Sequential Realignment in Protest News: Four-Layer Framing of Bangladesh’s July 2024 Uprising in Prothom Alo Newspaper

Abstract

This article examines how Prothom Alo framed Bangladesh’s July 2024 uprising between 5 June and 5 September 2024. It uses a qualitative-dominant mixed-method framing design based on 257 online news reports. Qualitative analysis reads frames through Entman’s functional framing, Pan and Kosicki’s structural framing, Gamson and Modigliani’s symbolic framing, and Tuchman’s institutional framing, while descriptive coding reports counts, percentages, and limited within-corpus association checks. The findings show three connected stages. First, the newspaper framed the issue in terms of legal grievance, merit, and student mobilisation. Second, after violence and deaths became central, coverage shifted toward repression, injury, custody, and accountability; victim/family/medical sources rose from 5.3% in Phase 1 to 57.5% in Phase 3. Third, after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, the dominant frame moved toward transition, legal action, victory, and martyr memory. The study argues that Prothom Alo was neither simply neutral nor instantly oppositional. Its coverage underwent a series of realignments as official credibility weakened and victim evidence became central. The article contributes a phase-sensitive model for analysing protest news in pressured media systems.