Partisan Attribution and Crime Framing in Bangladeshi Online News during the 2024–2026 Political Transition

Abstract

This study examines how Bangladeshi online newspapers attach political-party labels to crime news during the 2024-2026 power transition. The analysis covers 152 coded news items from 46 online outlets, published between 5 August 2024 and 14 June 2026. Each item names a figure, wing or local unit linked to a party seated in the 13th Parliament and connects that actor to extortion, land or market grabbing, attack, murder, threat, or sexual violence and abuse. Using qualitative content analysis with descriptive counts, items are coded for party family, wing, crime type, evidence stage, outlet, phase, division, and direction (accused vs victim). Coverage concentrates on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its wings, which account for 122 of the 152 items, far ahead of National Citizen Party (NCP) (14) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat) (10); extortion is the largest category (58), and direction splits into 117 accused and 35 victim or target items. This reflects a governing-party visibility effect rather than measured offending; the rape-or-abuse category is itself BNP-majority, 23 of its 26 items, with three linked to Chhatra Shibir. Across the corpus, allegation-stage reporting outweighs court-proven outcomes, and no conviction is recorded within the window. One high-salience rape case shows the party label itself being formally contested in court. The paper argues that party attribution in crime news works as a framing device that shapes public attention. It should not be read as a direct measure of proven crime.