Reporting blasphemy, constructing ‘Others’: media, xenophobia and the persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan

This paper investigates how online news spaces in Pakistan construct discourses surrounding blasphemy allegations concerning religious minorities. Integrating the theoretical frameworks of framing, moral panic, symbolic annihilation and bare life, positioning them within wider structures of xenophobic exclusion, this study examines the Asia Bibi case and the Shahzad and Shama lynching. The findings reveal that media discourses magnify moral panic, erase minority agency, and support exclusionary nationalism, normalizing vulnerability and extreme violence. Advancing an integrated analytical framework and a comparative empirical examination, the study demonstrates how media actively produces and shapes marginalization, advancing scholarship on media, power, and identity in postcolonial settings.