Framing experiments show readers reject pro-extremist media messages on India’s Naxal conflict

Media framing of violent political conflict can steer how citizens judge the conflict itself, but the cognitive mechanics behind that process have rarely been tested experimentally. A new study from India, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, reports that people process media discourses opposing Left-wing extremism faster and more accurately than discourses sympathetic to it, and that they actively disagree with pro-extremist statements when asked to evaluate them.

Left-wing extremism, also known in India as Naxalism, has long been depicted in Indian media with a rejectionist stance framed around national security and developmental democracy. The authors note that despite this coverage, no experimental research on the perceptual mechanisms underlying pro- or anti-Naxal discourse had previously existed in social and political psychology. Their study was designed to test how people perceive and process anti-Naxal discourse at both cognitive and behavioural levels.

The researchers conducted two priming experiments in which participants were exposed to sentential stimuli drawn from anti-Naxal and pro-Naxal discourses. The experiments measured two outcomes: response accuracy, expressed as a percentage, and response time, measured in milliseconds. This design allowed the team to compare not only whether participants endorsed or rejected each type of framing, but how quickly their judgements were reached.

The findings were consistent across the measures. Anti-extremist discourses were processed with greater speed and higher accuracy than pro-extremist sentential stimuli. Participants showed strong disagreement with pro-Naxal discourses and agreement with anti-Naxal stimuli, indicating that their evaluative judgements aligned closely with the anti-conflict framing that dominates Indian media coverage of the insurgency.

The delayed response times recorded for pro-Naxal discourses are, according to the authors, the most telling result. They interpret this slowdown as evidence that participants were not simply failing to engage with pro-extremist messages, but actively rejecting the violent ideology of the radical communists, a process that requires additional cognitive effort compared with endorsing familiar anti-extremist framings.

The study’s findings are contextualized within the attentional paradigm, the framework of peace journalism, and theories of positive psychology. In this interpretation, the faster and more accurate processing of anti-extremist discourse reflects how repeated media exposure shapes the attentional priorities and evaluative habits that citizens bring to conflict-related information.

As an experimental contribution, the study moves beyond content analyses of media coverage to demonstrate a measurable perceptual mechanism, linking discursive framing to reaction-time and accuracy data. The authors position the work as the first experimental evidence on how pro- and anti-Naxal discourses are processed in India, the world’s largest democracy, where media depictions of the conflict carry substantial weight in shaping public attitudes and behaviours towards extremism.

Subject of Research: Social and political psychology of media framing in India's Left-wing extremism conflict

Article Title: The power of framing: how pro- and anti-conflict media discourses shape attitudes and behaviours towards left-wing extremism in india

Article References: Kumar, R., Tarai, S., Kumar, A., & Daimary, R. (2026). The power of framing: how pro- and anti-conflict media discourses shape attitudes and behaviours towards left-wing extremism in india. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09280-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09280-8

Keywords: power, framing, pro-, anti-conflict, media, discourses, shape, attitudes, behaviours, towards, left-wing, extremism