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PP Issue no. 4 | 2022
POSTGRADUATE HIGHLIGHTOSTGRADUATE HIGHLIGHTOSTGRADUATE HIGHLIGHT

My name is Haroon Haroon Baloch
Baloch and I'm from PhD candidate
Islamabad, Pakistan.
Before commencing Media Studies and
my PhD degree at Communication Studies
UM, I did MPhil from
Islamia University However, I continued to struggle with organising
Bahawalpur and MA enough workshops and collecting data from a sizable
from National sample due to the pandemic. The arrival of Covid-19
University of Modern also meant I couldn't travel to Malaysia and meet with
Languages, my supervisor. In the first semester, I also contracted the
Islamabad in media studies. Prior to enrolling, I had coronavirus, which was especially difficult as I also had
discussed my PhD plans with a former student of UM to defend my proposal while in recovery.
and he put me in contact with my current supervisor Dr.
Amira Firdaus (she remains a pivotal person in the entire I am currently in the analysis stage and further
journey, consistently guiding me in making constant developing the literature review. Soon I plan to move
progress). I discussed my interest with her, who back to Kuala Lumpur to only focus on my thesis writing
thoroughly guided me in developing my proposal in as staying in Pakistan is filled with distractions, which
Constructive Journalism and Positive Psychology. UM includes work and family life. However, while it is never
became my choice for future studies because of its easy and sacrifices must be made, I will continue to
good ranking as an institution in the world. figure out a conclusive plan for the future and am
determined towards accomplishing my academic
My PhD research is designed from the lens of action goals.
research framework. I am exploring the constructive
journalism practices in Pakistan by using the framework
suggested by Karen McIntyre and Catherine
Gyldensted. I trained two groups of journalists in
Pakistan on the framework and collected data as pre
and post testing along with focus group discussions
and in-depth interviews. There are other streams of data
also part of the research. So far the findings are focused
on the current journalism practices in Pakistan that
makes constructive journalism a difficult concept to Participating at a
practice contrary to biased and partisan practices. journalism workshop,
in Islamabad,
February 2022.
The main objective of this research is to investigate
whether positive psychology and constructive
journalism are workable in Pakistani settings or not and
if the same framework proposed by Karen McIntyre and
Catehrine Gyldensted is workable. However, as soon as
I moved forward with the workshops and focused
group discussions, the findings included a whole new
dimension to this topic, which included the analysis of
current journalism practices overshadowing the
objective and solution oriented journalism.

The research has been fulfilling, but I initially faced
challenges in funding the focus group discussions and
constructive journalism workshops. However, with
some effort, I was able to secure small fundings from Leading focus group discussions with media managers and senior
DW Akademie through a local NGO in Pakistan. editors in Islamabad, 29 December 2021
26 | Pulse @ FASS