Investigating the Nagorno-Karabakh war and the emerging India-Armenia alliance through the lenses of Indian media: case study of the Times of India

In the process of ongoing wars and conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the formation of new alliance between India and Armenia, this study aims to investigate the Indian media news coverage of the recent Nagorno-Karabakh war. To this end, a synthesis of agenda setting and media conflict framing theories with a special attention to war/peace journalism was applied. A synthesis of agenda-setting and media conflict framing theories, with a special focus on war/peace journalism, was applied as it provided a suitable framework for analyzing war news. The main research method was content analysis, and data was collected from the Times of India, one of the most significant nationwide English-language newspapers in India. The study's timeframe spanned from September 2022 to October 2023.It was the time that the clashes happened between the two countries leading to the Azerbaijani government launched a blockade of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).The results of the study showed that the most important news topics that were covered by the Times of India was the report of violence in battlefield including the number of victims such as killed, wounded or displace people. Then mediating other countries such as Iran for the peace process got prior attention. Afterwards the tensions
between Armenia and Russia and consequently, its alliances with countries such as France and India were highlighted. From the perspectives of media conflict framing the results showed that the selected news frames were closer to the war journalism.