This research seeks to develop an understanding of the framing of the issue of air pollution in Delhi, India. Our research aims to identify people involved in the issue and how these policy actors are framing the causes, effects, and significance of air pollution. With an understanding of how policy actors, including the news media, are framing the air pollution issue, we provide insight into how individuals perceive the issue.

When faced with political decision making, individuals draw from more than past experiences. Humans are limited in their ability to interpret and understand complex information. Frames and narratives provide a way to structure and simplify that complexity, to create heuristics for people to comprehend issues in a particular light. Individuals interpret and process information differently, which makes narratives powerful in creating frames. They are often intentionally used in ways that can influence perceptions and positions on policy issues. 

Two innovative approaches are used to explore the framing of air pollution in Delhi, India: (i) a deductive approach that focuses on the stories told via online documents guided by the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF); (ii) an inductive approach of news media coverage of the issue using automated text coding. The NPF examines how contemporary information provided by various online documents creates frames that may sway resulting decisions during issue development. The framework analyzes of the use of character and narrative techniques on attitudes and aggregate public opinion. The online documents sampled and coded have been analyzed deductively according to the NPF, quantitatively and qualitatively assessing the patterns of narration and characterization among and between policy actors.

Whereas the NPF study offers a theoretically-rich description of a small number of online documents, the automated coding permits the coding of words and their associations from a large sample of news articles. The news media analysis data are analyzed using automated text coding (using software AutoMap) and network analysis tools (using software UCINET).  These deductive and inductive approaches are also informed by site visits and informal interviews conducted in Delhi, India and surrounding areas during summer 2013.

Initial results indicate that the government is conceived as both a hero and a villain, which points to the perceived mixed ability of government to effectively adopt and enforce public policies relating to air pollution. Frames of air pollution are heavy with value-laden descriptions. Two contentious issues have surfaced: 1) the successful construction and then failed operation of the Bus Rapid Transit system and 2) new emissions standards and Compressed Natural Gas fuel requirements to counteract rapid urbanization and the consequent increase in vehicular pollution. The combined deductive and inductive approaches as well as insights from the site visit provide a systematic and multi-method research study for understanding air pollution in one of the largest cities in the world.