American News Media Framing on Zohran Mamdani’s New York City Mayoral Election

The study aims to examine how the American news media frame Zohran Mamdani during the New York City mayoral election. The analysis focuses on the news coverage from CNN news media and The New York Times, specifically those published between 1st June 2025 and the day before the election on 4th November 2025. The study explores how two different news media report the same topic which is Zohran Mamdani as the new face in New York’s politics. After identifying the framing on both news media, the study tries to explore any similarities or differences from two news media on Zohran Mamdani. This study uses mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative techniques with the assistance of corpus-based software Antconc. Quantitative data were derived from word frequency list generated from each media corpus, while qualitative data were obtained through concordance analysis of selected keywords. This combination of methods allows for a comprehensive understanding of how framing functions operate across different media sources. The framing then was identified using Robert Entman’s framing function. The findings reveals that both CNN news and The New York Times highlight Mamdani’s campaign, his proposals, and his opposition. Mamdani’s campaign was described as a successful and modern campaign style while his proposal was framed as a bold yet fraught with risk. Both media also emphasize the conflict between Mamdani and his opposition group. The tension is mainly rooted from Mamdani’s political stances and his identity as a socialist and Muslim that remain contested and not fully embraced within the broader American political landscape. A subtle difference in focus between the two media emerged after identifying the semantic categories of both news media. CNN news tends to focus more on Mamdani’s tensions with broader political institutions, while The New York Times concentrates more on the electoral competition between him and other candidates.