Framing the Attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab City: A Study of News Channels on the Bale and Eitaa Messaging Platforms

Hassani, Hossein

doi:10.22083/cssms.2026.584685.1147

Framing the Attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab City: A Study of News Channels on the Bale and Eitaa Messaging Platforms

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Hossein Hassani

Assistant Professor of Cyberspace Studies, RICAC. Tehran. Iran. Email: hassani@ricac.ac.ir.

https://doi.org/10.22083/cssms.2026.584685.1147

Abstract

Introduction: The attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab during the opening hours of the Ramadan War (February 28, 2026) became one of the most widely covered civilian tragedies of the conflict between Iran and the United States-Israel coalition. Because the victims were elementary school children, the incident attracted extensive attention from national and international media. In particular, Iranian messaging applications such as Baleh and Eitaa emerged as important sources of news dissemination during the war, especially in the context of restricted access to global social media platforms.
Previous studies have shown that media representations of war victims influence public perceptions by determining which victims are considered worthy of sympathy and attention. However, the central question of this study is not merely whether victims are represented, but how they are represented. In the Minab case, media coverage consistently emphasized the child and especially female identity of the victims. This emphasis shaped public understanding of the event and, in some cases, overshadowed factual aspects of the tragedy, including the actual composition of the victims and discrepancies in reported casualty figures.
This article argues that the dominant representation of the Minab attack can be understood through what is conceptualized here as “feminized emotional framing.” While this framing effectively attracted public attention and moral outrage, it also marginalized alternative interpretations of the event and contributed to a selective construction of victimhood. The study therefore investigates the dominant frames employed in Iranian messaging-app news channels and examines their implications for public understanding of the incident.
Methods: This research employs a qualitative content analysis combined with inductive frame analysis. The dataset consists of news posts related to the Minab school attack published between the outbreak of the war and the ceasefire (from February 28, 2026, to April 8, 2026). Data were collected from four highly followed news channels on the Iranian messaging applications Baleh and Eitaa: Khabar Fori, Bidari Mellat, Akhbar Fori/Mohem, and Sabrin News.
News items were identified through keyword searches including “Minab,” “Minab children,” and “Shajareh Tayyebeh.” Following screening procedures, a total of several hundred relevant news posts were retained for analysis. The unit of analysis was the individual news post, although only textual content was examined.
The analysis followed an inductive thematic approach. Open coding was first conducted to identify recurring concepts and patterns. Similar codes were then grouped into subthemes and broader themes. Finally, these themes were interpreted as news frames that highlighted particular aspects of the event while downplaying others.
Findings: The analysis revealed three dominant media frames in the coverage of the Minab school attack. The first and most prominent was the “Child-Girl Victim” frame, which emphasized female victims as innocent, vulnerable, and pure, transforming the image of the “girl victim” into a powerful emotional symbol while largely overlooking male casualties and individual identities. The second, the “Violation of Innocence” frame, portrayed the attack as a breach of a sacred moral boundary, presenting the school as a protected space and the children as symbols of universal innocence. As a result, the event was framed less as a military action and more as an ethical transgression. The third, the “Moral Justice-Seeking and Legal Accountability” frame, shifted attention from grief to demands for justice by highlighting international condemnation, legal responsibility, and the prosecution of perpetrators. Through this frame, the Minab tragedy was elevated from a national incident to a global symbol of violence against children, reinforcing calls for accountability and moral judgment.
Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that the media representation of the Minab school attack was shaped primarily by the Child-Girl Victim frame, supported by the complementary frames of Violation of Innocence and Moral Justice-Seeking and Legal Accountability. The study introduces the concept of feminized emotional framing to explain how gendered notions of innocence, fragility, and purity were attached to child victims in order to maximize emotional impact.
While this framing successfully mobilized sympathy and condemnation, it also produced unintended consequences. It contributed to the symbolic depersonalization of female victims, marginalized male student victims, and encouraged emotional narratives that sometimes-overshadowed factual precision, including inconsistencies in casualty figures. Overall, the findings suggest that media representations of wartime suffering are not neutral reflections of reality but active processes of meaning-making that shape public memory, moral judgment, and political responses to violence against children.

Keywords

Ramadan War

Framing

Representation

News

Messaging Apps

Subjects

Social Groups and Institutions and Cyberspace and Social Media

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