The Media Representation of Coronavirus As A Tool of Discredit And Praise: The Cases of Sözcü And Sabah

Abstract

This study addresses the media representations of Coronavirus pandemic in two of the leading Turkish newspapers: Sözcü and Sabah. Sözcü has the highest circulation in Turkish print media with an ideology critical of the government and Sabah is one of the best-selling dailies having a pure pro-government stance. The main objective of the study is to shed light on the discourses of these two newspapers on how government has managed the Coronavirus crisis. All of the columns of Sabah and Sözcü between March and September 2020 have been scanned and the articles having the selected key words in the title have been put under scrutiny. For each month, two articles have been analyzed in each newspaper and a total number of twenty-eight articles have been analyzed through employing Critical Discourse Analysis methodology of Van Dijk. Critical Discourse Analysis is an interdisciplinary approach that studies the ways power abuse, dominance, and inequality are reproduced, and resisted by text and talk. Through using socio-cognitive approach of Van Dijk, this study aims to trace the following: how the government discourses regarding the pandemic are reproduced in Sabah; and what kind of discursive challenges have been made by Sözcü against the government discourses. It can be argued that, newspapers representing different ideologies based on the media ownership structures present a certain framework to the readers. They reproduce or challenge the government discourses through their own ideological perspectives.