Social Media in the Popular Turkish Newspapers

Abstract

This article focuses on how social media is represented in newspapers by analyzing two popular Turkish newspapers in the last decade, from 2013 to 2021. The news was examined with qualitative content analysis supported by MAXQDA software which is used to generate codings from the text while reading each news item. The article first reviews the literature on social media and the news. Afterward, the findings of the textual analysis are shared with diagrams and in an organized way around the themes. Some chosen examples are discussed with a special focus on the visuals and the headlines which are translated. The article reveals that social media, starting as the mobilizing force during the Gezi protests, over the years, gained new meanings in the news. In conclusion, it is suggested to categorize the following represented themes from 2013 to 2021 under the two frames as negative and positive. While the first includes the themes of disinformation and harm, crime, and access problems, the positive frame consists of the themes of new apps, services and technology, publicity, and using social media campaigns for good causes. The article argues how the newspapers, with the content of the news as these themes and with the form of the news with short, superficial, and under-investigated reporting as shown in the examples, in accordance with the context, amplify primarily authoritarianism and commercialism and ends with the suggestions.