Coverage of bombings for political advantage: Turkish on-line news reporting of the 2016 Ankara attacks

Way, Lyndon and Akan, Aysun (2017) Coverage of bombings for political advantage: Turkish on-line news reporting of the 2016 Ankara attacks. Social Semiotics, 27 (5). pp. 545-566. ISSN 1035-0330

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Abstract

On 17 February 2016, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 28 people and injuring another 61 in the “heart” of Turkey’s capital Ankara. A few hours after the attack, the Turkish government blamed Salih Neccar from the (mostly) Kurdish- Syrian People’s protection Unit (YPG). Two days later, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility and named the bomber as Abdülbaki Sömer a Turkish citizen. The bombing is part of a resumption of violence in Turkey between Turkish government authorities and Kurdish groups. In this paper, we examine how on-line news stories recontextualise the bombing. We assert that news sources multimodally recontextualise the bombing in ways which are advantageous to the news organisations’ owners, political alliances and supporters. By each news source representing their political interests unquestionably positive and opposition unconditionally negative, polarisation in Turkish politics is articulated. This does nothing to solve problems and heal wounds in a time of national crisis.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Social Semiotics on 11th January, 2017 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10350330.2016.1278342
Keywords:	Multimodal critical discourse studies, Turkey, bombing, Kurds, AKP, on-line news
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Creative Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities
Depositing User:	Lyndon Way
Date Deposited:	27 Sep 2017 13:10
Last Modified:	13 Nov 2024 12:21
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2156

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