‘See no evil, read no evil’: the failing role of Turkish newspapers in coverage of Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt

Way, L and Karanfil, G and Erçifici, A (2018) ‘See no evil, read no evil’: the failing role of Turkish newspapers in coverage of Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt. Critical Discourse Studies, 15 (5). pp. 481-499. ISSN 1740-5904 (Accepted for Publication)

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Abstract

On 15 July 2016, a group of soldiers tried to wrestle political control of Turkey from the elected government. The ‘coup attempt’ was declared over within approximately 10 h, but not before more than 300 civilians, police and soldiers had died. This paper examines how Turkish newspapers which are known to be ‘oppositional’ represented events of the night and the following few days before a state of emergency was declared which silenced almost all opposition. Through a close examination of images and written text, we reveal how newspapers fail to question government actions. Instead, an analysis of presuppositions and how social actors and their actions are recontextualised finds that newspapers represent events from the perspective of their political interests whilst not actually questioning the actions of the government. It is in this way that oppositional newspapers use the coup to further their interests at the expense of informing the public.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Discourse Studies on 12 Mar 2018, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405904.2018.1450277
Keywords:	Turkish oppositional newspapers, multimodal critical discourse studies, Turkey, failed coup attempt
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Business, Law and Criminology > Liverpool Hope Business School
Depositing User:	Andrew Taylor
Date Deposited:	03 Oct 2018 09:47
Last Modified:	03 Oct 2018 09:48
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2625

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