Television as an educational vehicle in Turkey: presentation of violence in news bulletins

The violence based news bearing negativity is the mostly presented one in the media which is no doubt influential on societies. As if violence is accepted as the most important ingredient in increasing the ratings in the Turkey’s media too. The news bulletins presenting the negativity more negative than its real negative-ness direct and affect the societal psychology. In this study, the TRT 1, ATV, Show TV, FOX TV, NTV and Kanal 7 national channels and their prime-time news bulletins are chosen as the sample for the content-analysis. Terrorism which is the most important element of violence for Turkey is focused. This element is called as the terrorist violence as it is called in the searched national channels. The study is limited with the bulletins including the attacks to Ortaköy Reina in the 1st of January 2017 and Gaziantep Police Department in the 10th of January 2017. The terrorist violence is content analysed on the news communicating structures such as duration, attitude, language, image, repetition, categorizing exaggeration, presenting examples, sound, and the subtitles. On the other hand, in order to obtain the opinions of academicians on the presentation of violence in main news bulletins, in-depth interviews were held with academicians (6 people) who worked at various faculties of Near East University (communication, education, psychology, law, fine arts). Within this scope, it was ensured that while interpreting the presentation of violence in main news bulletins, solutions can also be offered form educative point of view by academicians.