Abstract:

The aim of this study is to examine how the tourism sector, which has suffered great losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is handled in Turkish national newspapers, the purpose, content, scope and format of tourism news. In order to achieve this aim, the study has examined news articles on tourism in 10 national newspapers in Turkey during the period of the pandemic between 21 March and 1 June 2020. The study has employed criteria for examining the tourism news articles. These criteria are the category of the news article, subject of the news article, type of tourism the news article covers, the page on which it is published, whether the news article has a continuation page, its position on the page, the type and number of images used in the news articles. The researchers have accessed 145 newspaper news articles on tourism in the national print media through the Media Monitoring Center and have evaluated the news articles obtained from there using document analysis. The researchers have categorized and evaluated the news articles using the content analysis method used in qualitative research. The results have revealed that the tourism news articles are widely covered on the economy pages of the newspapers. The study has determined that economic dimension of tourism is at the forefront, and among the tourism types, the newspapers have widely covered the news on sea tourism. The study has observed that tourism news is usually presented to the reader on the inside pages. In addition, the study has determined that virtual tourism news has increased in the newspapers during the pandemic and the study suggests that Turkey’s different tourism riches should be brought into virtual tourism.

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