Abstract:

According to the approaches that describe the press as the fourth power, the media is an important tool that provides pluralism in representative democracies. In this parallel, disabled persons, as a condition of a democratic communication system, want to be able to announce their own voices in the press, to defend their rights and to bring their remaining problems to the agenda of the media. The fact that the media reports about the disabled individuals is important in this sense. As a result of the scan of the literature, the number of works that include the subject of media and disabled people is quite limited. The sample of the study is made by the Hürriyet, Nationalism and Morning newspapers published during the "World Week of Disabled People" which corresponds to 10-16 May 2019. The purpose of this research is to reveal how the Turkish press provides news about the disabled with a news statement to the reader. According to the study, a total of 46 disabled news reports have been published in the period. The vocational structure of disability has revealed the individual/medical, minority/social, positive models in the conceptual framework of disability. 9 news selected according to 3 basic conceptual models, was studied by reference to Teun Van Dijk’s critical speech analysis. In the newspapers that are limited to disabled persons in a disadvantaged position in social life, disability has been shown to be conceptualized in ways. The social disabilities are perceived in the form in which the written press is represented. In this context, it can be said that the characteristics of the representations are more than the characteristics of those who produce them and reflect the judgments of those who eat them.

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