Abstract:

News frames, which are essentially built on the written text and whose effect is also expanded with complementary elements such as news visuals, and which consequently serve the reader as a kind of guiding traffic signs, can be considered as the main skeleton on which the discourse rests or the discourse as a whole. In addition to being patterns of meaning that determine the context in which the news subject will be conveyed to the target audience, frames enable the reproduction of material reality in favor of the dominant one by feeding on principal social conventions. The main purpose of this study is to analyse the frames highlighted in the news published in the US online media about the 2023 Presidential Election held in Turkey. According to April 2023 data, the election-related news published in May on the web addresses of The New York Times, CNN and Fox News, the three most visited US-based news organizations, were selected as the sample for this analysis. In this study, framing analysis, an alternative technique of content analysis was preferred as a method. The construction of news frames is based on the inductive approach in which frames are generated from the materials at hand. As a result of the research, 5 common frames were identified under the headings of economy, international relations, earthquake, democracy and ideological tendencies and inflation, Turkey's foreign policy and military operations, victimization, anti-democracy and false consciousness were presented as the problems of the news frames. While economic policies, rapprochement between Turkey and Russia, Finland and Sweden's NATO memberships, Turkey's Syria policies, authoritarianism and ideologies emerged as the causal explanations of the frame problems, the purchasing power of the voters, Turkey's break with Western values, earthquake victims, the concept of unfair election race and ideological ties between the leaders and the voters were identified as the moral evaluations of the frames. The most important expectation or suggestion that came to the fore within the frames was the change of policies or the government.

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