(Draft)
Framing the Political Campaign News in Turkish Newspapers
İrfan Erdogan
Emre Toros
Abstract
This quasi-experimental study investigated the character of and difference in preferential treatment of political campaign
speeches in Turkish newspapers. The central argument of study is that newspapers, mimicking each other in general
tendency and differing according to their disposition toward the speaker, preferentially treat campaign actors, speeches and
topics, and frame a lot more negative campaign news than positive ones. The study population included campaign news
which was published in the nationally distributed daily newspapers during the campaign period between 2001 and 2011. The
data included 2200 all campaign news in the sample of 11 newspapers out of 27. The empirical analyses confirmed all 5
hypotheses. It was found that (a) there is a dominant tendency among newspapers towards high level of negativity and the
extent of negativity somewhat changes according to newspapers, (b) there is only few functional negativity when the target is
“us” and almost total negativity when the target is “them”, (c) they prefer speeches of those who are at the top of political
power structure and, thus, they marginalize or ignore other actors via exclusion. Although newspapers select limited
numbers of actors and campaign topics, but they differ in the extent of their coverage. This study was designed to contribute
to the accumulated knowledge in this area by focusing on a nonwestern environment and serve as a starting point of research
and discussion in order to gain improved knowledge and empirical evidence on the nature of campaign news in the countries
outside the West.
Keywords political campaigns, news framing, negative news, campaign speeches, media representation, preferential framing.
Function of media in political life of society has been one of the central concerns of
communication studies. Political communication studies as a subsection of communication
research have started with public opinion and voting behavior and evolved toward mediaconstructed political reality, multiplied in quantity and quality and become highly diverse,
fragmented and complex in their topics and theoretical and methodological approaches.
During this development, the nature and effect of negative campaigning has been one of the
major focuses of research in recent years especially in political science and political
communication.
There are rapidly increasing numbers of studies focusing on every probable aspect of
negative/attack campaigning (Elmelund-Præstekær, 2011; Geer, 2012; Nooy &
Kleinnijenhuis, 2013). Leading focus of such studies include topics such as the strategies of
attack campaign (Trent & Friedenberg, 2008), reasons for negative speech/campaign,
(Damore, 2002; Lau & Pomper, 2001), negative campaign to catch media attention (Geer,
2012; Hansen & Pedersen, 2008), front-runner versus runner-up tactics (Damore, 2002; Lau
& Pomper, 2001), tactic, outcome, advantage, function and cost of negative campaigning
(Carraro, Gawronski, & Castelli, 2010; Elmelund-Præstekær, 2010; Martin, 2004; Soubeyran,
2009; Walter & Vries, 2011), the negative and damaging outcome for political parties
(Brooks, 2006; Lau, Sigelman, & Rovner, 2007), negative messages in political speech,
choice of target and extent of representation in different media channels and (ElmelundPræstekær, 2008; Ridout & Holland, 2010; Walter & Vliegenthart, 2010), and extent of
reliance on negative campaigning (Blumler & Kavanagh, 1999). Hänggli and Kriesi (2012)
found that politicians push and repeat their own frames, and attack and dispute the frames of
their opponents. As De Nooy and Kleinnijenhu was stated, “in the logic of politics, support
and attack statements serve political purposes such as communicating static ideological
positions, gaining office, forging coalitions, or creating and implementing policies” (2013, p.
119).
Regarding the media representation of political speech, we witness the working of
media professionalism in a specific dominant form that frames the production of political
news in predefined formats: Political attacks or negative campaign speech are treated as
having high news value and attack/negative speech and advertisements receive excessive
amounts of coverage in media (Geer, 2012; Hansen & Pedersen, 2008; Nooy &
Kleinnijenhuis, 2013). Politicians, aware of the nature of media practices, tend to adapt to
media news format in order to obtain exposure in the news (Strömback, 2008). So,
attack/negative news serve as reproduction of media and political system in general and help
politicians (and also media) in their effort to communicate ideological positions, gain support
for office, forge coalitions, and create and implement policies.
The theoretical framework of the present study is based on the combination of the
agenda-setting theory of Weaver, McCombs and Shaw (Weaver, 2007) and framing approach
of Goffman (1974). Agenda setting deals with selection of topics or issues for coverage by the
news media and “indirectly through priming, evaluations of political leaders” (Scheufele &
Tewksbury, 2007, p. 15). Framing focuses on the particular ways those issues are presented.
As Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw explains, framing “is the selection of a restricted number of
thematically related attributes for inclusion on the media agenda when a particular object is
discussed” (Weaver, 2007, p. 143). Media framing is the construction process by which media
professionals redefine the defined by the campaign speakers. Goffman (1974, p. 21) classifies
frames as natural and societal frames: “Natural frames help to interpret events originating
from natural and nonintentional causes”, whereas societal frames help “to locate, perceive,
identify, and label” actions and events that spring from intentional human activities. Then,
nature of a political news as an end-product of mass communication depends on the
framework employed by the journalists to depict the event. In Goffman’s words, “the type of
framework we employ provides a way of describing the event to which it is applied” (1974, p.
24).
In this study, the agenda-setting by the media was taken as macroconstruct (Scheufele
& Tewksbury, 2007, p. 12) at the agenda building level. Namely, the agenda setting function
of media was taken at the level of framing the news in terms of the importance assigned to
political issues and personalities by the newsmakers. In this respect, journalists are agenda-
builders (for the public) who prepare political news using speeches of politicians who are
themselves agenda builders/setters of political news agenda for journalist. We used the
framing also at macroconstruct level in order to state that media professionals make some
issues more salient and important than others “to promote a particular problem definition,
causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item
described” (Entman, 2007, p. 52). Thus, they influence not only the audience but also each
other by setting standards for judgments, issues and approaches in political news. Framing
actually starts working at the stage and level of issue selection (by media professionals) which
is called priming. At the level of construction of political news, we used the media framing as
the way of organizing the political speech as news in order to set a certain meaning. Media
frames are intrinsically connected with the nature of media professionalism and professional
practices. Nature of selection and production of news (nature of priming and framing) are
influenced by the journalist’s way of mediation among self-interest, social-responsibility,
general interest, interest of the media organization, power structure and relations, prevailing
professional routines/practices, ideological orientation of journalist and the organization, and
general social norms and values (Gans, 1979).
Professional news practices rely on attack/negative campaigns, reproduce the reliance
of politicians on attack/negative campaign and produce audiences who get used to and seek
for such political speeches. Then, it seems safe to state that media largely adopt the main
frames from the political elites who, as Matthes (2012) and Hänggli and Kriesi (2010 and
2012) indicated, construct and promote their own frames. At the same time, politicians tend to
adjust their frames in ways that make them more likely to be covered by the news media and,
thus, they buttress the media logic that accentuates conflict, personalization, or dramatization
(Nooy & Kleinnijenhuis, 2013; Strömback, 2008). In fact, all these research findings lead us
to the fact that there is a reciprocal relationship between the politics and media: They feed
each other in a kind of symbiosis that each side engages in relationship ranging from
cooperation to competition.
Media cultivate and feed the negativity, thus politicians find ready and eager channels
for the wide dissemination of their attack and defense speeches. News values are mostly based
on negativity all over the world and it can be summarized by, for instance, four popular
sayings, in addition to the findings of many studies: (1) "When a dog bites a man, that is not
news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." (2) "You never read
about a plane that did not crash". (3) To a journalist, good news is often not news at all. (4)
The real news is bad news. In the 21st century, Journalists’ “feeding negativity” has become
more pervasive while their daily frantic search for attracting readers leads them to seek ways
to stamp their marks on political news beyond prevailing routines. Yet standardization,
personal and organizational interests, power and interest relations within the organization and
with political environment remain at the roots of their production practices (Adorno, 1991;
Bagdikian, 2004; Croteau, Hoynes, & Milan, 2011). Thus, political news production is highly
structured and consciously framed for certain ends in mind. Selection of speakers and parts of
speeches reflect the fact that news production has clear partiality even in presentation of
political speeches and sustainability of economical considerations of the journalist and the
newspaper under varying degrees of covert and overt pressures coming from leading political
and economical power circles (Bennett, Lawrence, & Livingston, 2007; Davies, 2008; Young,
2009). Another major pressure emerges from proliferating interest in combining news with
entertainment and creating professional practice and product of “political infotainment.” The
result is a growing tendency of hybridity in news with the introduction of parts from other
genres such as magazine and tabloids, and converging news with drama, excitement,
reenactment, scandals, trivia, talk-shows and physical action (Barnhurst, 2011; Baym, 2005;
Wood, 2004). Such tendency, collapsing the personal attacks and negative speeches over the
issues, not only buttresses the power relations among actors and ultimately affects the nature,
flows and meanings of political news (Chadwick, 2011), but also brings about trivialization
and tabloidization of even serious political issues.
Despite the productive past of academic interest especially in the USA and Europe, no
due attention has been given to the nature of news in framing the political speech in terms of
negativity in Turkey. This study was designed to fill the gap as much as possible by
investigating the nature of and difference in the preferential treatment of politicians and their
speeches in leading Turkish newspapers.
Political communication and media representation during the election periods in
Turkey is still a top-down affair. With the exception of unexpected or unforeseen occurrences,
the issues to be discussed and not to be discussed are determined by politicians, framed and
reframed by journalists, political experts and leaders of interested parties. This determination
is not done independently by these actors; rather, it is done according to the prevailing
political culture of interdependency in realization of private and common interests and
interrelations of cooperation and competition. In politics and media representation, the old
populist framing in the modern/modernist era which was based on the ideological race has
been replaced by the new populism of post-modern thoughts and sensitivities all over the
world. In Turkey, new populist political discourse in media is mainly used for a safe and
popular haven to maintain and advance personal-professional and organized interests and
power in media and politics. Such populist interests are rarely rooted in the expansion of
democratization, demise of ideological positions or paternalistic dispositions of journalists
and politicians, rather mostly rooted in the discourse to create functional images of political
and social realities that are called factoids (Ewen, 1996) or hyper-reality (Baudrillard, 1987).
In order to keep and provoke popular support, media professionals and mainstream politicians
in Turkey have always been using subjects, problems, reasons to problems and solutions that
people readily find important, engaging, relevant and interesting. During the era of
modernism, media and politics of representative democracy theoretically were promoted as to
be the voice and will of the majority. Now, the post-modern rhetoric refuses the validity of
modernist politics and policies and focuses on the globalization, participative democracy and
democratization wherein, they claim, people are empowered and express their political views
and concerns through new media, NGOs and political power of popular administration of a
popular party. However, major issues they emphasize are still the same: religious and moral
issues, personal behaviors and relationships, and structural questions and problems of political
order that are mostly reduced to parliamentary processes and governmental policies. The same
prevailing issues and lately emerged ones in current conditions are presented and discussed by
using mostly new rhetoric with cunningly constructed concepts of political agenda setting for
cultivation and maintenance. Furthermore, political news are supplemented with highly
expanded and popularized “talk-show democracy” (Graber, 1994) and vast varieties of
political columnists and other commentators who play important mediator role in framing the
political, economical and ethical meaning. Auto-control of media professionals are
passionately hailed and promoted as answer to the notorious censorship of the state. However,
auto-control in Turkey turned out to be the most hideous neo-censorship via professional selfcontrol in framing political news because media professionals are keenly aware of the fact
that the way they structure the news have serious outcomes for them: They, with very few
exceptions, avoid putting their job in jeopardy (fear of getting fired) by constructing the news
in a certain (distorted, biased, exaggerated) way or by completely ignoring the events. They
tend to remain away from being the target of various severe pressures coming from their
bosses and political power holders (fear of doing something against the interest of the media
owners and fear of political revenge form the government). They tend to avoid anything that
can block their advancement in their profession (fear of exclusion from the journalism world).
They mostly tend to perform their job in such a way that all doors for professional and
economical enrichment remain open for them. In Turkey, as probably in all countries today,
the existence of many channels, chances and incentives for media professionals means that
they can frame political communication to the interests of competing powers that inevitably
give them opportunity to deal with variety of subjects using different framesets within the
confines of dominant political environment. Consequently, the dominant professional
practices in journalism are structured in such a way that they have tendency of preferential
treatment of speakers and discursive elements in political communication. Thus, newspapers
introduce various biases in daily framing of political news by, as Griffin (2003) stated in
defining framing, calling attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring others. The
preferential treatment starts in selecting the news among many daily occurrences (news
selection) and continues with the inclusion and selection of political speakers and of parts of
their speeches (content selection). Eventually, a consciously selected, constructed and
packaged professional end-product as political news is produced for readers to attend and
consume.
Hypotheses
Based on the theoretical presentation above, we have developed five hypotheses and grouped
these hypotheses under three sets. The aim here is to explore and test the preferential
treatment of political news-making. All sets designed to identify the distributional character of
variables and test the bivariate relations.
Tone of Campaign News Coverage: Framing Negativity vs Positivity
Various kinds of homogeneity can be found in political news coverage. The first one is related
with framing the tone of speech: Media professionals seem to operate rather homogeneously
in terms of their propensity to cover campaign news (Nooy & Kleinnijenhuis, 2013). Whether
or not politicians adapt to media logic, the media professionals, regardless of their political
preferences and vested interests, tend to construct more bad/negative news frames (EshbaughSoha, 2010), and, if needed, exaggerate negative statements of political actors mainly because
of the nature of media professionalism that is based on a language of negativity in political
newsworthiness. Namely, newspaper professionals tend to prefer and frame bad news over
good news, negative over positive. Hence, choosing the political campaign speech to make
news, they all are expected to show similar selection patterns, heavily leaning towards the
negativity. Furthermore, their selectivity includes and excludes components of speech in
newsmaking according to their vested interests and ideological orientations. Hence, despite
the general homogeneity in focusing more on the negativity than the positivity, the
newspapers tend to differ in the quantitative extent of their negativity/positivity. Namely, the
general framing tendency on negativity is accentuated according to the ideological disposition
of newspapers towards the party identification of speaker/speech. This theoretical explanation
led us to construct the following hypothesis:
The following hypothesis was extracted from this reasoning:
H1: Homogeneity and difference in the tone of coverage hypothesis: (a) Newspapers
prefer campaign speech with negative character more than positive ones. However, (b) they
differ in the extent of negativity/positivity in their news coverage according to their
ideological orientation.
Previous studies found that smaller the power, smaller the media representation, and
thus higher the chance that small parties apply strong verbal attack to get media attention
(Geer, 2012; Hansen & Pedersen, 2008). This indicates that speeches of actors from small
parties can find chance of getting published as news especially when their attack is strikingly
strong. Then, it is expected that framing political speeches differ in quantity according to the
political power/position of the speaker.
Turkish political and media professionalism tend to reproduce political and media
cultures that have a historically cultivated tendency to focus on communicating negative
aspects of others (emphasizing external attributions) and positive aspects of their own
(emphasizing internal attributions). That’s why, while politicians attribute negativity to others
(them) and positivity to “us”, newspapers tend to reproduce this political practice, thus
perpetuate a reciprocal relationship. As a result, politicians and newspapers overemphasize
the otherization of political opponents/foes while underemphasizing or completely excluding
negative evaluations of their friends/proponents/allies. Based on these reasoning, the
following hypothesis with two connected statements was extracted:
H2: General tendency in “us vs. them” hypothesis: While reproducing the dominant
political cultural practices in campaign speeches, media framing of campaign speeches have
much more negativity than positivity when speaker talks about “them” and much less
positivity than negativity when speaker talks about “us”.
Homogeneity and Difference in Framing the News Topics
The second group of rationale and hypotheses were related with the homogeneity in selecting
the campaign topics. It is based on the theoretical reasoning that media frame, as ‘the central
organizing idea for news content, supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the
use of selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration’’ (Weaver, 2007, p. 143). Newspaper
selection of similar political topics makes the political agenda of a day and they do not differ
as a topic from one newspaper to other. Hence, similar and limited numbers of topics make up
the newspapers’ paradigmatic pool of political campaign issues. They not only remain within
the confines of the known issue agendas that are set by the politicians, but also do not
question the exclusive character of political campaign speeches by putting forward excluded
topics in the news.
Despite using the similar major types of topics, newspapers differ in the extent of
inclusion of topics according to the functional character of the topic for the
speaker/newspaper. It means that newspapers, when needed, use any major or minor topic in
the paradigm pool of journalism; however they tend to use the functional ones more than
others with the exception of enduring issues of conflict and important current events. Usage of
same topic by different newspapers also means that journalists reconstruct the meaning by
choosing, coding and recoding the part of the speech in order to support their own positions in
the discussion. This reasoning led us to extract the following hypothesis stating general
homogeneity and difference among newspapers:
H3: General similarity and newspaper difference in news topics hypothesis: (a) The
campaign news topics show more similarities across the newspapers than dissimilarities. (b)
However, newspapers differ in the extent of inclusion of campaign topics.
Homogeneity and proximity in framing the campaign speakers
Newspaper professionals tend to mimic each other not only in selecting the news topics, but
also in selecting the political actors, due to historically developed dominant character of
media professionalism. As Shehata indicated, “the news media’s focus on official political
actors is not only an issue of dependency but a consequence of a general journalistic tendency
to follow and report on actions of those in powerful positions as well” (2010, p. 125). They
use same political actors in their daily practices via preferential inclusions and exclusion
processes of news production. The same actors occupy the news agenda day after day.
Newspapers’ selection of political actors generally demonstrates a hierarchical preferential
ordering that starts from the top of the political power structure and barely goes beyond the
first level which includes only political party leaders. Furthermore, the extent of this
preferential selection depends on (a) political identity of the speaker (namely, disposition of
the newspaper towards the speaker) except some historically prevailing issues of highly
differing dispositions, and (b) political identity of the target (namely, disposition of the
newspaper towards the target of speaker). They prefer political speech of those in the front
line of the political power structure and relations; hence the speakers of small parties find very
little representation in the news. There is only one probable exemption to this: Ideological
proximity of the newspaper to the speaker. All these mean that newspapers tend to
marginalize or completely ignore some political actors and topics by means of exclusion from
daily news production. Marginal politicians and political parties are scantly represented in
media. Thus, quantitative nature of media representation of campaign speech of an actor
changes according to the power he/she holds in political arena (Nooy & Kleinnijenhuis,
2013). Media representation decreases as the power of the speaker lessens. This media policy
creates/buttresses a probability that speeches of actors from small parties can find chance of
getting published as news especially when their attack is strikingly strong. Then, it is expected
that framing political speeches differ in quantity according to the political power and position
of the speaker. All these lead us to the following hypotheses:
H4: Similarity, power and preferential treatment hypothesis: (a) Speakers used in the
campaign news show similarities across the newspapers. (b) However, speakers of major
parties are represented in news much more than speakers of minor parties.
H5: Ideological proximity hypothesis: Despite the similarities in the actor usage,
newspapers differ in the extent of the usage of speakers according to the proximity of political
orientation of speaker to the newspaper.
Method
The present study was designed to investigate the character of and difference in preferential
treatment of political campaign speeches in Turkish newspapers.
Study population includes the political campaign news that was published in the
national newspapers in Turkey during the four weeks campaign period in five (national and
local) elections between 2002 and 2011. In order to extract sample, few steps were followed:
Firstly, the daily published and nationally circulated newspapers were determined.
Newspapers that started publication after 2007 were excluded from the list. It was found that
there were 27 newspapers. Secondly, 11 newspapers were selected from the list of 27
newspapers by using simple random sampling. Thirdly, All the news published during the
campaign month were determined by going through all the issues. It was found that there
were 2200 campaign news reports altogether. All of them were used for data collection and
analysis.
Campaign news was defined as any news concerning the campaign under question.
Opinion pieces, news on other political actors like leaders of civil society organizations or
information produced by columnists were excluded from this definition.
Data collection was done by manifest and latent content analysis of the news texts.
The manifest content analyses included the election year, election type (national and local),
name of the newspaper, speaker (message sending person), party affiliation of speaker
(message sending party), target of speech (target of campaign communication), news topics,
and topical orientation of speech. Following this, as a second step, latent content analysis was
used in order to determine the contextual orientation which was confined only in the
determination of the tone of campaign speech.

The election year was defined as national and municipal elections between 2002
and 2011. There were five elections within this period.

Newspapers were defined as daily national newspapers and included 11 papers.
They were grouped under six main political orientations: left, center-left, liberalcenter, religious-right, nationalist-right and neo-liberal/post-modern.

Speakers/actors were defined as message sending persons in the campaign news.
They were measured by coding the names as they appeared in the news. During
this process, the party affiliation of speaker was also found out.

Target of speech was defined as “target is a person”, “target is a party” and
“general target” and coding was done accordingly.

Identity of target was defined as the “us” and “them” orientation of the target of
speech. It was determined according to the identity of the target: If the target is the
political party of the speaker or political persona who belongs to the same party, it
is coded as “us”, if not, “them”. Unidentified target, such as “general” was
excluded from the analysis.

News topics were defined as the issues of campaign news and coded as they
appeared during the data analysis, and, later, grouped separately under major
topics.

The topical orientation of speech was defined as whether or not it is issue oriented
or personal trait oriented.

The tone of speech was defined as binary oppositions: positive or negative. A
negative tone is any kind of criticism which is directed toward the target of speech,
a political actor or an issue. A positive tone is any kind of speech that carries
affirmative or constructive content.
Tone and topical orientation of speech were determined and coded by using the
following steps:

Determining the tone of speech in the text: Tone is negative if the actor of the speech
is criticising any other party or political actor (negative tone/appeal). Otherwise, it is
positive tone.

Determining the topical orientation/focus of the content of speech: If the speech is
concerned with an issue, then the speech is issue oriented: If it is concerned with the
character of another politician/actor, then the speech is personality trait oriented.

The available examples such as 2001 British Electoral Study (Clarke, 2003), 2006
Federal Election Study of Canada (Soroka, Maioni, & Andrew, 2006) and Lengauer,
Esser & Berganza (2012) were helpful in the method and coding procedures.
Because of the character of all the variables, they were measured at the nominal level.
Univariate statistics were used for the single variable distributions. The chi-square statistics
were used to test the hypotheses because of the level of measurement and the distribution of a
variable within each category of a variable.
Findings
The present study tested five hypotheses in order to investigate the character of and difference
in preferential treatment of political actors and their speeches during the elections between
2002 and 2011 in leading Turkish newspapers. The 2200 speeches from 11 newspapers were
analyzed.
The majority of campaign news (70.7 %) was issue oriented and the rest (29.3%) were
directed towards the personality traits of political personalities (Table 1 and Table 2).
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
Focusing on the personality traits was higher during the local elections (43.0%) as
compared to the national elections (24.8%). Only 11.5% of speeches on personality were
positive whereas the rest were attack/support speech using personality traits. Over three
fourths of issues (77.8%) were political and economical issues.
Target of speeches included mostly a political personality (81.4%), followed by no
specific target, but general (11.3%) and political party only (7.4%).
Tone of Campaign News Coverage: Framing Negativity vs. Positivity
The first hypothesis was based on the theoretical reasoning that newspaper professionals tend
to prefer bad news over good news, hence, political campaign news are expected to show
similar selection patterns in the quantitative distribution in terms of negativity/positivity.
Namely, the amount of negative distribution within each newspaper and the overall negative
distribution are expected to be significantly more than the positive ones. Despite this
homogeneity, the second part of the hypothesis stated that, when compared, newspapers differ
in the extent of negativity/positivity in their news coverage according to their ideological
orientation. These two parts of the first hypothesis were supported by the findings (Table 3
and Table 4). Except one newspaper, the tests for the distributions in each newspaper and in
the overall distribution were significant at 0.01 level (Hypothesis # 1), indicating dominant
tendency toward negativity in news. This tendency had no difference in national and local
elections, (72.2% and 72.4% negativity, respectively). The negativity of newspapers ranged
from 58.8 % to 97.9 % whereas the positivity changed between 2.1 % to 41.1 %. Taraf
provided the highest negative report (97.9 %) whereas Birgün (57.5 %) and Zaman (60.2 %)
provided the lowest amount of negative reports.
TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE
Regarding the second part of the hypothesis, it was found that newspapers differ in
general not only among themselves, but also according to their ideological disposition (Table
4). However, findings showed that the center-left (72.2%), Liberal popular center (73.6) and
center (75.8%) oriented newspapers slightly differ from one another. Left had a lot less
negative framing (57.5%), while the neo-liberals had the highest level of negative distribution
(97.9%).
TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE
Hypothesis # 2 was concerned with the media representation of tone of speech in
terms of “us” vs. “them”. The findings confirmed the hypothesis that campaign news had
more negativity than positivity when talked about “them” and no negativity when talked about
“us” (Table 5). The positivity was 99.5 % when the target of speech was “us”, while
negativity was 95.5 % when the target was “them”. The extent of negativity was higher in the
local elections (99.7%) as compared to the national elections (75.3%). Small percentages of
(a) negativities in speeches about “us” were due to the self-criticism and/or criticizing
unfriendly “us” and (b) positivities in speeches about “them” were due to the fact that “they”
were friendly “them”.
TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE
There were only two negative speeches directed to “us”: The first one was related with
the statement of MHP leader Bahçeli who expressed his embarrassment toward his party and
orphans. The second one was related with the in-party conflict: Ertugrul Güray of CHP, in
2004, stated that he was not happy with the CHP leadership. He was expelled from the CHP
in 2004. When a partial correlation was done, significant difference among newspapers was
found only in the coverage of negativity (X2: 55.310, df: 10, p: 0.01).The distribution ranged
from 86.8% to 100.0% (Sözcü 86.8%, Ortadoğu 87.2%, Cumhuriyet 92.4% and the rest were
between 96.5 % and 100%).
Homogeneity and Proximity in Framing the News Topics
The similarity in news topics hypothesis (first part of the hypothesis # 3) was supported with
the exceptions of social problems and environment which were scantly covered by some
newspapers. The politics (48.3 %) and economy (29.3 %) were the most preferred ones by all
newspapers, while environment (0.8 %) and health care (0.9 %) were not only the least
preferred ones but also preferred by few newspapers. There were only 3 newspapers that
provided campaign news on environment and 5 newspapers that made campaign news on
healthcare. The campaign news on politics and economics in local elections were 5% less than
the national elections. The news on culture and education in local elections were higher
(13.1% vs. 4.8%). Despite this dominant tendency of selecting the same campaign topics, the
newspapers were expected to differ in the extent of their coverage (second part of the
hypotheses # 3). This hypothesized difference was supported by the findings (table 6). Despite
the fact that all newspapers chose political, economical, international and culture/education
issues, they all differed in the extent of coverage of these issues. The extent of coverage of
political topics ranged from 30.6 % (Radikal) to 65.7 % (Taraf), economic ones from 11.4%
(Taraf) to 39.3% (Ortadoğu) and international issues from 3.3% (Ortadoğu) to 27.9% (Sabah).
TABLE 6 ABOUT HERE
Homogeneity and Proximity in Framing the Campaign Speakers
The findings supported the hypotheses that newspapers use the similar political actors, but
they differ in the quantitative inclusion of the actors in news (hypothesis # 4). Two thirds of
the 62 actors of all news (65.9%) were the party leaders of the major three parties (CHP
25.5%, AKP 24.1% and MHP 16.3%). All newspapers included these leaders in their
campaign news. This tendency did not change in the local news. The only difference was that
newspapers provided some campaign speeches of candidates of the leading parties during the
local elections. One of the striking findings was that only some newspapers provided local
campaign news and all of them were from the 3 major cities. The leaders of the other known
parties were also included in all newspapers, but scantly (1.0% - 3.3%). Each of the remaining
48 of total 62 speakers received less than 1.0% attention and was covered by few newspapers.
This shows that all newspapers use similar political actors of major political parties, but this
similarity generally disappears when it comes to the minor party speakers. These findings
indicate that leaders of major parties have preferential treatment over the leaders/speakers of
minor parties.
Despite this overall tendency of using similar major actors, newspapers differ in the
quantitative extent of inclusion of political actors (Table 7). Cumhuriyet’s first preference was
CHP leaders (28.3 %), followed by the governing party speaker (18.3 %). Sözcü had the
tendency similar to Cumhuriyet. Zaman (a progovernment newspaper) allocated 35.8 % to the
prime minister and 20.2 % to the leaders of the main opposition party. The distribution of
Ortadoğu was heavily leaned towards the leader of MHP (55.8 %).
TABLE 7 ABOUT HERE
Conclusions
This article investigated the nature of campaign news in terms of issues, actors and tone of
reported speech in Turkish newspapers. The basic theoretical assumptions of the present study
indicated that the dominant professional practices in journalism have tendency of privileged
treatment of speakers and preferential selectivity in discursive elements in political
communication. The preferential treatment starts in selecting the news among many daily
occurrences (news selection) and continues with the inclusion and selection of political
speakers and of parts of their speeches (content selection). At the end, consciously selected,
constructed and packaged professional end-products as political news are produced for
readers to attend/consume. They introduce their own preferences in their selective portrayal of
speakers and their speeches. It means that every newspaper use the same/similar actors (e.g.,
party leaders) and their speeches in political news in such a way that each newspaper tries to
create certain images of speakers and meanings of their speeches. Thus, the quantitative and
evaluative representations differ according to the way that a newspaper handles actor and
his/her speech. So, differences emerge in the extent of representation of campaign speeches
and negative/positive exaggeration because the selective inclusions and exclusions in news
making are done according to ideological disposition and vested interests of newspapers.
However, this does not necessarily mean (a) that newspapers drastically reduce/increase the
number of allocations they provide for the major leaders according to their calculated goals
and (b) that news grossly distort the speech. Rather, it means that number of allocations tends
to be in favor of the certain actors and topics, with the implication that some media
representation of speech and speaker remain undistorted with only some accentuation on
negative/positive components of the speech, while others provide distortion via high emphasis
only on purposefully selected “functional negativity/positivity” in a speech.
The study findings, supporting the theoretical statements above and findings of
previous studies (Nooy & Kleinnijenhuis, 2013), indicate that newspapers tend to mimic each
other in selecting types of political actors, main topics and negativity/positivity in framing
campaign news. Although newspapers set their campaign news agenda according to media’s
dominant mimicking tendency, they differ in the treatment of negativity/positivity, political
actors, campaign speeches and topics (issues and traits) while constructing the news according
to various calculated goals newsmakers have.
Supporting the general findings of previous studies in other countries (Chadwick,
2011; Geer, 2012; Hänggli & Kriesi, 2010; Lengauer et al., 2012; Nooy & Kleinnijenhuis,
2013), it was found that the dominant mode in Turkish campaign news is the high
concentration on negativity. There is an increasing trend in the extent of negativity in
campaign news: The percent of negativity was 65.2 % in 2002 election and it increased to
78.7% in 2007, and 80.1% in 2011. This also implies similar tendency in politics and supports
the previous research findings (Lau et al., 2007). This finding also provides an answer to the
concern of Lengauer, Esser and Berganza on “whether negativity is an exceptional US
American media phenomenon or a generalizable trend all across modern mass democracies”
(2012, p. 180): Our findings indicate that the negativity seems to be an international trend in
media professionalism.
The finding of the present research can also be evaluated as an alarming tendency in
terms of elitism, political trivialization, superficiality, escape from sound discussions, lack of
plurality and democratization. Furthermore, we can extend this alarming tendency to lack of
political engagement and rational and sound political decision making by the voters who get
their news from such media.
Regarding the actor selection, findings clearly demonstrate the dominance of existence
of preference based on the power relations that engender and reproduce the preferential
treatment of powerful over the powerless. It is well documented that primary news sources are
leaders and high-ranking personalities in the power structure in public and private
organizations (Berkowitz, 2009; Entman, 2007; Shehata, 2010). The first preferential
selections take place when newspapers include only (a) the party leaders and candidates for
the municipal positions, and (b) mostly the leading party leaders, and leading party candidates
for municipal election only in few major cities. Newspapers heavily focus on the leaders of
only the three major parties (66.3%), The majority of speakers (49 of 62) get less than 1.0%
attention in news. Although newspapers tend to use preset types of political actors and set
their political news agenda according to the leaders of governing party and major opposition
parties, findings also show that newspapers differ in the quantitative inclusion of political
actors depending on their disposition towards the political orientation/affiliation of the
speaker. Media’s preference and reproduction of frames close to their own ideological
positions have been found by numerous studies such as Entman (2007), Trent and
Friedenberg (2008), Hänggli and Kriesi (2010). Namely, the differences among newspapers
become visible according to disposition of newspapers toward the political party orientation
of the speech/speaker. These results indicate that there are two main tendencies the
newspapers have in terms of the extent of the use of speakers: The first one is the dominant
common trend of preferring political actors according to their power (Entman, 2007) and the
second one is the newspaper’s/journalist’s ideological proximity/rivalry to the speaker
(Bennett et al., 2007; Davies, 2008; Kahn & Kenney, 2002; Young, 2009).
The extent of media representation of campaign speech of an actor changes according
to the power he/she holds in political arena (Nooy & Kleinnijenhuis, 2013; Schoenbach, De
Ridder & Lauf, 2001). It means that extent of coverage increases according to the relative
power of speaker. Supporting this, the previous studies found that the campaign news mostly
exclude the voices of the powerless and those who are in powerless position have chance to
get media attention generally when they provide “attention gathering” speech which is mostly
defined as high/severe criticism of the opponent (Geer, 2012; Hansen & Pedersen, 2008).
Findings of the present study provide full support for the extensive exclusion of the powerless
and general support for the inclusion of the powerless only in the case of severe criticism or
highly critical incidents.
Regarding the tendency of external and internal attributions, the findings indicate that
newspapers reproduce the dominant cultural practice by treating the campaign news in a way
that positivity is accentuated when the target of speech is “us” whereas the negativity is
upheld when the target is “them”. Findings also implied the existence of friendly and
unfriendly “them” and “us”. Friendly “them”, for instance, include parties in cooperation and
ideological proximity. Unfriendly “us” are usually competing political parties and persons
with similar ideological orientation or persons that are considered unwanted/foe/competitor
within the same or friendly party. Such findings also coincide with the studies done on
selectivity of media professionals in the West and elsewhere (Bagdikian, 2004; Croteau et al.,
2011; Hänggli & Kriesi, 2012; Matthes, 2012; Young, 2009).
This study contributes to the existing research in the west and can serve as a starting
point for future research in Turkey and similar countries on media framing and representation
of campaign communication. Overall, the media preferences and treatment of campaign
speeches and speakers, framesets of campaign topics, dominant tendency of focusing on
major players and negativity within a multiparty system are in need of greater academic
attention in many countries like Turkey. This study is only an attempt to fill the gap in this
area and serves as a starting point of research and discussion in order to gain improved
knowledge and empirical evidence on the nature of campaign news.
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