Context problem in news and ideological presentation of custom killings in newspapers: An example in Hürriyet and Sabah daily newspapers

Ömer Özer¹ and Neda Üçer Saraçer²*

¹Journalism Department, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Anadolu University Eskişehir, Turkey.

²Visual Communication Design Department, Faculty of Communication, Yeditepe University, İstanbul, Turkey.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: nsaracer@yeditepe.edu.tr.

 Accepted 21 December, 2009

   Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the reproduction of ideology in news discourse caused by the lack of context information. The discourse analysis focuses on news presentation in Turkish daily newspapers (Hürriyet and Sabah) about a young girl, Güldünya Tören, who was killed in the name of honor. In the frame of this paper, approaches on cultural studies are reviewed to help clarifying some aspects of her case; however, Teun Adrian Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis model was the main focus. The analysis demonstrates that the representation of the event in newspapers is deprived intentionally of context information. Social, cultural and economic explanations are disregarded and news presentation is highly popularized, personalized in order to create sensational news, thereby reinforcing the ideological domination of the state by custom killing example.

Key words: News discourse, news context, ideological reproduction, customs, fourth estate, secondary definers, ideological state apparatus.