“Boğaziçi University Protests 2021”

The first report of the University in The News series examines how student protests and activist students are represented and approached. It is about the Boğaziçi University protests, which took place in the first months of 2021. The main goal in this and the following reports is to focus on how student protests and students are represented and framed, and the discursive patterns in these news articles.

Within the scope of the study, we scanned all the news about Boğaziçi University protests in A Haber, Akşam, Yeni Şafak, Calendar, Sabah and Yeni Akit between January 4 and March 31 and collected 353 news. We carried out a content analysis by coding all collected news on an individual basis with a detailed coding scale. We also carried out a discourse analysis on a smaller number of news pieces, which we think represent the patterns encountered in the news. We answered each of the following questions for 353 news pieces reviewed.

• What is the tone of the news? (positive, negative, neutral)
• What is the predominant theme of the news? (terror, provocation, disrespect for religious values, crime, vandalism, perversion)
• Whose voice is heard in the news? (student, academician, rectorate, prosecutor’s office, governorship, police, government, opposition, etc.)
• How are the students defined? (student, terrorist, provocateur, suspect, so-called student, activist / demonstrator / protester, vandal, pervert)
• Who is targeted in the news? (student, students, academicians, supporters, LGBTI + people, opposition parties etc.)
• Do the news contain the demands of the students?

We examined the discursive structures of the news underlining each question and setting examples as we think. In the discourse analysis we dealt with the patterns of meaning and the linguistic strategies used.

Author: Beyza Kural
Advisor: Prof. Burak Özçetin
Translater: Özge Karlık