Representations of “Kanal İstanbul” in Turkish news media: content analysis of pro-government and oppositional newspapers

This thesis examines the representations of the Kanal Istanbul project in online news articles published in Turkish pro-government and opposition newspapers with different political and ideological orientations. Five newspapers with different political and ideological perspectives, Sözcü, Cumhuriyet, Yeni Akit, Karar, and Sabah, are analyzed in terms of news content. In the study, news articles about Kanal Istanbul are analyzed under different categories such as the attitude of the news, the general tone of the news, the political figures in the news, the sources used in the news, and the theme of the news. The time scale of quantitative and qualitative content analysis covers the years between 2011 and 2022. Since there is not enough news text for analysis between 2011-2016, the news texts between 2016-2022 are included in the study. Focusing on the representations of the Kanal Istanbul project in the context of media framing theory, this thesis aims to reveal the ideological reflections in news representation by considering the principles of objectivity and impartiality in journalism practices.