Citation

Way LCS, Akan A. Soc. Semiotic. 2017; 27(5): 545-566.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10350330.2016.1278342

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

On 17 February 2016, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 28 people and injuring another 61 in the "heart" of Turkey's capital Ankara. A few hours after the attack, the Turkish government blamed Salih Neccar from the (mostly) Kurdish-Syrian People's protection Unit (YPG). Two days later, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility and named the bomber as Abdülbaki Sömer a Turkish citizen. The bombing is part of a resumption of violence in Turkey between Turkish government authorities and Kurdish groups. In this paper, we examine how on-line news stories recontextualise the bombing. We assert that news sources multimodally recontextualise the bombing in ways which are advantageous to the news organisations' owners, political alliances and supporters. By each news source representing their political interests unquestionably positive and opposition unconditionally negative, polarisation in Turkish politics is articulated. This does nothing to solve problems and heal wounds in a time of national crisis. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Language: en

Keywords

AKP; bombing; Kurds; Multimodal critical discourse studies; on-line news; Turkey