News discourse and ideology: critical analysis of Copenhagen gang wars’ online news

Authors

  • Pınar Yazgan Department of Sociology, Sakarya University
  • Deniz Eroğlu Utku Department of Public Administration, Trakya University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v14i1.322

Keywords:

news discourse, ideology, Critical Discourse Analysis, gang wars, Copenhagen

Abstract

Gang warfare is one of the social problems that draw attention in Denmark and it occupies an important place in the media discourse. However, the discriminatory and exclusionary effects of this discourse have been largely overlooked in many of the previous studies focusing on this problem. Taking this into account, this study examines the discriminatory aspects of the online news discourse covering these gang wars. In this way, it uncovers the forms of anti-immigrant bias in the news discourse in Denmark by examining articles from two online news articles of the newspaper Politiken’s and the news quoted from the same newspaper. Specifically, this study aims to demonstrate that the discriminatory and exclusionist discourse on the gang wars in Denmark may cause ethnic discrimination by producing negative social capital. The chosen sample of news articles have been analysed by devoting special focus on the concepts of ‘racism’, ‘exclusion’, ‘marginalisation’ and ‘negative social capital’ which are based on the critical discourse analysis of Teun A. van Dijk, who argues that news and media messages are ideological. The results of the analysis of the chosen news articles revealed that gang wars are not racism based wars as was claimed by the dominant media discourse

Author Biographies

Pınar Yazgan, Department of Sociology, Sakarya University

Pınar Yazgan is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Sakarya Uni­versity, Turkey. She received her BA, MA and PhD in Sociology, all from Sakarya University. Her dissertation focused on the sense of identity and belonging among migrants from Turkey residing in Denmark and was funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK). She conducted field work in Denmark between 2007 and 2009. She also served as a visiting researcher at The Danish National Research Centre for Social Sciences in 2009. Her recent research projects focus on transnationalism, Turkish ethnic community in Norway, integration, identity, social belonging and ethnic media. She is the co-editor of Göç Dergisi and recently co-edited a special issue of the Migration Letters journal on Syrian crisis and migration. She serves on the editorial boards of Migration Letters and Border Crossing journals.

Deniz Eroğlu Utku, Department of Public Administration, Trakya University

Deniz Eroglu Utku is Assistant Professor at Trakya University. Dr Eroglu Utku completed her PhD research on migration policy at University of Essex, UK. In 2015-2016, She was the Deputy Head of Romani Studies Instituted at Trakya University. She is co-editor of Journal of Gypsy Studies and also serves on the editorial boards of Migration Letters and Border Crossing journals. Dr Eroglu also served at international scientific committee of Turkish Migration Conference 2016.

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Published

2017-01-10

How to Cite

Yazgan, P., & Eroğlu Utku, D. (2017). News discourse and ideology: critical analysis of Copenhagen gang wars’ online news. Migration Letters, 14(1), 145–160. https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v14i1.322

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2017): Special Issue: Transnational Migrant Families: Navigating Marriage, Generation, and Gender in Multiple Spheres

Section

Articles

License

CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0

 

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