Political Agency of News Outlets in a Polarized Media System: Framing the Corruption Probe in Turkey

Abstract

This article aims to determine the stances of media outlets during crises in a polarized media system such as Turkey. Adopting a content analysis methodology, this article analyses the framing strategies of three national newspapers affiliated with certain sociopolitical camps (namely, the pro-government Sabah, the anti-government Kemalist Sozcu and the pro-Gulen Zaman) to observe possible similarities/differences during the critical 17 December corruption probe. The findings not only confirm earlier studies on press-party' parallelism but also reveal press-sociopolitical camp parallelism' in Turkey's polarized media system.