Proceedings of the 12th International Academic Conference, Prague

SYRIAN CRISIS: TURKEY, LEBANON AND JORDAN NEWS AGENCY'S PERSPECTIVES

BAHAR AYAZ

Abstract:

Uprisings, which started in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, demanding freedom and democracy against dictatorships began to affect Syria in March 2011. Soon after, this uprisings created a crisis which media have shown a lot of interest. There have been many studies examining the attitudes of European and American media. The aim of this study is to show and compare Syria’s neighbours views according to this crisis. In this study, Turkey’s, Lebanon’s and Jordan’s news agencies news about Syria are analysed. Anadolu Agency (Turkey), the Lebanese National News Agency NNA (Lebanon) and Jordan News Agency PETRA (Jordan) are examined within the framework of this study. This news agencies have different ownership structures. Anadolu Agency is autonomous, Jordanian News Agency is independent and the Lebanese National News Agency has a state-owned structure. This different ownership structures are also analysed and compared. The three neigbours of Syria will be compared with a method of content analysis. The outstanding topics, prominent actors, neglected issues are examined. The fundemental differences are revealed. At the end of the study, it was clear that all agencies were reporting news correspondingly to their foreign policies, regardless of ownership structures. While Jordan news agency neglected the Syrian crises because of a fear of similar situation in the country, Lebanon news agency reflected states complex structure. On the other hand, Turkey’s news agency represented Turkish foreign policy which shows similar attitudes with USA.

Keywords: Syrian Conflict, Uprisings, Content Analysis, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan

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