ACCIDENTALLY SEEN: A CASE STUDY ON THE 2014 ERMENEK MINE DISASTER AND ITS MEDIA REPRESENTATION A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY UĞUR SÜMBÜL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SEPTEMBER 2016 Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Tülin GENÇÖZ Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science. Prof. Dr. Ayşe AYATA Head of Department This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science. Assist. Prof. Dr. Özgür AVCI Supervisor Examining Committee Members Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yılmaz ÜSTÜNER (METU, ADM) Assist. Prof. Dr. Özgür AVCI (METU, ADM) Prof. Dr. Lütfi Doğan TILIÇ (BAŞKENT UNI., PRP) I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last name : Signature : iii ABSTRACT ACCIDENTALLY SEEN: A CASE STUDY ON THE 2014 ERMENEK MINE DISASTER AND ITS MEDIA REPRESENTATION Sümbül, Uğur M.S., Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Özgür AVCI September 2016, 173 pages In the afternoon of October, 28, 2014 a mine disaster occurred in Ermenek which is a small district of Karaman province which was resulted in death of eighteen miners. Following its occurrence, the mine disaster was constructed as a media event and it was brought to audiences as distant others with certain discourses and representation strategies. Ermenek was made visible with this disaster, it became the main topic of live broadcasts and main news bulletins for a while and in fact several aids and aid campaigns were organized to the region ‘thanks to’ this visibility. Here this study aims to investigate how the mine disaster was represented in news discourse following its occurrence and what effects those representations had both on experiencing the disaster and also in the process afterwards. For this purpose, the thesis problematizes the situation of ‘being visible with the disaster’ and claims that visibility does not always function for the good of the lower classes. The analysis is made in four main chapters and the discussion benefits from two methodological frames, one of which is news analysis and the other is semi-structured interviews conducted with the families as well as with some of the surviving miners who are regarded as the sufferers of the disaster. Keywords: Ermenek mine disaster, media representation, mediated visibility, distant suffering, Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. iv ÖZ KAZARA GÖRÜLEN: ERMENEK’TE 2014 YILINDA MEYDANA GELEN MADEN FACİASI VE MEDYADAKİ TEMSİLİ ÜZERİNE BİR VAKA ÇALIŞMASI Sümbül, Uğur Yüksek Lisans, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Yrd. Doç. Dr. Özgür AVCI Eylül 2016, 173 sayfa 28 Ekim 2014 tarihi öğle saatlerinde Karaman iline bağlı küçük bir ilçe olan Ermenek’te on sekiz madencinin ölümü ile sonuçlanan bir maden faciası meydana gelmiştir. Meydana geldikten sonra facia medya tarafından çeşitli söylem ve temsil biçimleri ile bir medya olayı olarak inşa edilmiş ve uzak ötekiler olan izlerkitleye medya dolayımıyla getirilmiştir. Ermenek ulusal medya tarafından bu facia ile görünür kılınmış, belli bir süre canlı yayınların ve ana haber bültenlerinin ana konusu olmuş ve hatta bu görünür olmanın sonucu olarak bölgeye çeşitli yardımlar götürülmüş ve yardım faaliyetlerinde bulunulmuştur. Bu çalışmanın hedeflediği şey Ermenek maden faciasının meydana gelmesinin ardından haber söyleminde nasıl temsil edildiği ve bu temsil stratejilerinin facianın deneyimlenmesinde ve sonrasında yaşanan süreçler üzerinde nasıl etkileri olduğunu araştırmaktır. Bu amaçla çalışma ‘kazayla görülme’ durumunu sorunsallaştırmakta ve bunu dört temel bölüm üzerinden yapmaktadır. Tartışma, biri haber analizi ve ötekisi faciadan etkilenen aileler ile sağ kurtulan işçilerle gerçekleştirilen yarı yapılandırılmış mülakatlardan oluşmak üzere iki metodolojik çerçeveden yararlanmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Ermenek maden faciası, medya temsili, dolayımlı görünürlük, uzak acı, Çok Kipli Eleştirel Söylem Çözümlemesi. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Özgür Avcı for his guidance, advice, criticism, encouragements and insight throughout the research. I would like to thank to the two examining committee members, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yılmaz Üstüner and Prof. Dr. Lütfi Doğan Tılıç for their helpful comments, criticisms and advises that were contributed this thesis a lot. I would also like to thank to my two closest friends Metehan Cömert and Ezgi Doğan for their friendship and support that was encouraged me a lot in this process especially in times when I was experiencing emotional rises and falls and was about to give up. This thesis project would not have been possible without the permanent support of my family. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my father Rıza Sümbül, my sister Sevgican Sümbül and my mother Canan Sümbül for their wholehearted support. Finally, the biggest appreciation belongs to the sufferers of the mine disaster who welcomed me and helped me with their sincere responses during the interviews. This thesis has written with the hope for a better, fairer world in which all sufferings and invisibility of laborers will come to an end. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PLAGIARISM...........................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iv ÖZ ............................................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................... x LIST OF ABBREVATIONS ..................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 1 2. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE DISASTER AS A MEDIA EVENT ......... 6 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 6 2.2 Mediated Visibility and Its Meaning for Disadvantaged Groups and Places .............................................................................................. 8 2.3 Ideological Discourses, Media Representations and Mediation of Distant Suffering ............................................................................. 16 2.3.1 Relationship between Ideology, Discourse and Reality ............. 17 2.3.2 The Notion of Representation .................................................... 21 2.3.1 Media Representations ............................................................... 22 2.3.1 Representation of Distant Suffering ........................................... 26 2.4 Concluding Remarks ........................................................................... 29 3. MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (MCDA) AND SOME METHODOLOGICAL TOOLS FOR NEWS ANALYSIS ............. 32 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 32 3.2 Method ................................................................................................. 33 3.2.1 Methodological Tools for Analysis ............................................ 37 3.2.2 Tools for Analyzing Social Actors ............................................ 38 3.2.3 Tools for Analyzing Social Action ............................................. 44 vii 3.2.4 Visual Representation of Social Actors ............................................... 50 3.2.4.1 Relationship between the Viewer and Representation ... 50 3.2.4.2 Depicting People in Visual Representation ................... 52 3.3 Selected Sample and Political Positioning of the Newspapers ........... 54 3.4 Research Questions, Assumptions and Limitations of the Analysis ... 58 3.4.1 Research Questions ................................................................... 58 3.4.2 Assumptions .............................................................................. 59 3.4.3 Limitations ................................................................................. 60 3.5 Concluding Remarks ........................................................................... 61 4. A MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE SELECTED NEWSPAPER NEWS MADE ON THE ERMENEK MINE DISASTER .................................................................................................. 63 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 63 4.2 Linguistic Representations of Actions in the News ............................ 64 4.2.1 Representations of the Possible Reasons for Occurrence of the Mine Disaster ..................................................................