Keywords: Media, women, discourse analysis
This study is revealed what kind of woman is reflected from Turkish media and media’s effects on society’s thoughts and decisions. The woman seen, heard and read in media caused shaping the woman concept in people’s mind. What kind of effect does media have changing the role of women? How a woman image is constructed by media seen as a mother, friend, employee or student ? After declaration of Republic, a modernist act has begun in Turkey and in addition after 1950’s a fast social change occurred ( Arkonac, Paker, 1998 ). Giving more importance to human righs, the increase in the numbers of working women, seeing more women succes in media are the result of this social change.However the role of the woman in society is influenced by seeing women more in TV shows, using frequently woman sexuality in media and advertisements towards mostly women. While becoming modern, the women are becoming the material of masss communication tools. As a result, this changed the woman figure in people’s mind.
The woman reflected from media is explained by using Discourse Analysis Method. The contribution of media to the woman image and obtained transformation of information reflects to the daily speeches. The transformation can be understood examining the speech of people and how they use the language. As discoure psychologists mentioned, the phenomenons which are interior situations are constructed in social actions especially with the usage of language. Because human being expresses his feeling and thoughts by using symbols. The most used symbol system belongs to the language ( Arkonac, 2001 ).
The written press is used in this study to know exactly from the main resource how the women are reflected by media. In addition, the data is collected by making interviews with “focus grou technic” .The interviews are made with 20 participants and recorded by participant’s permission.
The written texts and interviews are analyzed under the topic of “woman” and “media” with discourse analysis method.
Discourse analysis is interested in spontaneous speakings and texts including interviews and transcripts. The discourse anaylsis is interested in contents of speaking. In addition, instead of linguistic organization it is interested in social organization of speaking.
Discourses about women are shaped with modernism which are expressed by people live in a Muslim country such as Turkey. While talking about the woman as a modern, independence, self-cared, perfect person with her physical appearance, at the same time it is told that the women reflected from media are not appropriate to the religion, traditions and traditional family structures. Even Turkish media describe a modern woman, the women in a Muslim East country such as Turkey, are not in the position of ’subject’ like women in the West. When we examine the discourse in media and the discourse of people in Turkey, men are in the description of women. Even this process began to change, describing the woman as “the other” is still continuing.
* Presented at 13 th National Psychology Congress, Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey. 2004.
