Mental Health News Coverage in Turkish National Newspapers with Respect to Episodic and Thematic Framing: A Retrospective Content Analysis

Abstract

News framing is a process by which news media highlight, emphasize and place prominence to a certain aspect of a news story. This process is comprised of constructing news narratives to shape the perceptions and attitudes of the audience within the context of communication studies. Thereby, news framing is stated to shape public opinion and understanding through its emphasis of particular aspects of news stories, which may come to mean subtle guiding of the audience interpretations. Episodic and thematic framing constitute two approaches in news frames as suggested by Iyengar. If news is expressed as an episodic event, its focus is on discrete and individual cases, specific incidents, or personal aspects of issues. In contrast, thematically framed news points to a broader trend over time, background information or expert opinions provided concerning the issue being handled. Accordingly, this study aims to elucidate episodic and thematic framing approaches in the news items covered in Turkish print media over a five-year period (2014-2018). A total of 577 news items on mental health and psychological problems published in six Turkish daily newspapers constitute the sample dataset of the study on which the content analyses of framing approaches are conducted. In addition, frequency distributions calculated present the measurement of the most frequently occurring frame types in the newspaper items by the newspaper and year. The results of the study provide an extract of the portrayal of mental health-related news in in Turkiye, while attempting to point a way toward addressing news on a pressing social issue, namely mental health, from a systemic perspective. Based on these considerations and validation through the statistical frequency measurements and framing methods, the study aims at contributing to the understanding of how mental health issues are framed within the theoretical framework of social constructionism and framing applications.