Representation of other places in mainstream media: Building shantytown and suburbian images in news texts

As the main perception within the society and the way handled in the main stream media, the concept ?Outskirts? are the parts of a city identified with anarchy , crime and immorality. The outskirts are mostly mentioned in a pejorative way and kept apart from the dominant psychological trend. The imagination of a modern city is considered something different from the outskirts. Thus the concrete establishment of an outskirt does not conform to the imaginary background of a modern city. The people living in there have been subject to discrimination and marginalisation. The people who moved to the outskirts of the city on the grounds of security problems and joblessness and who are relatively less educated and resist to the ?modern? way of life are the reasons why they are called, suburbans. The way the media is dealing with the news about the different societal sections is a subject to longterm discussions. Some parts of the society are not equally represented in the main sream media. In a way, for some partsof society, just the negative sides of the life are featured. The negative meanings installed in the concept of ?the suburban? demonstrate that the main stream media is far away from the demonstratic and impartial publishing approach.Taking into consideration the main stream media -, especially Hürriyet Newspaper , I worked on throughly, the identity of the suburban (and the residents of the shanty houses) are generally put forward with negative images. The negative subject headings such as crime, drug addiction, violence, prostitution, are the bad images generally mentioned as more closely related to the migration of people from different places to the outskirts of the city. These kind of news mostly imply that these malignity is brought to town by these people and massified by them. The residents of the outskirts, and the slums are reflected as if contained in a circle of crime, drug addiction and nasty reletionships. İn this way, this parts of the cities are introduced as the centres of the negative circumstances. Any implementation threats against the main system and any structure which is resisting the modern life style , are mentioned as ?problematic?. The results of this approach imposed on ?the problematic structures? are either adoptation to the modern way of life and behaving in harmony with the ?norm? or become stereotyped in various ways which originate in the minds first than felt mercilessly in the society. As the conclusion, the language of media is away from being democratic and just not based on human rights and freedoms in this respect. İt harms the culture of living together and it instigates hatred and grudge so it is discriminative. İn a media setting where the main publishing philasophy is not the dignifying of the people just for their being, then it is hard to establish just and equal representation.Keywords:1- Outskirts2- Conflict3- City4- Alienation5- Violence