Refugees in online media: The case of Turkey and Bangladesh

In this thesis, published news in the years 2018 and 2019 about the Syrian and the Rohingyan refugees in online news websites of Turkey and Bangladesh has been studied. Websites of the Hurriyet and Sabah newspapers of Turkey was ranked as the first and the second leading online news sites in Turkey by the SimilarWeb on February 1, 2020. Additionally, www.bdnews24.com is the first published online news website of Bangladesh, while www.thedailystar.net is the ranked first news website of Bangladesh. In this regard, news texts published on the said news websites has been analyzed. Due to the fact that there are thousands of news about the refugees in the online news websites of both countries, a total of 40 news texts, consisting of 10 news from each websites, has been selected and these news texts has been analyzed in light of the Teun van Dijk's critical news analysis model. Selected news texts about the Syrians in Turkey and the Rohingyans in Bangladesh exhibit the negative points which contribute to the images of the refugees. Despite the fact that the news texts seem as objective, a detailed analysis of the texts reveals the negative points conveyed to the readers. Key words: New media, Refugee, Asylum seeker, Hate speech, Turkey, Bangladesh, Syrian, Rohingyan