Moral panic as a political project: A discourse analysis on the news about Syrian refugees in Turkey portrayed as folk devils

"Moral Panic" is a term that came to surface in 1960's and was constructed by Stanley Cohen as a theory. It is simply a media manipulated response devise to direct the thoughts and emotions of the media audience towards an agenda set by the political powers. The discourse used while conveying the "moral panic" subject is considered as a source of propaganda for Political Project. Via this process normativity, temporality and intentiality of the subject matter of the "moral panic" is planned how it is civilized and dicivilized through the discourse is structured as a Project. In this thesis, the matter of Syrian Refugees is focused on as the subject of the "moral panic". The news covering Syrian Refugees in two most circulated newspapers, Sözcü (oppositional) and Hürriyet (mainstream) internet news sites, are taken as the focus of the study. The process of how the topic of Syrian Refugees became a "moral panic" entity just before and after the 2019 Municipality Elections is analyzed using discourse analysis.