Representation of the February 6 2023 earthquake before and after in local press: The case of Malatya province

It can be seen that newspapers have reported on major earthquakes throughout the history of the press and given them special importance. One of these major disasters is the February 6th Earthquake, known as the disaster of the century and deeply affecting our country. The earthquake was the subject of many studies on the days it occurred, the dimensions of the disaster were addressed from different perspectives and it formed the main headline of many newspapers from local to universal. When we look at the practices of newspapers in reporting disasters, we see that local newspapers also have great duties and responsibilities in this regard. In this study, the articles of local newspapers in Malatya, one of the provinces most affected by the earthquake, before and after the earthquake are examined and how and to what extent they touched on the earthquake issue before, whether they gained awareness and consciousness about the earthquake afterwards, and whether they included the problems of the people in their headlines in the process after the earthquake constitute the subject of this study. The research was limited to local newspapers in Malatya, covering the period 06.02.2022-06.02.2023, 1 year before the earthquake, and the period 06.02.2023-06.02.2024, 1 year after the earthquake. It was considered important that these newspapers, which will be used as the main source in the research, describe the problems of the local people, have internet-based access to the newspapers, and have their own archives.