Construction of Islam and Muslim representation in Western media (Christchurch Terrorism Attack news examples)

The subjective attitude of the Western Media towards immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, draws attention. This attitude of theirs can be reflected in the news they prepare. In the news prepared without objectivity, negative representations of Muslim immigrants are presented to the news receivers. İf buyers may develop negative attitudes towards these groups by influencing from these representation. These attitudes can sometimes be in the form of acts of violence against Muslim immigrants. Therefore, the news made of the Western Media can manipulate the targets by influencing them. Receivers who have been manipulated may also engage in hate attacks against Muslim immigrants. Being one of these attacks, the Christchurch terror massacre, was carried out by Brenton Tarrant on March 15, 2019, the attacker by targeting the Muslim immigrants and having the terror attack two mosques in New Zealand. Various news about the massacre were presented in the Western Media. There are different statements in the presented news. In this thesis, the news about the massacre of four newspapers belonging to the Western Media were analyzed with the Critical Discourse Analysis and Lacanian Discourse Analysis methods. According to the data obtained, it has been determined that these organizations make negative judgments and accusations by implication in their discourses about the religion of Islam and Muslims. Reality in newspapers has been functionally used to highlight a certain of ideology by reconstructing it with linguistic codes and text fiction strategies.