A Comparative Analysis of News Coverage of Africa: A Case Study of two English LanguageNewspapers in Turkey

ABSTRACT: This study sought to trace the coverage of Africa by two English language dailies in Turkey - Today’s Zaman and Turkish Daily News during a three-month period from October to December, 2008. The goals of the research were to determine the quantity of Africa-related news stories published by the two dailies, as well as to attempt to analyze the themes and issues emphasized in the stories published – with a view to elicit the overall image of Africa portrayed by the dailies to their readers. Content analysis method was used to examine Africa-related content of online editions of the two newspapers for 92 days between October and December 2008. Findings showed that coverage of Africa by the two newspapers highlighted events centered on violence and conflict during the entire period with 37% of all stories published by Turkish Daily News and 52% of those published by Today’s Zaman falling into this category. In contrast, news in the other seven categories which are (Politics and Government, Arts/Entertainment, Sports, Diplomacy/Trade, Disasters/Accident, Religion and Others) only constituted a combined total of 48% in Today’s Zaman, and 53% in Turkish Daily News, making the violence and conflict-related stories stand out as dominant in the portrayal of the African continent to the Turkish readers. This coverage by the two newspapers mirror the findings of other studies of Western media coverage of Africa, and demonstrates that in spite of Turkey‟s proximity to Africa, its press coverage of Africa is no different from the press of traditional Western nations based in North America or Western Europe. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………