Analysis of drought-related news shared on Youtube within the framework of eco-criticism (2023-2024).

This study aims to examine how the environment is represented in drought-related news videos shared on YouTube by nationally broadcasting news channels in Türkiye between 2023 and 2024. The research seeks to reveal through which narrative and meaning frames environmental crises are constructed in digital media discourse and how these frames shape the relationship between nature and humans. In this respect, the study adopts a qualitative research design. Qualitative content analysis was employed as the data analysis method. The news content was analyzed based on Iyengar's (1991) framing approach, which assumes that news media structure social issues through specific narrative patterns, causal interpretations, and responsibility attributions. Accordingly, the analysis focused on how drought is contextualized within news discourse, which actors are foregrounded, and how causes and solutions are framed. The units of analysis consist of news headlines, narrative texts, and visual elements. The identified news frames were interpreted through an ecocritical perspective. In this context, the study questions whether nature is predominantly represented as a human-centered crisis element or as part of an ecologically integrated system. The findings demonstrate that environmental news in digital media does not merely function as an informational medium but operates as a discursive practice that reconstructs environmental reality through particular ideological and narrative frames.