Political rhetoric building of politicians in television news (Specific to 2017 Referendum example)

It is always expressed that there are intricate relationships between politics and media, depending on consent and interest. In the construction of this sense, it is undoubtedly an undeniable fact that media playing a role in reflecting political discourses is included. It is main objective of political actors to legitimate messages and deliver them to masses and media, within this scope, is one of the most important instruments to achieve it. It can be said that political actors in question trying to survive in this status quo environment create themselves new identities in media that could not help serving to hegemonic structure in parallel with economic interests. It would not be improper to say that discourses in these communicational environments are mostly delivered to collocutors upon the request of media actors, not political actors. It formed the basic question of this research to examine the argument in question and it was endeavored to conduct this study within the scope of "television news" because it is still assumed as an instrument which maintains its position as the most effective and common one among mass media and implements the objectivity principle. So as to detect what is effective in determining political discourse constructions of political party leaders having their groups in the parliament, television news was picked up in the course of "2017 Constitutional Amendment Referendum", one of the periods in which intensive election propagandas were performed. Main new bulletins broad-casted for 13 days in the course of the election of 3 sample channels (ATV, FOX, Kanal D) studied in the research were transcribed. After date obtained were examined within the conceptual and theoretical scope, they were analyzed depending on Van Dijk's discourse analysis, which is a qualitative research method and by means of performing a content analysis method for quantitative data, when required. It was endeavored by means of the study to exhibit metaphors based on the context of political discourse construction and ominous semantic contents of news actors in the oligopolistic structure in media. To conclude, news actors may reflect political actors in identities that they desire in the construction of political agents-based news, and it was stated that important findings were achieved attributing value in terms of supporting the argument and most of the hypothesis presented within the scope of the study were supported.