Representation of Violence Against Women in Television News: The Case of Emriye Metegül

Introduction

Most people today spend more time listening to the radio and watching television than they do at work. The effectiveness of mass media is increasing day by day, administrations are trying to control the content of these tools. The decrease in the time allocated to reading in the movement of daily life directs people to audio-visual tools that can be obtained more easily and cheaply (Uğurlu, 2007, p. 289). Television has been an attractive instrument since it was invented. Rating has been high even during the time of New Media instruments. According to the results of the ‘Study on Television Watching Orientations’, the mean daily duration of watching television in Turkey was three hours and 34 minutes in 2018. Results of the afore-noted study also indicated that the durations of watching television are close in Turkey, Germany, France, United Kingdom and India (Sirer, 2020: p. 184). It guides the audience with its news content and presentation formats. Television is important for viewers who want to watch the news, especially since it is audio-visual in the concept of news. The news on television reaches a higher number of viewers as it is transmitted visually and with sound. In television news, the first images that come to mind and welcome us are the images. In addition to the concepts of news and reality, this also highlights the discourse approach in the news.

The role of televisions as appealing to the eye and ear is precisely to integrate the world into the flow of images, rendering it useless and empty. The viewer's mind is completely preoccupied with the fullness of visual images. These intense images do not allow people to rest. The news or speeches presented can be listened to and heard while dealing with different jobs. However, images bind people to themselves (Ellul, 1998, p. 178). Although many images in the news are watched carefully by the audience, they make the audience insensitive after a while. The audience can watch even a news where very bad events take place without reaction. Violence and violence against women, which are among the indispensable topics of news programs, are used extensively as important news topics.

The forms of representation in which women are predominantly trivialized, portrayed as victims, accused, negated and ignored in the media often appear as the subject of violence against women. The view that the media have a central influence on the increase in violence in society has been debated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Theories that deal with the relationship between display of violence and aggressive attitudes on the effects of the media draw attention to the direct or indirect effects on behavior (Boztepe, 2017, p. 40). One of the purposes of the media is to get yourself watched. As a result of this purpose, the media gives quite a place to violence in its content. The prevalence of violence and murders against women in the world has caused violence to become a social issue. The fact that violent events take place in a comprehensive manner, the way they are practiced and the degree of closeness of the perpetrator or people to the victim of violence ensure that these events take place on the agenda of the media” (Nisan and Tuncel, 2020, p. 105). It is known that one of the most emphasized areas in terms of representation among the products in the media is news. The news tends to increase the interest in the news by highlighting the woman in this representation feature.