YEREL BASINDA TURİZM HABERLERİ TARAMASI: MEDYA KEŞAN GAZETESİ ÖRNEĞİ

Abstract

EXTENDED ABSTRACT From the very beginnings of human history, efforts to build communication have played the central role among the individuals in a community. Communication can be described as exchanging information through various forms such as speaking, writing or drawing as done on the walls of the caves in ancient times. When people start communication, they send or receive information in various forms. Messages that are exchanged need to be comprehensible and meaningful. Otherwise, the communication process is likely to be disrupted and finalized. Another channel through which messages transmitted is media sources. Media sources are responsible for disseminating information as news. It is another form of information that is new and fresh. Simply put, news is information about recent events published in print and electronic media which is not limited to a country or a particular area of activity as it is disseminated worldwide. There is a set of criteria by which news is judged. These are whether it is new, unusual, interesting or significant. News is mainly reported by a journalist through both traditional and new media channels such as newspaper, radio, television and social media. No matter on global, national or local level, news making and news reporting are complicated processes that run on the basic principles of journalism. Anything can be the matter of a news story or a headline whereever in the world on the condition that it is based on the set of criteria that make news noteworthy and valuable. Newspapers, radio and television make the biggest part of the mass media. The press and broadcast organs are one of the essential and fundamental intermediaries in the production and transmission of news. These press and broadcast organs can be handled as two different groups as national and local press. In this sense, in addition to the national press, there is a type of press and publication called the local press, in other words the 'Provincial Press'. The local press, which has an important function such as informing, educating, entertaining and creating public opinion to the masses living in the narrow and defined region, has a significant mass of news readers and it posseses the strenth to create agendas as much as the mainstream media. Newspapers make a choice between events and publish some of these events in larger font sizes on the first page, while others are published at the bottom or on the inside pages. In short, the media presents them with a certain agenda by making an evaluation among the issues. This approach, known as the agenda-setting approach, is grounded on the principle that a parallelism coexists between the importance that the mass media atrributes to a subject and the that of the audience attaches to the same subject. In other words, the national press is a media organization that covers issues that concern most of the people in a society and that has created a service network that can deliver its publications to the larger part of its target audience. Local media, on the contrary, are only media organizations that are read, watched or listened to in a particular region and where local issues are addressed. In that sense, both print and electronic issues of selected local news paper involved, this study examines tourism news making process in about a fifteen and six month year time period to see at what intervals and how often tourism news was in the headlines and to which contexts and terms such news was related and referred in those headlines. The study concludes with some important findings that can be outlined with a few assumptions that while making and especially writing news, reporters, journalists and editors are in a postion that they can easily control the mindset of their readers. Bearing this in mind, they must possess a clear knowledge of the context of an event from which the news is made and how it is told. Tracking the frequency of the appearance of the tourism keyword and its relational and syntactic position in the news headlines of a local newspaper will make it possible for both readers and news makers to better understand how a keyword as a concept can be relatively evolved into a news event. As a result, in view of a local newspaper like Medya Keşan, it is seen that Keşan and its immediate surroundings are a district that is on the way to branding with a tourism potential suitable for hosting different types of tourism and increasing the number of touristic activities. For this reason, journalists and news sites have important duties to fulfil. It is thought that more space should be given to news types that will help promote regional tourism. In doing so, it should be ensured that the necessary agenda needs to be created adequately and effectively by paying more attention to the use of influential images and text writing in similar news.