Analyzing the Concept of Evil in Marxist and Freudian Context through the News on the Webpages of the Newspapers

Abstract

The positive or negative impact of media content on individuals and society is a matter of much debate, but it has been the subject of many studies from the past to the present. The main debate on this issue is the size of this effect rather than the influence of the media. News and content in the media, whether positive or negative, inevitably affect individuals or society in some way. Setting aside the positive impact, it is possible to say that a significant portion of content in the media negatively affects individuals, either directly or indirectly. This is because it's a known fact that the media is more inclined and eager to publish negative content. In particular, news related to societal events, referred to as "third-page news", frequently finds a place in the media. Third-page news predominantly consists of negative stories. It causes exposure to negative content in many ways. Considering that these negativities reach people of all ages, levels of education, and status, negative social reflections can be observed, especially in the medium to long term. The detailed presentation of news that may set a negative example (evil) in the media, and especially in the new media, can set an example for other people and cause the evil to spread systematically. This study aims to examine the news published on the internet news sites of the most followed newspapers in Turkey, through the concept of evil in the Marxist and Freudian context. For this purpose, news texts were examined from macro and micro perspectives using the discourse analysis method. According to the main findings obtained from the study, parallel results were obtained with the thesis that evil manifests itself more based on economic reasons, which is dominant in Marxist thought. On the other hand, the findings showing that there is a high number of incidents involving individuals committing evil for trivial reasons lead to the belief that the Freudian perspective of evil is prevalent in society.