Representation of Corporate Social Responsibility in Turkish Newspapers

Abstract

The new world order require companies and any kind of organizations to effectively inform their audience about their activities, to implement corporate social responsibility projects and programmes, and the media to mediate a healthy public sphere with their news content on corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is among the topics which receive the attention of media the last two decades. Eventhough the statistical data show the interest of media to CSR, it can be said that it is difficult to differentiate between the original news coverage produced by journalists and the content of corporate advertising. The aim of this study is to reveal the representation of CSR in Turkish newspapers. For this purpose, Hürriyet, which is one of the mainstream newspapers and has the highest circulation of Turkey in December 2015, was selected as a reference newspaper in order to analyze CSR related news content. With content analysis of the December 2015 news coverage of Hürriyet, it was found that Turkish mainstream newspapers included the term social responsibility in its news agenda, but CSR was not received enough coverage within the news.