Abstract
Norway lived its bloodiest terrorist attack when Breivik killed nearly 100 people. This was recorded in history as a difficult test for the media. The Norwegian media exhibited great bias by reporting this bloody act by making judgments on the assumption that Muslims committed it. The media described Breivik as a mentally disturbed person, not as a terrorist. When the answer to the question, Why did Breivik commit this act? was sought, the detailed analysis ended up with the propaganda of Breivik's manifesto. Breivik became a symbol of anti-Islam and multiculturalism in Europe. Finally, the New Zealand aggressor Tarrant and Norway Baerum Al-Noor Mosque aggressor Manhaus performed two attacks in 2019. They were fueled by the uncontrolled cybersphere where Breivik was idolized. The study aims to examine how the media made news about the terrorist figure devoted to the Breivik brotherhood and those who followed in his footsteps. It aims to make a news analysis of the Norwegian mainstream printed media about the Norwegian Al-Noor Mosque attacks in 2019.
TopIntroduction
As a driving force that ensures the change, transformation, and development of societies, media is an institution that represents oral, written, printed, and visual communication formats and mass media such as newspapers, magazines, books, brochures, and even television and cinema in its expanded form. Since the 2000s, the internet media has also been included in this term, and even surpassed all communication forms and achieved a leading position. Therefore, the media institution undeniably has a very important influence and responsibility in the opinion, thought, action, and mobilization of the society (Mora, 2008, p.5).
The fact that the society changes its way of thinking by developing a subjective view and prejudice with an ideological attitude, based on the judgment and conviction of the person or group chosen by the media as the subject in the news results in marginalization and exclusion (Eravcı, 2010, p.15).
There are numerous case studies in the literature in this respect. When going backward from the Manshaus attack in Norway, which is the main subject of the present study, the news of the mosque attack in New Zealand, the mass attack in 2011 by Breivik, and the Al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US are among the tragic events that must be investigated over the media and terror relations. Especially, the shooting of the twin towers on September 11, 2001, in the United States was handled by the media as a terrorist act, and the news served to create a stereotyped terrorist typology at the global level, which has served to transform the premise of “terror equals Islam” into a strong belief by stigmatizing Muslims as terrorists in the minds of Western people (Aydinalp, 2011, p.13).
However, the root of the purpose of terrorist acts is to frighten, intimidate, and leave a psychological impact on masses over violent acts. For this reason, the news coverage of sensitive events such as terrorism that may shake social peace must be considered sensitive issues that cannot be used as material for perception work. Because the news on terrorism has the power to dictate how the public should think about social events such as terrorism. Especially the presentation of terrorist news with visual elements means that these visual elements mediate the delivery of the messages of terrorist organizations to masses with multiplied effects (Süllü, 2016, p.90).
When the media is presenting the news on terrorism and similar issues, it uses various instruments to shape social and cultural life. These methods that were found with the news analysis are as follows (Gökçe & Gökçe, 2011, p.43):
Image Construction: It is the structured and generalized conceptions and mental images of a particular event, phenomenon, or region.
Creating Clichés: It refers to “a means of mass production of the same thing”, or “stereotyped and schematically-used expressions”. Clichés give expressions a “certain and universal“ meaning and carry them to an unquestionable presupposition in the minds.
Stereotyping: It is “the verbal expression of widespread belief towards a social group or a member of it. The stereotype, which is logically a judgment, ascribes certain qualities to a social group or its members, with an unfair, simplified, and generalized, emotionally evaluative disposition.
Creating Prejudice: It means pre-judgment. Prejudice can also be directed at a group or a single member of that group. By definition, it can be expressed as “an oppositional and hostile attitude towards a person from any group just because he/she belongs to that group“. While a stereotype is expressed in words and sentences, prejudice expresses an internal belief and attitude.
As for the “language“ used in newspaper news, “language” has a very important place in shaping the news for the media. Because the modalities or various formats used in linguistic expressions make the meaning settled in the interlocutor. In linguistic analysis, it is seen that the five strategies are generally adopted by the media elements (Alghamdi, 2015, p.200).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Media Analysis: It is the analysis of newspaper news with descriptive analysis and content analysis methods by centered on the data obtained from newspaper documents.
Breivik Massacre: Anders Behrig Breivik carried out on July 22, 2011 in the direction of his extremist anti-multicultural ideas, in the Ministry of Labor and Utoya island in Oslo, Norway, and caused mass deaths.
Al-Noor Mosque: Names of mosques with the same names chosen as targets in Brenson Tarran's attack in New Zealand and Manshaus in Norway.
Tarrant Massacre: The tragic terrorist incident in which 50 Muslims were brutally murdered as a result of the Breivik method of armed attack on Al-Nur and Linwood mosques, respectively, by Brenson Tarrant on 15 March 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Anti-Islamism: The instinct to avoid, fear and flee from Islam and Muslims, although it is not based on any reality.
Manshaus Attack: The terrorist attack carried out by Breivik fan Philip Manshaus on the eve of Eid al-Adha, on 10 August 2019, on a mosque named Al-Noor in Baerum city, near Oslo, the capital of Norway.
Multiculturalism: Multiculturalism is a word that describes a society in which many different cultures live together.