Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Constructive Narratives in Crisis: How Euronews Mediates Forest Fires Across Languages and Modalities

D2-S1-A8

14 May 2026, 09:50

20m

A8 (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Oral Presentation Session 1.3 (Day 2)

Speaker

Sara Bokaie (İstanbul Arel University)

Description

This paper explores the ways Euronews features forest fires in Türkiye and other European countries, focusing especially on constructive journalism, news framing, and news translation. With climate-related crises so frequent now, it is of utmost importance to understand how transnational media influence the way audiences perceive environmental issues. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of Green Media Studies (Keilbach and Pabiś Orzeszyna, 2021), Framing Theory (Entman, 1993), and Constructive Journalism Theory (McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018), this research is based on a comparative multimodal discourse analysis of online Euronews articles published between 2021 and 2024. Along with textual analysis, the research examines visual elements such as photographs, graphics, and videos to determine how all these factors can affect the process of meaning-making across various modalities. It also discusses how journalists present the causes, consequences, and reactions to forest fires, and how translations between the English and Turkish versions influence these narratives. Furthermore, it explores the interplay of constructive reporting methods, including focusing on solutions, community involvement, and resilience, with linguistic and visual decisions to impact audience perception. The findings contribute to interdisciplinary discussions connecting journalism, news translation, and Green Media Studies, which provides an insight to understanding the potential of online media to facilitate solution-oriented, compassionate, and resilient societal discourses in the face of environmental crisis.