Abstract
This study examines how Turkish newspapers with divergent ideological orientations—Yeni Şafak, Sabah, Sözcü, and Evrensel—construct Elon Musk and Donald Trump as symbolic figures within Turkey’s polarized media system. Drawing on 144 news and opinion pieces, the research employs an integrated qualitative design that combines systematic content analysis with discourse-historical analysis to investigate how global technological elites are domesticated within national moral and ideological frameworks. The analysis follows a hierarchical coding strategy encompassing evaluative tone, thematic framing, discursive strategy, and moral valence, ensuring analytical consistency through intercoder reliability and multi-level triangulation. Findings reveal a polarized yet morally coherent media field. Pro-government outlets frame Musk and Trump as embodiments of rational modernity and entrepreneurial sovereignty, while oppositional newspapers depict them as symbols of capitalist spectacle and inequality. Across ideological divides, technology itself is moralized—either celebrated as virtue or condemned as vice—demonstrating that Turkish journalism constructs technological modernity as a moral and political category rather than a neutral domain of progress. The study introduces the concept of the ‘Musk Effect’ to capture how transnational technological elites function as discursive instruments through which semi-peripheral nations negotiate soft power, legitimacy, and modernity. Situated at the intersection of celebrity politics, digital diplomacy, and platform capitalism, the analysis highlights the methodological value of multi-layered qualitative triangulation in revealing the ideological work of media discourse in contemporary techno-politics.
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