Visual Journalism on YouTube: Emotion, Representation and Platform Logic
Akdeniz İletişim, cilt.0, sa.51, ss.44-62, 2026 (TRDizin)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 0 Sayı: 51
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.31123/akil.1792700
- Dergi Adı: Akdeniz İletişim
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Directory of Open Access Journals, TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.44-62
- Trakya Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Purpose: This study examines how YouTube thumbnails and titles operate within the platform’s attention economy and algorithmic visibility in digital news. It focuses on three Turkish news outlets—Sözcü, A Haber, and Medyascope—to show how editorial positioning is translated into visual and textual packaging. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative design combining visual framing analysis with a broader interpretive framework drawn from platformization, affective publics, and Chouliaraki’s aesthetics of witnessing. Rodríguez and Dimitrova’s four-level model structures the analysis of 77 thumbnail-title pairs published between 28 April and 4 May 2025. Thumbnails and titles are treated as a single visual-textual unit and examined in terms of descriptive content, stylistic features, emotional cues, and ideological messages. Findings: The findings reveal distinct outlet-specific strategies. Sözcü emphasizes conflict, urgency, and oppositional tension; A Haber foregrounds national unity, security, and threat through symbolic and emotionally charged framing; Medyascope adopts a more restrained aesthetic and analytical tone that encourages interpretive distance. Research limitations/implications: The short sampling period and focus on highly viewed videos limit generalizability. Future research should expand the timeframe and include audience reception and video content. Practical implications: The findings offer practical insight for digital news producers, editors, and platform-based journalism practitioners by showing how visual design choices carry editorial, emotional, and ideological consequences. They also highlight the need for greater awareness among journalists and media managers regarding the tension between visibility-driven optimization and editorial integrity. Originality/value: The study contributes to the literature by bringing together visual framing, platform logic, and affective publics in the analysis of YouTube news presentation in Turkey. Its originality lies in treating thumbnails and titles as a single unit of analysis and in showing how platform affordances, emotional intensities, and ideological positioning intersect in routine news representation. In doing so, it offers a context-specific contribution to debates on platformized journalism and the visual transformation of news.