Message framing in context: political debates of 2010 constitutional amendments

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1379340 (Table of Contents)

This thesis examines the substantive and relational dimensions of the rhetoric used during the 2010 constitutional debates process and analyzed the impacts of political environment and simultaneous and sequential issue consideration as two different contexts on the constitution amendment making process. This thesis predicts that presence of a polarized political environment leads the speakers to use a competitive and distributive rhetoric during 2010 constitutional debates and that the speakers use more cooperative and integrative rhetoric in the sessions in which the issues are considered simultaneously than in the sessions in which the issues are considered sequentially. It is found that the presence of a polarized political environment results in more a backward-looking, power and mistrust oriented rhetoric, which is associated with competitive and distributive bargaining. It is also found that the messages in the sessions in which the issues are considered simultaneously, are framed in more forward-looking, affiliation and trust oriented way, which is associated with a cooperative and integrative bargaining approach, than in the sessions in which the issues are considered sequentially. Based on an analytical case-study, this study has the main objective of analyzing both substantive and relational dimensions of the rhetorical messages in 2010 constitutional debates, through using content analysis method.