Discourse of Mobbing in Turkish Press

Mobbing (Psychological violence in working place) has been researched especially by the scientists making researches in organizational communication for last 20-25 years. In Turkey, mobbing concept is a newer research field. In this study, how the news regarding mobbing has been given in Turkish press will be analyzed with Van Dijk‟s discourse analysis. How the news regarding mobbing has taken place in Turkish press will be analyzed by applying Van Dijk‟s discourse analysis. From the year of 1997 when the news related to the mobbing appeared to today, what kinds of differences happened in news discourses especially with taking place of mobbing in Turkish Criminal Law, will be analyzed. Keywords: Mobbing, working place, victim The working concept is to use human‟s physical and mental powers for a determined aim in a planned manner. Nowadays almost the most important one of the personal prestige criteria is regarded as the success in working life. Therefore, the working life is leading in basic communal institutions to have an important role and place in the community and reflect existing potential. The working life has an important place in human life, because one third of the human life passes by working and in this activity the individual sustains the continuity of his/her life. By working the individual not only earns monetary gain, but also has moral gains with the issues such as becoming happy, successful and satisfied from the work s/he accomplishes. Due to the fact that the working life affects the individual‟s relations with the community and communal position, the encountered problems affect the individual‟s whole life negatively. Mobbing (Psychological violence in working place) is not a very new concept in working life. It is an issue which is always existing in the communal life and working life, but do not come into prominence due to the prevalence of other violence types. Mobbing, which is one of the hidden dangers of working life, is evaluated within the concept of „violence‟ which goes all lengths to reach its aim in terms of the individuals exposed to this condition and its formation manner. There are many dimensions of violence; it extends from physical violence to sexual violence and verbal violence, from there to the psychological violence applied to the targeted individual. All of these violence types also take place in working life as in communal life. In recent years, especially psychological violence has become one of the most important encountered problems in working life. Mobbing, which is composed of malicious activities aiming at expelling an individual or a group from working place through applying unfair accusation, general harassment, humiliation, abasement, emotional torture and psycho-terror, is a process having various stages and spreading at least to three and six-month period. Among the reasons of mobbing (Psychological violence) profit/return law is mentioned at most. The reasons such as change of working place condition in the course of time, seeking high productivity and competition, autonomy increase, increase the pressure on the workers in the context of unemployment. As a result of this pressure in which there is a full damnification for the worker regardless of public or private sector, the decreasing of individual‟s productivity in the working place is inevitable. The intimidation behaviors in the organization has been observed as horizontal, downwards and upwards and arisen from the power relations in the organization. Whatever the direction of these activities realized in harming and despotic manners are in the organization, as a result they affect the workers negatively, make them resign from their duties and reach to the levels affecting their health. As a result of this pressure, the worker has to cope with the mental problems resulting with being dismissed and hard to be repaired. When Swedish scientist Leymann defined the mobbing behaviors in the year of 1984 for the first time, he emphasized that these behaviours were a type of working place terror. Leymann not only expressed the existence of mobbing behaviour in the working place, but also emphasized the special attributions of the behaviour, its emergence way, the person who were affected from the applied violence at most and its possible psychological consequences. In terms of our country‟s workers the situation is a little bit difficult. Because of the fact that the issue of requesting help is just a new understanding for Turkish community in psychological terms, medical advice is not mostly sought. It is possible to say that this requirement is solved with strong family ties in our community. In our country, there are not “support and rehabilitation centers for intimidation” like in the developed countries giving importance to physical and mental health of workers in their working place environments. Therefore, when it is considered that the individuals, who are suffered from the intimidation process and do not have families, can not get family supports, the situation is also a substantially difficult process for these sufferers. In our country, the attentions of neither academic and business environments nor the professional bodies have been attracted to the intimidation process. In fact, similar problems are encountered in many working places and increase more in economical crisis situations. This process threatens all workers in a manner which is as serious as not being ignored. The researches regarding physiological violence are extensively made in Europe. Although it is limited, some researches have been made in this issue for the last 7-8 years in our country. The determination of the dimensions of the problem is important in terms of increasing the sensitivity of workers in this issue and ensuring that the institutions and related organizations take precautions regarding the issue. Raising awareness of the workers in mobbing issue and familiarity with the issue are possible with the fact that media, especially the printed press gives places to the mobbing news. As of when the news related to the mobbing appeared in Turkish press, with which discourses these news were given and the news‟ points of view to the issue are the starting points of this study. How the news regarding mobbing has taken place in Turkish press will be analyzed by applying the content analysis method. From the year of 1997 when the news related to the mobbing appeared to today, what kinds of differences happened in news discourses especially with taking place of mobbing in Turkish Criminal Law, will be analyzed.