In the second semester of 2019-2020, I had the great opportunity to do an internship at the University of Amsterdam. I worked with a professor in the Political Communication and Journalism department. As a student that admires research and wants to pursue an academic career, this internship was a nice way for me to gain some insight and experience in the scientific world.
In this blogpost, I will share my experience as an intern at the UvA and how it was to work at a time of a pandemic outbreak. I will also share one specific result from the research I have conducted during my internship as it stands out from the rest of the results. I will also try to explain with a sound reason why such a result would show up. So, let’s begin.
My main duties consisted of supporting the admin on research matters, teaching tasks and course materials. To a great extent throughout this internship I used the online database LexisUni for research purposes. Very early into the internship the pandemic outbreak occurred and my role as an intern slightly changed. This didn’t demotivate me. However, it took some time for me to get used to working from home. Through this internship, I had the chance to learn about the leading academics in the field of Political Communication and already get familiar with the research that was conducted previously which I am very thrilled about.
As we were obligated to conduct a research during our internship, I chose to focus on the Syrian Civil that has been ongoing for the past nine years. I specifically examined how Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War was reported on using conflict reporting by The Times and The New York Times between 2011 and 2019. The results of my study indicated that The New York Times mentioned the topic at hand more often than The Times. In addition, when compared to The Times, each year from 2011 to 2019 The New York Times reported on Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War more often except from 2016. Interestingly, 2016 is the only year where The Times report on the topic more often than The New York Times. I wonder why this is the case.
First of all, in February 2016 Turkey’s president Erdogan threatened Europe by opening the gates for millions of refugees. This meant that countries in the European Union was facing a huge influx of migrants. Since at the time the UK was in the European Union and that the situation was before the Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom was very likely to be burdened by the high influx of refugees. Accordingly, the number of articles published at the time by The Times peaked.
Secondly, when I did some research, I found out that in August 2016 operation Euphrates Shield, Turkish military’s intervention in Northern Syria, started. Turkey was backed by both the United Kingdom and the United States. However, the United States was also supporting the opposition group. In addition to these two countries Russia was now an ally of Turkey. Knowing that Turkey and Russia were enemies for years this cooperation in operation Euphrates Shield seemed surprising to the UK. I believe this was the reason for The Times to publish more articles than The New York Times.
Overall, I had a nice experience through this internship and I really enjoyed the research I have conducted. I look forward to work in the academic field.