The role of the media following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War: The cases of AzadliqRadiosu and MeydanTV news sites in Azerbaijan

As the second Nagorno-Karabakh War, also called the '44-Day War' (between 27.09.2020-10.11.2020) ended, and the ceasefire agreement was signed, the for the Khankendi-centered area in Nagorno-Karabakh region. This area is predominantly an Armenian-populated region and is internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan but is under the control of the so-called de-facto Artsakh the Caucasian region and specifically relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the status of the Armenian-populated region, and social cohesion between the communities remain still problematic. In this context, the study aims to find out how the Azerbaijani media reflect this post-conflict situation. In doing so, the most-followed two online media platforms, MeydanTV and Azadliqradiosu, were selected for the sampling, and topic-oriented framing analysis was employed to scrutinize the news posted during the one-year post-conflict period (between 10.11.2020-10.11.2021). According to the findings, construction/negative peace was the main theme in both news sites. One of the main differences was about framing of rehabilitation phase. While the stories from both Azerbaijani and emphasized on MeydanTV.