Science-based truth as news: Knowledge production and media in Iraqi Kurdistan

Abstract

This article examines aspects of the entanglement of (social) science, politics and media in Iraqi Kurdistan and investigates their representation in Kurdish newspapers, taking a quantitative study on genocidal persecution published by a Kurdistan government ministry as an example. It demonstrates how one and the same corpus of science-based ideas is appropriated and operationalised according to very different political agendas, and how the media itself conveys certain beliefs on the measurability of social experience and the truth value of science-based knowledge. Drawing on the broad debate in social science and the humanities on knowledge and the capitalist society, this article discusses aspects of the scientification of media and the politicisation of academic knowledge production