This book looks at the structural, economic and political reasons why the current media system fails urban educated young professionals in Turkey and led them to a month long resistance and protest through the use of social media during OccupyGezi movement. The book outlines the history of alternative media use and the ways in which it has become a tool for the critics of the neoliberal economic system in Turkey. The collection concentrates on social media use within social movements and applies interdisciplinary approaches and research methods, ranging from cinema and visual arts to sociology, political science, content analysis and ethnographic study.
This book looks at the structural, economic and political reasons why the current media system fails urban educated young professionals in Turkey and led them to a month long resistance and protest through the use of social media during OccupyGezi movement. The book outlines the history of alternative media use and the ways in which it has become a tool for the critics of the neoliberal economic system in Turkey. The collection concentrates on social media use within social movements and applies interdisciplinary approaches and research methods, ranging from cinema and visual arts to sociology, political science, content analysis and ethnographic study.
Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism, and Resistance
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Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism, and Resistance
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Overview
This book looks at the structural, economic and political reasons why the current media system fails urban educated young professionals in Turkey and led them to a month long resistance and protest through the use of social media during OccupyGezi movement. The book outlines the history of alternative media use and the ways in which it has become a tool for the critics of the neoliberal economic system in Turkey. The collection concentrates on social media use within social movements and applies interdisciplinary approaches and research methods, ranging from cinema and visual arts to sociology, political science, content analysis and ethnographic study.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786610645 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2021 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 210 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Victoria McCollum is a Lecturer in Cinematic Arts, in the School of Arts and Humanities, at Ulster University. Her most recent research examines how horror films, including some of its most transgressive subgenres, deal with memory, ideology, and the often-competing claims of nationalism, American exceptionalism and cultural sorrow. She is the author of Post-9/11 Heartland Horror: Rural Horror Films in an Era of Urban Terrorism (2017) and the co-editor of HBO’s Original Voices: Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality and Power (2018) and Make America Hate Again: Trump-Era Horror and the Politics of Fear (2019). Victoria is currently working on a long-term research project concerning Halloween in Northern Ireland.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Diverging Trajectories of Alternative/Citizen Media in Turkey
A Comparative Analysis of Çapul TV and 140journos
Haluk Mert Bal, Ergin Bulut, and Lemi Baruh
In the first half of the 2010s, alternative and citizen media practices went through a period of revival, with the global rise of mass demonstrations and the diffusion of digital technologies, which enabled citizens to become active agents of dissemination of information. In Turkey, the Gezi Park protests of 2013 began as a reaction of a group of environmentalists to the replacement of Gezi Park in Taksim, Istanbul, with Topçu Kislasi, an Ottoman-era military barracks and a shopping mall (Gürcan and Peker, 2015; Yaman, 2014; Amnesty International, 2013). Protests turned into a nationwide uprising as images of police violence were spread throughout social media. Citizens also significantly dissented to the indifference of mainstream news. More specifically, the broadcasting of a documentary about penguins on CNN Türk during the circulation of scenes of violence on social media became a symbol of clientelism and corruption with regard to the relationship between media and political power in Turkey (Öztürkmen, 2014).
It has been almost four years since Gezi as we write this chapter, and even though the political dust has not completely settled in the country, it is important to assess the field and to identify varying trends of the alternative media scene in Turkey. This is a particularly vital task in terms of grasping how alternative media outlets, which were established as a reaction to mainstream media, manage to sustain themselves in the absence of a prevalent wave of social movements and increasing political turmoil. As such, this chapter presents a study of alternative and citizen media within a politically polarized and democratically deficient media environment. For this purpose, we focus on two alternative and citizen media outlets in Turkey, 140journos and Çapul TV, and demonstrate a divergence of paths between the two, even though both began as alternatives to mainstream media, empowered by content provided by citizens as volunteers and activists.
According to Reporters without Borders (2016), Turkey ranked 151 out of 180 countries in 2016 in terms of freedom of the press, following a gradual negative trend since 2002 when Turkey ranked 99 (Çoban and Ataman, 2015). Currently, Freedom House classifies Turkey as "not free" in terms of both press and internet freedoms (2016a; 2016b). Accordingly, in terms of the relationship between media and democracy, scholars point to the high degree of polarization found in Turkish media (Toker, 2015) and have defined Turkey as a "neoliberal media autocracy" (Akser and Baybars-Hawks, 2012, 309) with a "pre-dominant party system" in which there is clear evidence for "press-party parallelism" (Çarkoglu, Baruh, and Yildirim, 2014). Others have pointed to the problems stemming from a "competitive authoritarian regime" in which there is "uneven access to media" for different political actors (Esen and Gumuscu, 2016, 1587). Similar to the political scene, the "media system matches the characteristics of the polarized pluralist model" that "includes high media integration into party politics (or political parallelism) and state intervention" (Panayirci, Iseri, and Sekercioglu, 2016, 552). Somer also suggests that "the Turkish press seems to fit the image of the polarized-pluralist Mediterranean model," while "there is much more internal pluralism, discussion and dissent within both religious and secular elites than often perceived" (2010, 574). Yesil (2014, 2016) states that numerous factors, such as clientelism, interference from state authorities, commercial pressures, concentration (and state-induced transfer) of media ownership, and the breakup of unions, threaten freedom of the press in Turkey. Overall, scholars agree that the Turkish media environment lacks autonomy from political and economic pressures to the degree that its media system falls short of democratic conceptions of the role of media in society. As will be discussed later in further detail, both Çapul TV and 140journos ground their emergence on a disenchantment with the mainstream media. However, the ongoing stories of these outlets show that alternative/citizen media do not follow a clear-cut formula, and the variations found in the field challenges the preconceived understandings.
ALTERNATIVE AND CITIZEN MEDIA: A HETEROGENEOUS FIELD WITH DIVERGING PATHS
Even though alternative media and citizen-oriented media practices often have a similar motivation in their phase of inception, the field is highly heterogeneous, also reflected in the abundance of concepts utilized by scholars. Indeed, alternative media is defined on the basis of what it is not rather than what it is (Rauch, 2015); that is, it exists outside of the realm of mainstream media in terms of the "kind of content," the "means of funding," and the way this kind of media employs recent technologies (Hamilton, 2001, 306). A number of terms/concepts attempts to address this heterogeneous field: radical media (Atton, 2002), social movement media (Downing, 2008; Downing, 2011), tactical media (Lovink, 2002; Lester and Hutchins, 2009), citizens' media (Rodríguez, 2011), activist media (Waltz, 2005), participatory media (Bowman and Willis, 2003; Carpentier, 2016), and rhizomatic media (Bailey, Cammaerts, and Carpentier, 2008).
The concept of "citizen journalism," which defines ordinary citizens who disseminate information as they become witnesses to major events (i.e., mass demonstrations, nationwide disasters, or particular accidents and events) that are unlikely to be covered by professional journalists (Allan, 2010; Wall, 2015), stands as a field of research separate from the study of alternative media. Still, citizen journalism is closely related to alternative media in many respects, to the extent that it is associated with deprofessionalization of journalism, voluntary labor, and content created by ordinary people (Splichal and Dahlgren, 2016). However, citizen journalism can be complementary and assistive rather than oppositional or even alternative to mainstream media (Dahlgren, 2013). Moreover, when we consider citizen journalism outlets rather than individual citizen journalists, it becomes evident that hybrid forms of professional or semiprofessional outlets such as Global Voices, which uses a combination of paid and voluntary labor, are already being accepted as forerunners in the field of citizen journalism.
Scholars also argue that, while considering the respective positions of mainstream and alternative outlets within the contemporary media landscape, rather than a binary understanding of these spheres, we should be cognizant of their interdependencies and how they may be converging (e.g., Rauch, 2016). For example, according to Kenix (2011), media should be understood as a continuum, and there is room for cooperation between different types of media. In fact, Kenix warns alternative media against "the risk of an ideological 'ghettoization' if they do not engage in cohesive processes" with the mainstream media (166). Simultaneously, she advises alternative media "to find avenues of growth that exist outside of the influence of foundations or advertisers" (171) and states that "funding models, across the media spectrum, need to be solicited from a wider base of individual contributors, rather than a relatively few number of advertisers or corporate sponsors" (172). Similarly, Bailey et al.'s (2008) concept of rhizomatic media underlines the possibility of hybrid models of media practices in which alternative media can exist with varying degrees of relationship with market and the state. Notably, this complex relationship may mean that alternative media is susceptible to being co-opted by market organizations and losing its independence.
A related area of inquiry investigates the implications of entrepreneurial journalism, whereby journalists become owners of their own outlets as the separation of journalism and media ownership disappears (Casero-Ripollés, Izquierdo-Castillo, and Doménech-Fabregat, 2016). Accordingly, entrepreneurial journalism poses a challenge, since the journalist becomes the person who is also responsible for the financial sustainability of his/her organization, which opens up an ethical debate about journalistic autonomy (Porlezza and Splendore, 2016). In this study, we refer to the field of "alternative and citizen media" or "alternative/citizen media" in order to include various types of media that claim to operate in a different way than what they consider to be mainstream media. This involves oppositional, complementary, and just different types of alternative/citizen media practices. It is inevitable that such a heterogeneous field will produce different and even competing news cultures as well as organizational structures and financing/funding models. Hanitzsch, in his study that classifies eighteen countries and their national news cultures, identifies "three general dimensions" or "institutional roles" that correspond to "areas of disagreement over the social function of journalism" (2007; 2011, 481). These general dimensions are as follows:
1. Interventionism is related to the promotion of the journalist's values. It differentiates between "two types of journalist, the one interventionist, involved, socially committed, assertive and motivated, the other detached and uninvolved, dedicated to objectivity, neutrality, fairness and impartiality."
2. Power distance differentiates those who assume a watchdog function of journalism from those who "tend to see themselves more in a collaborative role, as 'partners' of the ruling elites in political processes."
3. Market orientation is about addressing the audience as either citizens or consumers and prioritizing either "the logic of the market" or "the public interest" (Hanitzsch, 2011, 481).
Hanitzsch identifies four news cultures in his research. First, there is the populist disseminator that focuses "mainly on news that attracts the widest possible audience" (2011, 484). The populist disseminator also serves as a "detached observer." Second, the detached watchdog refers to a journalist who combines detached observation with a critical attitude toward the elites. They try to inform their readers with regard to political issues, yet are not keen on intervening on behalf of them. Third, critical change agents refers to those both critical of elites and interventionists. They are the journalists who are "most eager to motivate their audiences to participate in civic activity and political discussion" (486). Lastly, there is the opportunist facilitator, who views journalists as "constructive partners of the government in the process of economic development and political transformation," which are neither detached observers nor watchdogs of their government (486). In addition, Hanitzsch identifies two dimensions for epistemologies of journalism — objectivism and empiricism (2007). Objectivism refers to a continuum between the pole of correspondence, the idea that there is an absolute truth, and the pole of subjectivism, the idea that there is no value-free truth and reality. In terms of empiricism, a news culture "that prioritize[s] an empirical justification of truth strongly emphasize[s] observation, measurement, evidence, and experience," while the negative end of the empiricism continuum is "where journalism cultures stress the analytical justification of truth claims, accentuates reason, ideas, values, opinion, and analysis" (377).
In terms of news cultures of alternative and citizen media outlets, Hanitzsch's study offers a useful framework to identify different trends. In the following sections, we will first summarize the stories of 140journos and Çapul TV, analyze the interviews, and then discuss what our findings represent in terms of the alternative/citizen media scene in a country with a politically polarized media environment.
140JOURNOS
140journos was initiated as a communication platform in association with the Institute of Creative Minds (ICM), a network of creative professionals, on January 19, 2012, on the anniversary of the assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Founders were a group of friends and students who were in their twenties. ICM is an organization that acts as a network and agency among professionals working in the creative industries. It is involved in both not-for-profit projects, including 140journos, and for-profit services such as digital communication management, event and experience design, and consultancy (Institute of Creative Minds, 2016b). Currently, 140journos has 153,000 followers on Twitter, which is the primary platform through which it publish its news stories. According to its website, 140journos had 237,700,000 impressions on Twitter in the first six months of 2016, which increased by 774 percent in comparison to the first six months of 2015, which generated 27,200,000 impressions (140journos, 2016c).
140journos, according to its founders, was born as a "countermedia" initiative and as a "conscientious reaction" to a series of absent or inadequate coverage of events by the mainstream media in Turkey. These events, which are censored and/or overlooked by the Turkish media, include the Republic protests in 2007, the Tobacco Monopoly (TEKEL) workers' protests of layoffs by the government in 2009, and the Uludere airstrike in 2011 in which thirty-four citizens, who were involved in illegal border trade and mistaken for armed militants, were killed near the Turkish-Iraqi border. Founders of 140journos had no prior training or involvement with news reporting of any kind, but they followed the example of Serdar Akinan, a journalist who criticized the lack of reporting about the incident and went to Uludere to cover the unfolding events through Twitter and Instagram as a citizen. This act by a professional journalist, who was disillusioned by the media environment in Turkey, created a "methodology for citizen journalism," according to the founders of 140journos (Önder 2015).
Initially, 140journos was based on content created by users mainly through Twitter, which also gives the platform its name with its character limit, as well as content created by the members of the platform who reported about critical court trials of the period, such as Ergenekon and the KCK trials. This established the place of 140journos as a citizen media platform within the alternative and citizen media landscape in Turkey. It was also distinguished by its strict insistence on an avoidance of using any form of "labels" and not providing any form of commentary while describing individuals, events, and groups: "We use a neutral language so that every community can receive our news and we face criticisms such as 'it's not police intervention, it's attack' or 'it's not a group, it's the people' due to the objectivity of the language we use" (Gökmen, 2015).
In June 2015, 140journos members decided that citizen content was not enough to cover "the complex agenda of the country which changes more than once within a day" (140journos, 2015). In addition to their already established citizen journalism practice on Twitter, which was limited to 140 characters, they started to include longer news stories, first using images within Twitter, later through the blogging platform Medium. For wider coverage, they decided to include news stories provided by news agencies in Turkey, such as Anadolu Agency, Dogan News Agency, and Dicle News Agency. However, in accordance with their approach that prioritizes verification and their initial critique that problematizes the biased and polarized media climate in Turkey, they decided to disseminate agency news through a comparative perspective. In each news story taken from agencies, they point to differences in facts and interpretation. In this process of transformation, 140journos also changed its visual outlook and logo. Depending on the platform, it began making use of infographics, images, and short documentaries and increased its use of audio-visual elements. Its logo, which was similar to the Twitter bird (its preferred platform at the time), was replaced by a logo inspired by the northern bald ibis, a critically endangered species of bird found in Turkey.
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