The Politics of Media in Turkey: Chronicle of a Stillborn Media System

Author(s):  
Sarphan Uzunoğlu

This chapter analyzes the politics of media in Turkey and the formation of Turkey’s so-called new media order characterized by polarization, corporatization, widespread censorship, and lack of journalistic independence. It argues that Turkey’s ongoing media crisis arose due to structural transformations starting from the early 1980s and becoming more accelerated and visible under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The chapter discusses Turkey’s media crisis in three steps. Firstly, it contextualizes Turkey’s traditional media system within globally recognized media systems and provides a historical understanding of the impact of political elites and the government on the media industry. Secondly, it discusses shifts in media consumption habits and media ownership structure under AKP rule and shows how these shifts served the party’s political agenda. Finally, it offers a critical overview of several existing prescriptive approaches to Turkey’s media crisis and argues that techno-determinist and overgeneralizing approaches are incompatible with Turkey’s social reality.

2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110471
Author(s):  
Dasniel Olivera Pérez ◽  
Mariana De Maio

This paper analyzes the relationship between media and politics in Cuba during the presidency of Raúl Castro (2006–2018). It contributes to the theoretical discussion about the approaches concerning change and continuity in media systems with empirical evidence from interviews with communication and political science experts, and an analysis of non-standardized content in academic, political, legal, and professional documents. The (re)structuring of the media system is explained by the most important political, economic, technological, and cultural events of the period studied: the survival of the Soviet media model, the impact of the U.S. conflict with Cuba on domestic politics, and a (de)territorialized notion of system boundaries. The patterns of change and continuity are discussed through the relationships among the State’s participation in media and the fulfillment of media’s democratic functions, the media policy projection and journalism cultures, and the political articulation of the media and development of the media industry. The articulations among these patterns highlight the relevance of a multidimensional approach as an interpretive dimension of media systems.


2020 ◽  
pp. 194016122092502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Ines Langer ◽  
Johannes B. Gruber

This article examines the roles of the media in the process of political agenda setting. There is a long tradition of studies on this topic, but they have mostly focused on legacy news media, thus overlooking the role of other actors and the complex hybrid dynamics that characterize contemporary political communication. In contrast, through an in-depth case study using mixed-methods and multiplatform data, this article provides a detailed analysis of the roles and interactions between different types of media and how they were used by political and advocacy elites. It explores what happened in the different parts of the system, and thus the paths to attention that led to setting this issue in the political and media agendas. The analysis of the case, a partial policy reversal in the United Kingdom provoked by an immigration scandal known as the “Windrush scandal” reveals that the issue was pushed into the agenda by a campaign assemblage of investigative journalism, political and advocacy elites, and digitally enabled leaders. The legacy news media came late but were crucial. They greatly amplified the salience of the issue and, once in “storm mode,” they were key for sustaining attention and pressure, eventually compelling the government to respond. It shows that they often remain at the core of the “national conversation” and certainly in the eye of a media storm. In the contemporary context, characterized by fierce battles for attention, shortening attention spans and fractured audiences, this is key and has important implications for agenda setting and beyond.


Author(s):  
Manfred Knoche

Abstract: This paper discusses how the capitalist media industry has been structurally transformed in the age of digital communications. It takes an approach that is grounded in the Marxian critique of the political economy of the media. It draws a distinction between media capital, media-oriented capital, media infrastructure capital and media-external capital as the forms of capital in the media industry. The article identifies four capital strategies that media capital tends to use in order to try to maximise profits: a) The substitution of “old” by “new” media technology, b) the introduction of new transmission channels for “old” media products, c) the definition of new property rights for media sectors and networks, d) the reduction of production and transaction costs. The drive to profit maximization is at the heart of the capitalist media industry’s structural transformation. This work also discusses the tendency to the universalization of the media system in the digital age and the economic contradictions arising from it. It identifies activity fields of the media industry’s structural transformation and shows how the concentration of the capitalist media markets is an essential, contradictory and inherent feature of the capitalist media system and its structural transformation. The paper identifies six causes of why capital seeks to employ capital strategies that result in the media industry’s structural transformation. They include market saturation, overaccumulation, the tendency of the profit rate to fall, capital-concentration, competition pressure, and advertising. The paper finally discusses the role of the state as an agent of capital in general and media capital in particular. It discusses the role of the state in privatisations, neoliberal deregulation, the formation of national competitive states, and various benefits that the state provides for media capital. This contribution shows that capital and capitalism are the main structural transformers of the media and communications system. For understanding these transformations, we need an approach that is grounded in Marx’s critique of the political economy.Translation from German: Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lundälv Jörgen

Welfare, critique and the media – social workers’ voices in podcasts in social policy and social workSocial workers and social policy researchers can engage in social work and critical social policy, in traditional media and in the new media. In recent years, the social media have been increasing in both the international media systems and in the media system in Sweden. One channel for social workers to use to be able to make their voice heard in society is to participate, debate and discuss social policy in podcasts. In 2016, the Union for Professionals, Akademikerförbundet SSR, developed ”Social Services Podcasts”. At the same time the National Board of Health and Welfare introduce a new podcast on social services and health care that is called ”Podcast in the Deep”. This article examines voices and themes in social policy and social work in a total of 112 programmes in two podcasts: ”Socialtjänstpodden” and ”In Depth” during the years 2016–2019. There are several challenges for the storytelling tradition and social criticism in social policy and social work in podcasts, which is highlighted in this article.


2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peeter Vihalemm

Abstract The article gives an overview of general trends in media use in Estonia over the last 15 years, making some comparisons with Nordic countries. Since the beginning of postcommunist transformation in 1991, the media landscape in Estonia has faced substantial changes. A completely renewed media system has emerged, characterized by a diversity of channels, formats, and contents. Not only the media themselves, but also the patterns of media use among audiences, their habits and expectations, have gone through a process of radical change. Changes in the Estonian media landscape have some aspects in common with many other European countries, such as the impact of emerging new media and global TV; others are specific features of transition to a market economy and democratic political order. Besides discussing general trends, the article gives insights into some audience- related aspects of changes, more specifically age and ethnicity.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Knoche

This paper discusses how the capitalist media industry has been structurally transformed in the age of digital communications. It takes an approach that is grounded in the Marxian critique of the political economy of the media. It draws a distinction between media capital, media-oriented capital, media infrastructure capital and media-external capital as the forms of capital in the media industry. The arti- cle identifies four capital strategies that media capital tends to use in order to try to maximise profits: a) The substitution of “old” by “new” media technology, b) the introduction of new transmission chan- nels for “old” media products, c) the definition of new property rights for media sectors and networks, d) the reduction of production and transaction costs. The drive to profit maximization is at the heart of the capitalist media industrys structural transformation. This work also discusses the tendency to the universalization of the media system in the digital age and the economic contradictions arising from it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Suiter ◽  
Eileen Culloty ◽  
Derek Greene ◽  
Eugenia Siapera

Populism, or at the very least a ‘populist zeitgeist’ has advanced across the globe with populist actors from across the ideological spectrum at the forefront of politics in Europe, North and South America and Southeast Asia. One of the major components is the media and specifically hybrid media, which can inhibit or magnify populist political tendencies among both parties and voters. We utilised both hand-coded traditional media data and machine learning on social media data in order to disengage the hybrid media nuances for populist storytelling. We find that the media system in Ireland largely inhibits populist politics and messaging and thereby dampens all anti-out-group messaging. Thus, contrary to the literature identifying an inclination towards populism in some types of new media, and the emergence of media populism in similar media systems in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that the Irish media, across all platforms, tend not to focus on populist messaging. In addition, the norms appear to bleed over to social media. These results are important because they potentially provide lessons for other European countries in covering populist actors and they contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of different kinds of media in the representation of populist politics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
Michael Otieno Otieno; Michael M. Ndonye

The main aim of this paper is to investigate media ownership patterns and analyse the implications of such patterns in Kenya—while thinking globally. Notably, media industry has attracted politicians and business tycoons around the world. It is one of the most lucrative industries that come with a lot of power and influence. From the literature reviewed in this analysis, it is evident that very few studies have been done to critically look at the media ownership patterns in Kenya and the implications such ownership have in the media market place. The paper is aimed at answering three questions. 1) What has been the media ownership pattern in Kenya since independence? 2) What does media ownership patterns mean to the Kenyan Media industry? 3) How does this pattern in Kenya compare to the rest of the world? Analysis from this research seems to demonstrate that most media outlets in Kenya are either politically owned or have some political agenda attached to them. As a result of such pattern, the Kenyan media experience narrow content and lack of alternative viewpoint of news and information disseminated to the public. Secondly, there is lack of balance since the main aim of the media is to advance political agenda as opposed to being the fourth estate—that watchdogs the government on behalf of the society. The findings also indicate that there are similarities in media ownership in Kenya and those around the world. When the political class owns the media, its normative roles are compromised, the editorial independence is skewed, and the media loses its impact as a cultural institution. The recommendation is that only community media can undo the pattern that is being established by politically owned media industry.


Author(s):  
Julian Murphet

This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the substantive analyses to follow. It foregrounds Faulkner’s profound continuing attachment to romance tropes which his more modernist aesthetic sensibilities would increasingly deem invalid. It argues that Faulkner’s primary artistic challenge was finding ways and means to “manage” his anachronistic romanticism, via technical strategies of omission, repression, and tropological masking. The chapter both considers the lingering aesthetic ideology of romance in the modern United States, especially the South, and outlines a genealogy of literary tactics Faulkner was able to employ in order to discipline it, before introducing the major new formal device for which he was responsible: masking romance with figures taken from the new media system.


Author(s):  
Zhiru Guo ◽  
Chao Lu

This article selects the listed companies in China’s A-share heavy pollution industry from 2014 to 2018 as samples, uses a random effect model to empirically test the relationship between media attention and corporate environmental performance and examines the impacts of local government environmental protection and property nature on that relationship. Results are as follow: (1) Media attention can significantly affect a company’s environmental performance. The higher the media attention, the greater the company’s supervision and the better its environmental performance. (2) In areas where the government pays less attention to environmental protection, the impact of media on corporate environmental performance is more obvious, but in other areas, the impact of media on environmental performance cannot be reflected; (3) The media attention is very significant for the environmental performance improvement of state-owned enterprises, and it is not obvious in non-state-owned enterprises. (4) A further breakdown of the study found that the role of media attention in corporate environmental performance is only significant in the sample of local governments that have low environmental protection and are state-owned enterprises. This research incorporates the local government’s emphasis on environmental protection into the research field of vision, expands the research scope of media and corporate environmental performance, and also provides new clues and evidence for promoting the active fulfillment of environmental protection responsibilities by companies and local governments.


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