Books by Ece Algan
Television Turkey: Local Production, Transnational Expansion and Political Aspirations, 2020
This edited collection takes a timely and comprehensive approach to understanding Turkey’s televi... more This edited collection takes a timely and comprehensive approach to understanding Turkey’s television, which has become a global growth industry in the last decade, by reconsidering its geopolitics within both national and transnational contexts. The Turkish television industry along with audiences and content are contextualised within the socio-cultural and historical developments of global neoliberalism, transnational flows, the rise of authoritarianism, nationalism, and Islamism. Moving away from Anglo-American perspectives, the book analyzes both local and global processes of television production and consumption while taking into consideration the dynamics distinctive to Turkey, such as ethnic and gender identity politics, media policies and regulations, and rising nationalistic sentiments.
Journal articles by Ece Algan
International Communication Gazette, 2023
Since the 2000s, the television industry in Turkey has emerged as a transnational business and as... more Since the 2000s, the television industry in Turkey has emerged as a transnational business and as one of the largest TV program exporters worldwide. However, Turkish television is still largely national in its production practices and content, and thus, highly vulnerable to the domestic political landscape and media regulations of the government.
In the last two decades, rather than endorsing the independent growth of this emerging industry in the international markets, the Turkish government has erected barriers by tightening censorship and passing new regulations to control national television and its content production. The AKP government deployed various state apparatuses, including Turkey’s public broadcasting channel (TRT), English language news channel (TRT World), and the regulatory agency Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) to foster the type of television content that can ideologically serve the AKP’s
conservative and neo-Ottomanist agendas. Drawing on the political economy of media and through critical analysis, this paper analyzes how these state mechanisms are used to instrumentalize TV exports and media institutions in service of President Erdoğan’s cultural, economic, and foreign policy agendas within the country and abroad. By investigating the tension between the state’s ideological project and the regional, transnational, and global mediasphere, our work sheds light on how the implementation of the government’s new media and cultural policies, top-down directives and pressures from the state and government on both the TV industry and its audience, and South-to-South cultural flows have shaped the Turkish TV industry and its content in the last two decades.
(Ms)taking Context for Content: Framing the Fourth World Conference on Women
Political Communication, 2001
This article analyzes journalistic framing of the 1995 Fourth UN World Conference on Women in two... more This article analyzes journalistic framing of the 1995 Fourth UN World Conference on Women in two mainstream American newspapers, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The research identified recurrent themes used by the two news-papers to frame ...
Turkey’s TV celebrities as cultural envoys: the role of celebrity diplomacy in nation branding and the pursuit of soft power
Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 2021
With the increasing popularity of Turkish television dramas, actors from Turkish TV series have b... more With the increasing popularity of Turkish television dramas, actors from Turkish TV series have become global celebrities with hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. In this paper, drawing on a political economy of communication analysis, we investigate the ways in which the Turkish government utilizes Turkish TV series’ actors’ celebrity status to further its foreign policy agenda with respect to soft power. We argue that in the Turkish case, celebrity diplomacy or the instrumentalization of celebrities for state ambitions of soft power necessitates a reliance on commercial television exports for nation branding. This brings its own contradictions and consequences as the image and meaning desired by the Turkish government does not always align with what the TV industry creates when competing in the global TV marketplace.
International Journal of Communication, 2020
Through a feminist critical discourse analysis of newspaper columns from both secular/nationalist... more Through a feminist critical discourse analysis of newspaper columns from both secular/nationalist and religio-conservative outlets, this article illustrates how the issue of increased violence against women-which was made visible by the murder and attempted rape of a young university student, Özgecan Aslan-was instrumentalized by secular media outlets to critique the current government's conservative family policies based on Islamic principles, while conservative progovernment media outlets used the murder as a moral tale about both the importance of a devout, humble life devoid of consumerism, and other temptations of modern life that encourage lewd behavior. Although patriarchy was not addressed as a root problem for rape, Özgecan Aslan ended up becoming a polarizing and tragic symbol of the consequences of either Western modernity or conservative Islamism-depending on the ideological composition of the media outlet in question-further helping both sides legitimize their versions of patriarchy. Ece Algan: E.Algan@lboro.ac.uk
Local Broadcasting as Tactical Media: Exploring Practices of Kurdish Activism and Journalism in Turkey
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2019
PDF AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST--Against the backdrop of struggles that local broadcasters in Turkey w... more PDF AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST--Against the backdrop of struggles that local broadcasters in Turkey who advocate for Kurdish minority rights have endured, I discuss local broadcast journalists’ tactics for creating and maintaining programming that caters to the ongoing Kurdish conflict. Local ethnic broadcasting in Kurdish provinces has long strived to offer an alternative discourse than that of the state propaganda and to mobilize political support within and outside Turkey. In order to illustrate the role of Kurdish activist journalism in political mobilization, I analyze examples of local radio programming from 2010 to 2013, a period during which broadcasters in Kurdish provinces enjoyed relative freedom. I aim to illustrate the instrumentality of activist journalism in an authoritarian regime, and the ways in which local broadcasting is utilized as tactical media by both activist journalists and the community they serve.
Ethnographic examinations of media and social change can focus too narrowly on the changes taking... more Ethnographic examinations of media and social change can focus too narrowly on the changes taking place at the time of introduction of a new communication technology and thus can end up being incredibly shortsighted and celebratory in their approach. Postill argues that inquiries into media's role in social change should not be done through time-constrained ethnographic methods, but rather should follow a more biographical model that better accounts for ongoing social change. In response to his essay in this issue and in light of my fieldwork experience in the same site during the past 15 years, I discuss the value of adopting a longitudinal approach to media ethnographies with focused or punctuated revisits (Burawoy, 2003) to the field. Öz Medya ve toplumsal değişimi inceleyen etnografik yaklaşımlar, araştırma objesi olarak çoğunlukla yeni bir iletişim aracının ortaya çıktığı noktadaki değişimlere odaklandığından, yeni teknolojinin dönüştürücü gücünü fazlasıyla öne çıkarma eğilimi göstebilmektedirler. Bu yüzden Postill, medyanın toplumsal
This study investigates the role of Turkish commercial local radio in the construction of youth c... more This study investigates the role of Turkish commercial local radio in the construction of youth community in the city of Şanlıurfa, which is located in the poor rural southeastern region near the Syrian border. Through in-depth interviews with radio listeners and analysis of their interactions via radio, this paper also examines young people’s attempts to overcome traditional restrictions and social norms through talk radio. By doing so, this study aims to highlight the social role of radio, which is often underestimated in media studies (Scannell 1996), and to challenge Western-centric scholarship on talk radio, which ignores talk radio’s role in community formation. By drawing from Downing’s concept of ‘radical media’, Atton’s definition of ‘alternative media’, and Couldry’s theorization of the ‘symbolic hierarchy of media power,’ this study will discuss why some local commercial stations in Şanlıurfa function as alternative media for the Turkish youth and how they cross the boundary between the ‘media’ and ‘ordinary’ worlds to create a space for themselves.
Keywords: Alternative media, talk radio, local media, Turkey
Development of Local Radio in Southeast Turkey
This article examines the emergence of local radio in a rural southeastern Turkish city called Sa... more This article examines the emergence of local radio in a rural southeastern Turkish city called Sanllurfa in the early 1990s following the end of the state's media monopoly on broadcasting. Informed by a media ethnography conducted there in 2001, this article discusses local debates over the content and quality of local radio and the influence of the state's official cultural policies on the programming decisions of local radio owners, managers, and DJs. This paper also illustrates Turkish young people's local and national radio preferences, their responses to local programming and on-air personalities, and the meaning of music and local radio in their lives.
Americans know very little about the Middle East in general despite the fact that the region is a... more Americans know very little about the Middle East in general despite the fact that the region is at the heart of American foreign policy. While no one doubts the importance of teaching the history, culture, and politics of the Middle East in the United States, lack of basic knowledge coupled with the strong antipathy toward Arabs and Muslims make classroom teaching about the region quite challenging. Given that the current Islamophobic discourse in mainstream media and imperialistic American foreign policy misinform students about who Middle Easterners are, the so-called “war on terror” causes educators to be uneasy about discussing the Middle East in their classrooms. A strong pro-Israel lobby and other pressure groups make it even more difficult to have an independent intellectual discussion of the Middle East because of intimidation and anti-Semitism accusations that follow discussions of the Palestinian plight or the issue of the Palestinian refugees. Ismael (2011) adds that the ...
Book chapters by Ece Algan
Tactics of the Industry Against the Strategies of the Government: The Transnationalization of Turkey’s Television Industry
The Routledge Companion to Global Television, 2019
Stuck between the political economy of the larger domestic television production industry and glo... more Stuck between the political economy of the larger domestic television production industry and global market imperatives, I argue that Turkey’s TV industry executives and professionals had to develop and implement a number of tactics to achieve a locally based transnational cultural industry able to withstand both global and domestic pressures. In this chapter I identify three main tactics employed by Turkey’s TV industry executives and professionals to combat the socio-economic and political challenges they face: These tactics are: (1) carefully managing the content to skirt government restrictions; (2) adopting the government’s soft power discourse and public diplomacy aspirations by cooperating with government officials and businesses in their cultural promotion and nation-branding efforts; and (3) adapting to global TV trends by undertaking rigorous marketing and branding campaigns. A discussion of these tactics in the Turkish case can help us understand how culture industries in the developing world, which had to integrate into a neoliberal media environment after the 1980s due to market- and state-driven policies propelled mostly by US-based global media giants, negotiate being locally based transnational culture industries in the face of increasingly authoritarian and right-wing domestic political climates.
Privatization of radio and media hegemony in Turkey
Youth, New Media, and Radio: Mobile Phone and Local Radio Convergence in Turkey
The gendered politics of care: redefining marriage and gender roles on Turkish reality television
The gendered politics of care: redefining marriage and gender roles on Turkish reality television
There is no permission to love in our Urfa: media, youth identities and social change in Southeast Turkey
Today media are central to young people’s experience of modernity and identities everywhere in th... more Today media are central to young people’s experience of modernity and identities everywhere in the world – not only those who are educated and live in the centers, but also those with little or no education who live in rural areas, ghettos, and the periphery. My research in Southeast Turkey illustrates how integral media are to the everyday lives of young people in Şanliurfa. This research, however, does not necessarily suggest that the introduction of a new medium or programming content is drastically transforming their lives. Rather, as I show in this article, the media activities of the youth in Şanliurfa are linked to much wider social change in Turkey, which we must understand in order to see the role media play in their lives, and their perceptions and experience of change. On the one hand, national, transnational and global media increase intergenerational tensions by pointing out the disparities that exist between the young people’s realities in Southeast Turkey and those of...
Yeni Türkiye, Hakikatsiz Siyaset, Soylu Yalan, 2018
The problem of textuality in ethnographic audience research: Lessons learned on Southeast Turkey
Today media are central to young people’s experience of modernity and identities everywhere in th... more Today media are central to young people’s experience of modernity and identities everywhere in the world—not only those who are educated and live in the centers, but also those with little or no education who live in rural areas, ghettos, and the periphery. My research in Southeast Turkey illustrates how integral media are to the everyday lives of young people in Şanlıurfa. This research, however, does not necessarily suggest that the introduction of a new medium or programming content is drastically transforming their lives. Rather, as I show in this paper, the media activities of the youth in Şanlıurfa are linked to much wider social change in Turkey, which we must understand in order to see the role media play in their lives, and their perceptions and experience of change. On the one hand, national, transnational and global media increase intergenerational tensions by pointing out the disparities that exist between the young people’s realities in Southeast Turkey and those of other young people of the same generation living in the west of the country. On the other hand, local media and new communication technologies give them an opportunity to articulate youth identities shaped by and negotiated through both globally-induced socio-economic changes, as well as centuries-old patriarchal and tribal structures.
The popular Turkish reality TV show Izdivaç reveals how the mainstream ideologies and traditional... more The popular Turkish reality TV show Izdivaç reveals how the mainstream ideologies and traditional practices of marriage are negotiated against the changing socio-economic realities of modern Turkey. Drawing on the dialogues that took place among the host, participants, prospective spousal candidates and studio guests on Izdivaç during June 2009, this presentation examines the changing expectations and meanings of gender roles in marriage and discuss why marriage is increasingly seen as a care-based economic alliance.
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Books by Ece Algan
Journal articles by Ece Algan
In the last two decades, rather than endorsing the independent growth of this emerging industry in the international markets, the Turkish government has erected barriers by tightening censorship and passing new regulations to control national television and its content production. The AKP government deployed various state apparatuses, including Turkey’s public broadcasting channel (TRT), English language news channel (TRT World), and the regulatory agency Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) to foster the type of television content that can ideologically serve the AKP’s
conservative and neo-Ottomanist agendas. Drawing on the political economy of media and through critical analysis, this paper analyzes how these state mechanisms are used to instrumentalize TV exports and media institutions in service of President Erdoğan’s cultural, economic, and foreign policy agendas within the country and abroad. By investigating the tension between the state’s ideological project and the regional, transnational, and global mediasphere, our work sheds light on how the implementation of the government’s new media and cultural policies, top-down directives and pressures from the state and government on both the TV industry and its audience, and South-to-South cultural flows have shaped the Turkish TV industry and its content in the last two decades.
Keywords: Alternative media, talk radio, local media, Turkey
Book chapters by Ece Algan