PhD in Communication
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Öğe An interdisciplinary perspective towards makerspaces: 5 cases from London(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2023) Yardım Meriçliler, Nurgül; Ada, SerhanABSTRACT: A makerspace is a workspace that encourages the maker community through collaboration by providing them (physical) space, tools and knowledge for making. This dissertation examines makerspaces as a dynamic social phenomenon in its continuous state of change, aiming to inquire into and theorise them. Specifically, the dissertation raises questions about the positioning of makerspaces, particularly about connections between makers, their community, physical space, neighbourhood and production process in a makerspace. In this sense, the study constructs a theoretical framework for makerspaces by offering a case study methodology needed to be responsive to makerspace characteristics and necessities. The research design employs an interdisciplinary perspective, from social theories to architectural discourse, and includes observation of makerspaces through site visits and semi-structured interviews with makers and directors from Makerversity, Blackhorse Workshop, South London Makerspace, The Warehouse, and Sugarhouse Studios, all based in London, United Kingdom. These interviews with makers were also released as podcast episodes regarding a selected method for the dissertation. This dissertation presents perspectives that makerspace possesses distinctive qualities, while the makerspace community positions making at the core of their social connections. Therefore, makerspaces’ unique characteristics and contexts are discussed, while this is finalised in the construction of “makerspace identities”. With the help of cases, makerspaces are defined as “community with an entrepreneurial mindset in the city”, “collaborative environment empowering innovators”, “community-led workshop with an online visibility”, “open-access factory for everyone to co-create”, and “hub for cross-disciplinary studios with a social network”. These identities are to open up a discussion for the future makerspaces located in other cities or contexts; and to be aware of the relations between makers, inner maker community, and neighbourhood as well as the physical space and the urban context. Additionally, makerspaces may evolve into or challenge the concept of thirdspaces, enabling more collaborative settings. The significance of this dissertation is making contributions to literature using an interdisciplinary perspective, from social sciences to architectural discourse, and framing a systematic standpoint for future studies.Öğe Minority newspaper and editorial cartoons: reading Turkish Jewish minority through Şalom newspaper in Turkey(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2023) Meşulam, Rakel Pinhas; Haydari Pakkan, NazanABSTRACT: This research draws from Şalom, the longest-published Turkish-Jewish newspaper since 1947, to trace the communication strategies of Şalom as a form of minority media. It offers a multilayered analysis of the newspaper's front pages and İzel Rozental's editorial cartoon corner, "Tünelin Ucu"(End of the Tunnel). The content and historical discourse analysis of the selected number of front pages shed light on various intervention and communication strategies used by Şalom during four marking periods in the history of the Turkish-Jewish minority. It is argued that while the content and the tone of the news on the front pages are mediated by the political and social context, the editorial cartoons of "Tünelin Ucu" constitute a significant space to claim oppositional position through the critique of local and international politics. Thus, the editorial cartoons form a dialogic relationship with the front-page news of minority media create different channels and unique politics of representation. Editorial cartoons carry the potential of turning minority newspaper into an active agent questioning the status quo and paving the way to put forward the criticismÖğe Defining precarious work through the experiences of set workers in Turkey(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2023) Akten, Ece; Haydari Pakkan, NazanABSTRACT: This study (re)defines the precarious work in cultural industries in Turkey through the accounts of 31 set workers working in different tasks and departments in the film and television industries. Standing observes that as a result of globalization, a more fragmented emerging global class structure arises defined by insecurity and uncertainty, and he identifies the precariat as a distinct class that rises to the fore (2011). In order to provide a comprehensive, complex, and systematic understanding, Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) by Donal Carbaugh is applied in the analysis of the interviews to explore the precarious employment of set workers in Turkey as a multilayered process, in this study. It is argued that precarious work constitutes a condition defined by struggles. This study unequivocally shows that set workers struggle in the workplace. It demonstrates that set workers in Turkey may be understood as a condition rather than a class and that their precarious situation is distinct. The qualitative research tries to offer a fresh perspective on everyday activity in a multi-dollar industry and introduces a new definition of precarious work through set workers, contributing to the existing literature.Öğe Reading the Korean War through the photographs of Semiha Es(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2022) Kaçar, Şehlem; Haydari Pakkan, NazanABSTRACT: This thesis questions how the Korean War is represented through the photographs of Semiha Es and examines these photographs through the lens of different discourses. Some of the photographs will be viewed on the axis of militarism, anti-militarism and masculinity discourses, and selected private archive photographs on the axis of alternative historical narratives. The first part consists of the Korean War, which aims to remember the Korean War and question it through media representations; while doing this, it examines the Hürriyet newspaper and the media climate of the period. The second part explains the methodological approach using three different layers, including content analysis, connotation and denotation readings, and critical discourse analysis. With content analysis, the elements in each photo frame were classified, the number of photographs was determined, and the units emerged according to their similarities. The photographs were described with the methods taken from semiology, and finally, the discourses in the sample photographs selected for each group were examined. While selecting the photographs to be analyzed in the private archive, a distinction was made between photographs that were not grouped according to number or similarity but contained a different language of expression. The published photos are militaristic and support the war. Accordingly, wounded soldiers, soldiers in uniform and having fun, dead soldiers, enemies and prisoners are common themes. The photographs in the private archive also maintain these themes, but some selected private archive photographs create cracks in the common narrative. In particular, the civilian Mehmetçik theme, framing soldiers who took off their uniform, is important here to see the area where the camera was turned. Again, the analysis of a fictionalized photograph and the deaths of civilians in close shots, which we cannot see in the published photographs, provide clues about this area. By questioning the concept of hegemonic masculinity, and by photographing daily life practices, the narrative of masculinity is destroyed by photographs, and anti-militarist reading practice can be developed. While feminist, critical theory and daily life literature constitute the conceptual framework of the thesis, Semiha Es's presence on the battlefield as a woman photographer, as well as memory and the possibility of reading history through photography, are also emphasized. The possibility of finding an alternative view through selected photographs in her archive and the non-hegemonic narrative of masculinity were among the research questions of the thesis. For the discourse analysis, the technical features, through the eye of the beholder, the choice of "moment" in the photograph and objectivity were used as background concepts.Öğe Revisiting Goffman's "interaction ritual": the role of social media use in face-to-face communication in public spaces(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2022) Topçu Gülşen, Zekiye Tüge; Nalçaoğlu, HalilABSTRACT: The pervasive use of smartphones and access to social media platforms in public spaces has transformed the everyday communication practices of individuals. The present study derives from this new communication environment and aims at exploring and understanding simply what is happening in social gatherings when individuals have access to social media through their smartphones which they never keep away from themselves. To achieve this aim, the research utilised the approach of ethnographic research in the area of sociology of everyday life and specifically Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical and ritualistic conceptualisation of face encounters, the interaction ritual. The researcher conducted two-step research to collect data. In the first step, she conducted 34 field observations with 106 participants (51 females, 55 males) where she kept detailed notes of thick descriptions to document the patterns of smartphone use behaviours in public space on university campus. The field observations provided the researcher to see the maps of behaviours in public space that show the interaction patterns in the presence of smartphones. The second step of the study involved semistructured in-depth interviews with 25 participants (12 females and 13 males) who provided the researcher with detailed data regarding their actual communication experiences and perceptions of the new patterns of behaviour in public space where they use social media during ongoing conversation engagements. The overall results of the study demonstrate that the new interaction ritual involves different patterns of behaviour, forms of involvements, rules of conduct and norms in public space from that of Goffman’s. The use of social media in the new interaction ritual appears to be irresistible and also mainstream in face encounters where individuals take it for granted and shape their communication practices accordingly. The study concludes that since going back to basics in everyday communication in public space is impossible, it is important that researchers and professionals understand how individuals perform in the front performance and in the back stage/region and maintain the social order so that effective communication and new communication strategies in different spheres of everyday life would be improved.Öğe The importance of family communication: applying socio-ecological model to analyze children’s emotional well-being during pandemic(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2022) Eryavuz, Tuğçe; Saka, ErkanABSTRACT: The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has disrupted the routines and relationships of children and families all around the world. Families not only experienced problems such as illness, loss of a family members or friend, unemployment, financial difficulties, but also tried to get used to the quarantine processes because of the governments' procedures to prevent spread of COVID-19. These physical restrictions and quarantine processes are the largest and longest we have witnessed globally. During this challenging and stressful pandemic period, parents have tried to take measures to protect the psychological health and well-being of both themselves and their children who are separated from their friends, school, and social circles. Bronfenbrenner's ecological model presents a comprehensive framework in explaining the development of children, including their interactions with families, school, peers, and environments. During the pandemic period, the duties of all other actors have either diminished or disappeared, and therefore the child's family communication has become more important than ever before in their development. Recent research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic is having a harmful impact on children and youth (eg, Gimenez Dasi et al.,2020, Jiao et al., 2020; Morelli et al., 2020; Sprang 2013;). On the other hand, with pandemic families devote longer time with their children which may result in strengthening family bonds. Finally, this one-of-a-kind opportunity may provide families with an opportunity to safeguard their children from the detrimental consequences of a pandemic by assisting them in developing resilience. A great deal of studies shows that parents may help their children's emotional well-being. However, research is limited during the pandemic time, when the entire family is confined at home and parents are also dealing with their own stress. Therefore, this research investigates the relationship between family communication styles and preschool children’s emotional well-being during psychical distancing period. The research also tries to determine which family communication style or styles could strengthen the communication between parents and children and protect both sides from the negative effects of the pandemic.Öğe An analysis of virtual social support community of mothers in the context of identity, agency and collectivity(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2022) Ulutaş Akman, Ayça; Tunç, AslıABSTRACT : The emergence of virtual communities, along with computer-mediated communication, can hardly be considered a contemporary notion. However, virtual communities created for and by women with diverse contexts in new media platforms became a new site within which women from diverse positions seek social support and advice from similar others to overcome various social issues and cope with life experiences away from the impositions of the public. This dissertation aims to present a multifaceted understanding of one poorly documented context of virtual social support experience, “mediated motherhood”, through a specific case, in Turkey. The current literature on mothers’ use of virtual communities is highly dominated by behavioral approaches explaining the motivational factors in accessing those spaces. However, there is a consistent lack of consideration of political, social, ideological meanings and the cultural context of motherhood. The impact of women’s online experience on the real-life context is mostly absent from the discussion. Based on this, how women’s engagement of online interaction, various aspects of use and practices of those spaces transform the experience of motherhood becomes the primary concern of this dissertation. This study, moves beyond the behavioral approach, presents an analysis from the perspective of feminist theory of motherhood and calls into question the transforming potential of those spaces in providing support for social change. Accordingly, multi-dimensional perspective to the analysis enables to examine the social worlds of mothers respectively in their connection with each other, and it addresses the need to think beyond the emergent spaces to larger social reality. This study combining digital ethnography with sequential in-depth interviews within a constructivist grounded theory methodology looks for ways to generate a new theoretical framework to provide a comprehensive understanding of the experience of motherhood at the crossroads of virtual and real. The interactional experience of motherhood is covered in an evolving process of empowerment, and the consequences that constitute empowerment and the redefined concept of vulnerability as a condition that makes the process possible, as a whole, represents the substantive grounded theory developed throughout the dissertation. Through a strategic case selection, the study captures nuances of the virtual community of support experience within a specific cultural context of motherhood, in which the new conceptual resources could apply to future studies in the intercultural and comparative field within and beyond the context of maternal subjects.Öğe An ecology of political communication: propaganda geographies and infrastructural uproar in Istanbul(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Zeren, Can; Ada, SerhanABSTRACT: This dissertation aims to inquire into and theorize the ecology of political communication. It focuses on political communication within and through the materiality of urban space. The quest of this study is to weave theoretical and methodological networks to grasp political communication within and through the messiness of spatial arrangements, infrastructures, and geographies. In this sense, it aims to go beyond conventional and disembodied approaches on political communication such as interpreting and analysing media content exchanged between fixed parties in linear processes and short durations of traditional categories such as elections, campaigns, media agenda and audience attention. The study problematizes political communication while grasping it as operating not only through language, symbols, and representations but material, affective and embodied encounters. The study recommends ecology of political communication as a research horizon. It presents a new path for the field of political communication to focus on the processes and encounters that are beyond-the-stage and more-than-the-staged, considering the entanglement of body/mind/environment. In this sense, the study performs discussions at the junction of political communication, media ecologies, theories on ecological cognition, production of space, discourse theory, and nonrepresentational theories. Thus, in the context of political communication, it puts forth an ecology to embrace all embodied cognitive and affective processes and manipulation of material/discursive environments. In this sense, ecology of political communication emphasizes a non-linear, multi-spatiotemporal and morethan-representational perspective while focusing on machinic and naturecultural encounters and alliances. In this line, the study renders the propaganda geography and infrastructural uproar in Istanbul region. It provides a panorama of historical periods while referring to specific historical and contemporary instances such as rampant excavations, constructions, demolitions, displacements and mobilization of geographies and infrastructures as propaganda in their own right generating a warfare-like atmosphere. The study employs tanglegrams as material/discursive tracing and mapping practices serving to foreground the agencies, operations, encounters, and ecologies that are forgotten behind the traditional political communication categories. Besides, the study performs collage-making to generate simultaneous encounters with different agencies, juxtaposing their images that are otherwise framed and published separately within limited periods of time. Both methods as material/discursive tracing and visualization, afford to reveal and depict molecular processes obfuscated within and through focalized objects, routinized stagings and media representations. In general terms, the dissertation aims to weave a theoretical/methodological network to deal with how political communication and propaganda machine operate within and through urban space and its arrangements, what does political communication do, and how does it govern and intervene into everyday embodied encounters among humans and nonhumans, depending or investing on what material/discursive affordances.Öğe Digital diplomacy in Turkey: past practices, present conduct, future potentials(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Ezgin, Sevgül Akbüz; Saka, ErkanABSTRACT: The primary goal of this study was to look into new diplomatic activities carried out on the digital platforms in Turkey. As a result of digitalisation, social media has presented appealing opportunities for diplomacy worldwide, so this dissertation focused on digital diplomacy conduct specifically after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt by addressing digital diplomacy activities of Turkish statecraft based on the analysis of Twitter posts. In a nutshell, digital diplomacy as a new type of diplomacy was examined from several angles with regard to views on conceptual definitions, implementation of different diplomacy types such as public and digital diplomacy. Then, at the national level, this study aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of digital diplomacy in Turkey from a historical perspective and its development into diplomacy through Twitter. Afterwards, to understand how diplomacy is performed in Turkey on Twitter, the analysis phase’s methods and techniques were used in the analysis phase since the analysis part was analysed thoroughly. Based on the Framework Analysis methodology implemented in this study, the Twitter posts from five accounts, the holders of which act as the leading actors exercising digital diplomacy in Turkey, were analysed for the periods corresponding to July 15 to August 10 in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Finally, the last part of the research was dedicated to interpreting and discussing the findings acquired from the analysis of the data. This part of the research aimed to investigate how the Turkish state has exercised digital diplomacy since the coup attempt concerning newly emerging state discourses. More specifically, in this part of the dissertation, prominent themes obtained from Framework Analysis were evaluated and revealed that Turkish state narratives have overlapping features with Populism. The study’s primary findings revealed that it’s worth discussing the major themes with regard to several key notions of Populism by emphasising the parallelism between these themes and Populism concepts. It is critical to investigate Populism’s reflections on digital diplomacy in Turkey in the aftermath of the coup attempt in 2016. The findings can be summarised as follows concerning the results obtained from the Twitter accounts of five government agencies that practise Turkish digital diplomacy. When the dominant themes identified through the analysis of Twitter posts were interpreted in light of core elements of Populism, these features were thought to be firmly linked to the Turkish state discourses that mainly arose from or were reinforced by the July 15, 2016 coup attempt. In that sense, this dissertation attempted to explain the connection between the key themes and Populism concerning several concepts such as democracy, national will, unity and solidarity, power and heroism. In general terms, this dissertation is thought to be the first to explore digital diplomacy in Turkey from various angles, with a central focus on dominant themes that emerged in the process after the July 15 coup attempt, with a specific focus on the Turkish state discourses in digital diplomacy. Another significant contribution of the study is to provide a thorough examination of digital diplomacy conduct in Turkey by analysing the messages through Twitter delivered by various government bodies, which exercise digital diplomacy, within a wide period of time, from July 15- August 10, 2016, to July 15- August 10, 2020.Öğe Re-visiting gender, new media technologies and leisure: is there any time left for women in the digital age?(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Küçük, Begüm Irmak; Tunç, AslıABSTRACT: Aiming to scrutinize the relationship between leisure and gender, this study covers a group of women’s stories who share a common leisure sphere in the Turkish context. Drawing from a personal yet common narrative, women’s leisure time and related challenges are portrayed through an additional layer regarding the entrance of new media technologies into daily lives. Living in a digitalized environment, the boundaries between work, home, daily responsibilities, and leisure becomes blurrier than ever. Domestic responsibilities are still mainly assigned as women’s duties; it is becoming a challenging task to juggle between fragmented tasks and to create time for leisurely activities. In terms of covering the entangled nature of leisure and gender domains, a requirement to revisit the boundaries of each concept is portrayed through focusing on real-life excerpts. Envisioning an effort to provide a timely and contextual portrayal, leisure’s multi-layered nature is recognized alongside with its historical journey. In this context, this research aims to understand women’s unique takes on leisure time and their satisfaction with their current time allocation of their daily routines within a feminist perspective. Acknowledging the possibilities of utilizing leisure time for self-satisfaction, liberation, resistance and empowerment, a feminist postmodern interactionist perspective on leisure is utilized to open up a new sphere of feminist discussion around exploring the vitality of women’s leisure opportunities and constraints. Conducting focus groups, one-to-one interviews, and participant observation, participants’ stories are examined through thematic analysis, enabling them to locate the experiences at the core of the study. Construction of the cases focusing on urbanite working women in Turkey and revisiting the gender-leisure spectrum enable to underline the multi-dimensionality of leisure and provide a toolset for further research in the area. Multi-layered definitions of leisure, the role of experience and context and fragmented nature of women’s time-use management are all contributive factors that define this peculiar journey.Öğe Crossover framework: features, possibilities and ramifications of fictional crossover narratives(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Aka, Kadri Görkem; Erhart, ItırABSTRACT: Fictional crossovers, narratives in which entities (such as characters) of a fictional text transfictionally appear in another distinct such work, have become frequently executed acts in contemporary storytelling. Regardless of their prominence in the popular culture, crossovers remained understudied and untheorized in the academical literature; a situation which causes vagueness regarding the definition and the exact nature of the notion while the possibilities and consequences of such narratives have also remained mostly unexplored as a result. The purpose of this work is to remedy these problems by producing a framework to define and theorize narrative crossovers. To clarify the definition of the notion, the produced framework proposes a normative set of qualification criteria that a work must meet in order to be defined as a crossover, while providing alternative terminology (with explanatory differentiation) for works that are categorically similar yet different in narrative nature; effectively narrow defining crossovers. In addition, to address the question of narrative possibility; the Crossover Framework produces a dedicated model for the assessment of crossover compatibility between respective works of fiction through making an adaptation of the Possible Worlds Theory. And finally, the produced framework presents the original elaborate theorization of the narrative and ontological ramifications of a crossover for the texts and their residing fictional realities that are involved in it, listing five consequations that a narrative of this kind can result in. The Crossover Framework is the first elaborate dedicated study and the maiden theorization effort of this delicate way of transfictional storytelling and seeks to ensure that crossovers take their rightful place in the literature of narrative studies.Öğe From a political protest to an art exhibiton: building interconnectedness through dialogue-based art(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Eğrikavuk, Işıl; Erhart, ItırABSTRACT: In this thesis, I extract certain qualities of the Gezi Park protests that took place in 2013, in Istanbul and invite the reader re-think them in the light of topics discussed under the community art practices (new genre public art). I identify these qualities as critical dialogue, agonistic community and performative expression. Taking these three key issues as my criteria, I then search for ways to redevelop them through a collaborative and participatory artistic research, in which I collaborate with six collectives (five artist collectives and one ecology collective) from Turkey. Our collaborative and participatory artistic research constitutes our dialogical process and its outcomes, which we presented as an exhibition in Istanbul in 2017, and the follow up phase of the whole process. Through my in-depth dialogues with each collective, I found out this: In the current socio-political atmosphere in Turkey, where freedom of speech and the right to public protest is very limited, collective work model within the arts serves primarily for meeting emotional needs, such as expressing oneself freely, feeling heard, feeling accepted, connected and safe, rather than a shared artistic vision, common ideological agenda or career-related goals. Having met these needs first, artists express themselves through art. Acknowledging this as my key finding, together with the collectives, I searched for ways of making art that embodies these qualities of expression and connection, and through it reaching other people, who are not practitioners of the arts. I argue that, in an atmosphere where there is extremely limited freedom of speech, art, which is made through and for dialogue, holds the potential to connect people with one another, and thus transform the society. A significant aim of this research is to make academia more open to methodological diversity and their results. An overarching aim is to make academia speak openly about emotions and their transformative power as well as to create safe spaces to practice them. ÖZET: Bu çalışmada, 2013 yılında İstanbul’da gerçekleşen Gezi Parkı eylemlerinin bazı özelliklerini seçerek alıyor ve okuru bu özellikleri toplum temelli sanat (yeni tip kamusal sanat) kapsamında tartışılan konular ışığında yeniden düşünmeye davet ediyorum. Bu özellikleri eleştirel diyalog, agonistik (çatışmalı) topluluk ve performatif ifade olarak tanımlıyorum. Bu araştırmada, Türkiye’den altı kolektif ile (beş sanatçı kolektifi ve bir ekoloji kolektifi), işbirlikçi ve katılımcı bir sanatsal araştırma yoluyla, bu özellikleri yeniden geliştirmenin yollarını aradım. İşbirlikçi ve katılımcı sanatsal araştırmamız, 2017 yılında İstanbul'da bir sergi şeklinde sunduğumuz diyalog sürecimizi ve tüm sürecin takip aşamasını oluşturmaktadır. Kolektiflerle derinlemesine diyaloglarım sayesinde şu çıkarımı elde ettim: İfade özgürlüğünün ve kamusal protesto hakkının çok sınırlı olduğu Türkiye'deki mevcut sosyo-politik atmosferde, sanat alanındaki kolektif çalışma modeli ortak bir sanatsal vizyon, ideolojik gündem veya kariyer hedeflerinden ziyade, öncelikle kendini ifade etme, duyulma, kabul edilme ve güvenli hissetme gibi duygusal ihtiyaçlara hizmet ediyor. Bu temel ihtiyaçları karşıladıktan sonra, birlikte sanat üretiyorlar. Bu bulguyu temel alarak, bu araştırmada, kolektiflerle birlikte özgür ifade ve duygusal bağlantı özelliklerini bünyesinde barındıran bir sanat yapmanın ve sanat pratiği olmayan diğer insanlara ulaşmanın yollarını aradık. Sonuç olarak şunu savunuyorum: Son derece sınırlı ifade özgürlüğünün olduğu bir atmosferde, diyalog yoluyla ve diyalog için yapılan sanat, insanları birbirine bağlama, böylece yeni ilişkiler kurma ve toplumu dönüştürme potansiyeli taşıyor. Bu araştırmanın önemli bir amacı, akademiyi metodolojik çeşitliliğe ve çalışmaların sonuçlarına daha açık hale getirmektir. Araştırmanın kapsayıcı bir diğer amacı ise, akademinin duygular ve onların dönüştürücü güçleri hakkında açıkça konuşabilmesini sağlamak ve bunları uygulamak için güvenli alanlar yaratmaktır.Öğe Self-tracking culture in Turkey(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Kutluk, Mert; Saka, ErkanABSTRACT: People have been tracking their own habits, body measurements, expenses, and various parameters for a long time. But recent technologies digitalize the tools that has been used for self-tracking. The digitalization reconfigured what people track and how they used to track. Resulting from that reconfiguration, a new culture called self-tracking emerged. Self-tracking culture defines the society, which is keener to collect body related data, positions self-tracking as social activity rather than personal and takes fitness over health. More institutions, governmental organizations and industries involved in self-tracking culture by time. Hence, concept of body, health, mind, and citizenship reconfigured. Data become more prioritized and concerns over privacy and surveillance got more serious than ever. New regulations and political strategies configured. New kind of communication involved in clinics. More actors invited into the health arena. A new kind of digital embodiment is rising, new approaches on health revolutionize traditional definitions. In this regard, Study on Self-Tracking Culture in Turkey investigates mechanisms, developers of the technologies, local biosocial groups, regulations, and policies to analyze self-tracking culture without overlooking the pre-digital establishments to explore the contemporary state from the best possible view.Öğe Effective native advertising factors and their effect on brand attributes(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Devrim, Cüneyt T.; Sanje, GresiABSTRACT: Native advertising has become a phenomenon in the advertising industry in the last decade. There are many solid grounds behind this development by considering the user’s point of view. Digital advertising space users are trying to keep up and adapt to new ways of commercial messaging. New generation consumers' way of consuming media made the industry mimic the content and design of the advertising material to their original environment. This dissertation aims to investigate the main factors that may make native advertising more effective in terms of the offer type, language use, temporal focus, brand presence, and product involvement levels. The literature on this field is limited to some specific areas which are mostly concentrated on ad disclosure, persuasion, and deception effects of native advertising. Three major methodologic approaches are tested within the scope of the research to get an extensive spectrum of findings. The first study was conducted with field data from two years (2018-2019) native advertising campaign data (N = 7725) from one of the biggest native advertising technology platforms, EngageYa. For the second step of the research, a laboratory experiment was designed to investigate the effects of brand presence, brand recall, and attribute effects, and finally, a field experiment was applied to analyze the brand presence on ad visual. Findings that are refined after the research, showed some significant implications that have not been seemed to be explored within the given literature. Contributed to new inferences in the field also raise some new questions and opens further areas to scrutinize.Öğe A critical discourse analysis: gendered discourses within the corporate sustainability context(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2021) Şenkardeş, İnci Çağla Gül; Erhart, ItırABSTRACT: Sustainability refers to protecting the environment, and preserving the economic growth and development for the future. Current global political context of women empowerment is focusing on a sustainable economy and society. Although women empowerment is positioned as one of the solutions for sustainability, there is a debate on the results of the corporate-led empowerment agenda, where remains a discursive terrain of such initiatives. The purpose of this research is to analyze the discourses produced by corporate companies in Turkey within the context of women empowerment for sustainable development and present an empirical inquiry to bring up whether gendered discourses are produced. This research offers insights into the bias, cultural assumptions, power relations and ignorance focusing on the gendered discourses. Taking the social, economic, political and historical context into consideration this research presents a discussion with a feminist Foucauldian attention to subjectivation and freedom. Findings of this research which emerge from the literature review, field research, and theoretical and empirical work all together focuses on the gendered discourses produced. This research draws from all the approved CSR reports of Turkish companies and semistructured interviews conducted with professionals renowned for their practice in sustainability reporting and management. The research findings provokes new directions for future research problematizing ‘doing gender' through CSR practices and language with the new questions it calls over the power politics of gender equality. ÖZET: Sürdürülebilirlik konsepti, gelecek kuşakların ihtiyaçlarını göz önünde bulundurarak, ekonomik, ekolojik ve toplumsal alanlardaki faaliyetlerin yürütülmesine odaklanır. Kadınların güçlendirilmesine ilişkin mevcut küresel siyasi bağlam, sürdürülebilir bir ekonomi ve topluma odaklanmaktadır. Her ne kadar kadının güçlenmesi odaklı inisiyatifler sürdürülebilirliğin çözümlerinden biri olarak konumlandırılsada, kurumlar tarafından yönetilen bu gündeminin sonuçları ve yarattığı söylemsel alan üzerine tartışmalar devam etmektedir. Bu araştırma, Türkiye'de kurumsal firmaların sürdürülebilir kalkınma odağında kadının güçlenmesi amacı ile ürettiği söylemleri analiz ederek, bu bağlamda cinsiyetçi söylemlerin üretilip üretilmediğini ortaya çıkarmak için ampirik bir veri sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Sosyal, ekonomik, politik ve tarihsel bağlamı göz önünde bulunduran bu araştırma, feminist Foucaultçu bir yaklaşımla, öznelliğe ve özgürlüğe yönelik bir tartışma sunmaktadır. Cinsiyetçi söylemlere odaklanarak iş dünyasındaki güç ilişkilerine dair içgörüler sunan bu araştırmanın bulguları, literatür taraması, saha araştırması, ve teorik ve ampirik çalışmaların bir bütünü olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Saha araştırması, Türkiye’deki kurumsal sürdürülebilirlik raporlarının detaylı okumasını ve kurumsal sürdürülebilirlik çalışmaları ve raporlaması uygulayıcıları ile yapılan, yarı yapılandırılmış derinlemesine görüşmeleri içermektedir. Araştırma bulguları kurumsal sürdürülebilirlik çalışmaları ve iletişim dilinin toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği üzerindeki etkilerini sorunsallaştırarak yeni sorular ortaya koymakta ve gelecek araştırmalar için yönler sunmaktadır.Öğe Transmedia journalism toolkit (tjt) a design thinking guide to creating transmedia news stories(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2018) Gürsoy, Dilek; Çiçekoğlu, FerideIn the age of digital progress, converging media organizations, technologies, workspaces and storytelling practices are changing the way of production and consumption of news stories. Fragmented dissemination of news consumers among multiple media channels and active participation of knowledge communities through social media suggest a new aesthetic, which brings forward the frequent use of transmedia storytelling in journalism practice. This dissertation revolves around the significance for teaching the notion of transmedia journalism and its practice in the context of journalism education. The direct adaptation of transmedia storytelling methods to journalism practice presents conflicts in areas of planning time, availability of information, limited story expansion, and privacy of the individual. This research proposes a design thinking approach in understanding the theoretical and practical processes of transmedia systems in journalism practice. Transmedia Journalism Toolkit (TJT) is evaluated in a oneday workshop. The highlights of the evaluation demonstrate participants’ simultaneous attention to transmedia storytelling and journalism principles, while working in collaboration and producing collective knowledge. The workshop concludes with further study suggestions regarding issues of timing, complex story structure, and theme selection. Ultimately, this research offers a new methodological approach in understanding the theoretical and practical processes of transmedia systems in journalism practice.Öğe Construction and presentation of communication consultancy expertise in Turkey(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2017) Göncü, Barika; Aslanbay, YoncaThis study is concerned with the professional expertise of public relations consultants - or the communication consultants as it is often referred to- in the public relations and/or communication consultancy agencies in Turkey. The objective of the study is to provide a detailed description of how these consultants construct and present their expertise. The research examines the activities of these consultants within the backdrop of the dramaturgical metaphor developed by Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), through a focus on one of the core features of the communication consultancy work, namely the creation and maintenance of a series of impressions to persuade clients of the quality and value of this service. While incorporating Goffman’s dramaturgy in the detailed examination of external communication consultancy services, the study is also inspired by scholarly work on the similar nature of management consulting services, as well as international and Turkish scholarly literature on the various aspects of services provided by public relations and/or communication consultancy agencies. Furthermore, with the objective of providing a full picture, the study also refers to up-to-date international and Turkish public relations industry literature. By focusing on the public relations/communication consultancy agency as the research site; the study offers a rich description of the the construction and presentation of communication consultancy expertise in the Turkish context, through the accounts of the most prominent and credible consultants of the industry. The study adopts qualitative methodology in exploring the research question of the study, employing the method of in-depth interviewing. 30 participants of the study are the leading Turkish communication consultants, most of whom are also the founders and the owners of the credible consultancy agencies in Turkey. Responding to the need for more research on the role and contribution of the external communication consulting, the study has revealed that although the intellectual capabilities of the Turkish communication consultants are highly developed, the industry has to enhance its professional capacity by developing diverse and specialized services, by improving its human resources management, and by claiming authority through informed translation of the external world into the realm of communications.Öğe Documentary as autoethnography: a case study based on the changing surnames of women(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2016) Çayır, Hande; Çiçekoğlu, FerideIn the autoethnographic research method, researchers analyze their own subjectivity and life experiences, and treat the self as ‘other’ while calling attention to issues of power. At this juncture, the researcher and the researched, the dominant and the subordinate, individual experience and socio-cultural structures can be examined. As an emerging filmmaker I have made the seventeen-minute documentary Yok Anasının Soyadı / Mrs. His Name (2012) which is defined as a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context. My filmmaking experience spread the seeds, gave birth to this thesis, created a researcher—me, in this case—and as such, theory in practice and practice in theory go hand in hand. The interdisciplinary nature of this enquiry highlights the link between surnames and identity, which is a crucial human rights debate, and also focuses on the feminist quote ‘the personal is political’.Öğe A study of personal streaming playlists through digital curation(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2019) Sesigür, Onur; Tunç, AslıMusic streaming platforms are a contemporary and common way consuming music. Personalization of music consumption by the listener, which manifested itself in ways such as record collections, mixtapes and digital archives in previous eras of music consumption technologies, is today visible in the form of playlists. This dissertation constructs a theoretical framework for playlisting activities using existing concepts and offering new ones at the intersection of previous concepts of information management and collection studies literature. Research in both fields have been conducted on either personal information collections or physical record collections. By studying streaming platforms and personal playlist practices, these two fields are intersected in the context of digital curation, offering further studies to be made utilizing both in tandem. Following the establishment of the foundation for the study through digital curation, analysis of multiple in-depth active interviews (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995) conducted with four participants and five industry representatives are made regarding their playlisting activities on Spotify with the proposed five key concepts to position playlists within digital curation: information needs, adding value, memory, identity and sharing. This dissertation argues that studying personal streaming playlists with the given theoretical framework and through subjective narrative input constructed with the participants, positioning playlisting as a digital curation yields significant results that is usable by fields such as information management, collection studies, musicology and media.Öğe Forum theatre as a participatory communication space for dialogue, collaboraton and solidarity(İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2018) Kunt, Zeynep Feriha Eren; Haydari, NazanThis research explores Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre as a participatory communication space. As an interactive form of performance, forum theatre is practiced with the communities experiencing various forms of oppression. As a methodology, forum theatre provides communities with the participatory tools for dialogue, collaboration and a space to develop potential strategies to understand and overcome their oppressions. This study explores the potential of forum theatre as a model for participatory action research by focusing on its reciprocal roles: to reveal social knowledge and start a process for transformation both in individual and collective levels. The discussion is drawn from the fieldwork conducted with a group of doctors who voluntarily came together forming a forum theatre group to develop strategies for maintaining the practices of the good medicine. The three-month long forum theater sessions with the doctors have led to the play called The Dr Good Physician, performed by the doctors for the audience who were colleagues/ “spectactors”. The audience members became spect-actors by acting out the solution strategies presented on stage. The research investigates all stages of forum theatre in terms of its participatory processes through this fieldwork. It is argued that forum theatre presents as a model of participatory communication and action research by “minimising the hierarchy” imposed on participants and maximising the possibility for “becoming active citizens” in life.
