Volume 42, Issue 1

This study discusses how activist citizen reporters in Turkey, who initiated a brand-new alternative new media practice, transformed news gathering and writing activities in the process of the Gezi Park Resistance, which erupted in Istanbul in June 2013. A handful of citizens, outraged by the police violence as well as interested in human rights from a journalistic perspective chose to create their own make-shift media outlets or to become medium themselves. They gathered and simultaneously disseminated news and broadcast live on many occasions mostly through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and livestream, in the absence of traditional mainstream and/or alternative media. They also contributed to the solidarity of the resistance. In this context, the theoretical framework of this study is based on concepts such as alternative media, citizen media and citizen journalism. Likewise, concepts like democracy, citizen and journalism are also re-evaluated from a radical perspective. After theorizing ‘Çapulcu Media’, a local variant of the Rodriguez’s ‘citizen media’, constructed in the Gezi Resistance by a few activist citizen reporters, this ethnographic study concentrates on their activities in the field as well as the process of their identity formation based on data collected from in-depth interviews and continuous attention given to their social media accounts. Finally, this study aims to develop a critical understanding of a radical variant of citizen journalism in the context of contemporary Occupy movements.

Social networking sites like Facebook are popular and ever-expanding, especially among adolescents in Turkey. The study of 406 adolescents aged 14 to 18 ( M age = 15.61, SD = 1.16) provides novel insights into how adolescents from Turkey within a specific cultural framework, display certain kinds of self-presentation strategies. Using the Revised Self-Presentation Scale (RSPS; Lee et al., 1999) when coding adolescents’ profiles for strategies and information, we found that exemplification is the most utilized strategy followed by the ingratiation strategy. Self-report results differed from coded behavioral strategy use for intimidation and self-promotion, where there were higher levels of intimidation strategy than self-reported; for the self-promotion strategy, self-reported levels were higher than coded behavioral use. Particular strategy usage also predicted the sharing of types of information and the number of network friends.

This paper suggests a mediated model of cultural deterritorialization. It conceptualizes the relation between intercultural capital, perceived cultural proximity and exposure to transcultural media representations. Intercultural capital refers to knowledge about, and familiarity with other cultures. Perceived cultural proximity describes the individually varying perception of other (territorialized) cultures as close to one’s own culture. This perception of closeness results from identification with this other culture. The concept is to be distinguished from Straubhaar’s notion of cultural proximity designating a culturally bound individual’s tendency to prefer media content that is closer to his or her own cultural identity (Straubhaar, 1991, 2003, 2007, 2008). To test the proposed model we conducted an empirical study with 962 German respondents. We found empirical support for a relation between intercultural capital and perceived cultural proximity that was mediated by exposure to transnational media representations.

This article proposes that syntactic features of newscasts can act as learned motivational stimuli determining both viewers’ attention and memory for information. An experiment was conducted in which we manipulated the presence of stings (a type of widely used audiovisual connector) and the arousal levels of stories, while participants’ attention and recall of information were measured. The results suggest that stings elicit motivational activation among viewers; however, differences in motivational activation were observed depending on whether it was due to arousing content or to stings. These results highlight the relevance of accounting for learned motivational processes in media information processing research.

The role of the official film production policy in stimulating a Flemish identity forms the central research question of this study. This research project examines the period that starts in 1964, when a selective and culturally inspired support mechanism for feature films was introduced in Flanders. Subsequently, the support system ran until 2002, when it was structurally renewed. This study makes use of original archival research, policy documents analysis, expert interviews, qualitative press documents analysis, and a quantitative content and qualitative textual analysis of films. The research shows that throughout the course of the second half of the 20 th century, there was an evolution in Flemish film policy towards more pluralistic and less essentialist and explicit national discourses, in which national elements, nevertheless, retained an important place.