Determinants of Media Criticism in a Democracy in Transition: Applying Field Theory to Turkey

Authors

  • Basak Yavçan TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Dept. of Political Science
  • Hakan Ovunc Ongur TOBB University of Economics & Technology, Dept. of Political Science

Keywords:

media studies, bias, criticism, Bourdieusian field theory, Turkey, content analysis

Abstract

Following recent studies using Bourdieusian field theory to examine journalistic freedom and media criticism, we investigated the Turkish press using a comparative perspective focusing on the media’s interaction with the nexus of power/government and market mechanisms. Using a snapshot of four Turkish newspapers in 2013, we analyzed their critical content vis-à-vis reporting about the government. To explain differences of criticism across these media outlets, we extended our qualitative and quantitative analyses to three sociopolitically key years with regard to the consolidation of governmental power. Our results indicate that what explains media criticism goes beyond structural factors and should also involve both between- and within-field variations, emphasizing media as a semiautonomous field.

Author Biographies

Basak Yavçan, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Dept. of Political Science

Başak Yavçan is Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Turkey. She received her PhD from University of Pittsburgh with a focus on comparative politics and international relations. She specializes in comparative political behavior, mostly in relation to inter-group relations in the forms of attitudes toward immigration and the European Union in Europe and immigrant acculturation attitudes in Europe. Some of her current research focuses on criticism of Turkish politics in the press and the effect of newspaper frames on attitudinal change, and the integration attitudes of Syrian displaced people in Turkey. Her latest works appeared in Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis and Turkish Studies.

Hakan Ovunc Ongur, TOBB University of Economics & Technology, Dept. of Political Science

Hakan Ovunc Ongur is Assistant Professor of Political Science at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Turkey. He is the author of Consumer Society, Neurotic Culture and Fight Club [Istanbul: Ayrıntı Publishing] and Minorities of Europeanization: The New Others of European Social Identity [Lanham: Lexington Press]. He also has several research articles and book chapters across his research interests.

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Published

2016-05-15

Issue

Vol. 10 (2016)

Section

Articles

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