The perceptions of Çapul TV and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests

Ulubelen, Yasemin 2022. The perceptions of Çapul TV and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The 2010s were marked by a wave of contemporary uprisings around the world. Among these protests are the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013, which were one of the biggest civil uprisings in the country's contemporary history. Thousands of people took to the streets in İstanbul to protest the demolition of Gezi Park and its conversion into a former Ottoman Empire military structure. During the first days of the protests, allegations were made by national and international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International about the police using excessive force against the environmentally concerned sit-in. Additionally, Turkey’s mainstream media were accused by the protesters of censorship and failing to cover the events. During the most heated days, while international media outlets like CNN International were streaming the protests live from inside the demonstration sites, its Turkish partner, CNN Türk, chose to air a documentary on penguins, incurring public anger. People gathered in front of big media companies and protested the censorship. In the meantime, social and alternative media came forward during the protests to share protest information. Related scholarly debate has focused on the importance of alternative media and journalism in a democratic society and to what extent these practices contribute to social change. Much analysis in alternative media research focuses on the organizational structures and content dimensions of these media to map out their structural and practical differences from the mainstream media, but it rarely considers how people outside these outlets perceive such practices and the reporting of alternative media. The present study makes an original contribution to these academic debates by carrying out a qualitative investigation that explores the organizational structures and the practices of Çapul TV that give rise to its content in the context of the Gezi Park protests. It examines the extent to which the study’s participants perceive Çapul TV as a legitimate alternative news medium. An empirical study was conducted in Turkey using 26 semi-structured interviews with various participant groups, including Çapul TV producers, parliamentarians, activists, and professional journalists who have taken part in the Gezi Park protests. The theoretical framing is developed around the Habermasian model of the public sphere and the democratic role of the media. The findings of the study provide useful insights as to how the activist identity of the producers of Çapul TV was the driving impetus for them to create Çapul TV, which also shaped the institutional dynamics, values, and practices. This thesis also argues that Çapul TV is an alternative medium more on the content level than on the structural level, and participatory production is not the foremost criterion for being an alternative medium. Additionally, this thesis demonstrates that participants in this study are dissatisfied with mainstream media; however, they use alternative media as a complementary part of their media repertoire, not as a replacement. Specifically, it is shown that the subjective nature of alternative journalism and strong ethical ideals in news reporting cause tension among the participants, providing evidence that normative journalistic ideals in news reporting are still vital in this context. Overall, the study’s contribution to knowledge lies in showing that Çapul TV constructed a counterpublic sphere during the protests and, therefore, contributed to the pluralism of the public sphere in Turkey by counterbalancing the dominant media narratives about the Gezi Park protests.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 February 2024
Last Modified:	01 May 2024 08:57
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/165891

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