This article explores the relationship between populism, media and popular culture in Turkey by focusing on a phenomenal historical television series, Diriliş: Ertuğrul, and the discursive spaces opened by the show. The author relies on a symptomatic analysis of populism which conceptualizes the term as an anti-status quo discourse that simplifies the political space by symbolically dividing the society between ‘the people’ and its other, more specifically ‘the elites’. Diriliş is promoted by the Justice and Development Party ( Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) elite and pro-government media as ‘the show of the people’, and as a cultural artifact belonging to the people. The show has been embraced as an alternative to morally degenerate cultural products of alienated Westernist/Kemalist cultural elites. The Justice and Development Party elites used every opportunity to incorporate the series into its populist political program. The article focuses on a specific crisis moment, ‘The Golden Butterfly Awards 2016’, and the ensuing debates to show how media discourse can resonate with the populist political discourse of a political party.

This article presents a discursive analysis of religious conservative daily newspapers’ response to Israeli commandos’ attack on a flotilla of aid ships that were attempting to break an embargo on traffic to Gaza on 31 May 2010. The event not only caused a serious rupture in Israeli-Turkish relations but also resulted in the rise of (already present) anti-Israeli sentiment in the conservative religious sectors of society. Conservative religious media, more specifically the Islamic newspapers, led the anti-Israeli campaign within this process. The authors emphasize that news does not simply represent reality, but, as an active process, works on it. The institutional dependence on regular and reliable institutional sources and the ideological character of language are two major dynamics of this process. The journalistic routine imposes the statements of the institutional sources, or the voice of the powerful, as the only reliable and viable definition of events. The language used in the news enhances this partiality through use of stereotypical, bitter and discriminatory expressions. This article discusses the way news texts influence reality by focusing on the primary and secondary definers in the news, newspapers’ oscillation between humanitarian and Islamic concerns, and between anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic positions.

This article analyzes the way in which the downing of a Russian aircraft by a Turkish F-16 jet on 24 November 2015 was framed by pro-government (Türkiye, Yeni Akit, Yeni Şafak) and anti-government (Cumhuriyet) newspapers. Framing means selecting some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text. News frames give us definitions and identify those responsible for an event; make moral judgements; and propose solutions to problems. The analysis of the news frames utilized by four newspapers underlines the fact that in a polarized media environment news frames are highly politicized and the distinction between news frames and official discourse is frequently blurred.

Communication is among the most used and least theorized concepts across various disciplines, including communication studies. There are many communication theories and models, most of which take communication for granted, only as a name and an unproblematic/self-evident concept. The concept's ambiguity relates to the definition of borders and the discipline's content. In 'Communication theory and the disciplines', Jefferson D. Pooley (2016a) presents an exhaustive list of disciplines that relate or are sensitive to communication theory, including sociology, psychology, political science, geography, economics, philosophy, history, literary studies, and cognate fields such as cultural studies, visual studies, game studies, popular music studies, gender studies, and LGBT studies. Located at the intersection of various disciplines, communication studies host a plethora of analytical frameworks, epistemological paradigms, and research interests. However, 'what it gained in intellectual richness . . . it lacked in disciplinary focus and shared identity' (Waisbord, 2019). Labeling communication studies as a post-discipline, Waisbord points to ontological plurality, theoretical heteroglossia, hyper-specialization of contemporary scholarship, and the overall decline of grand theories as the main reasons for the identity crisis. Communication is defined as connection, dialogue, expression, information, persuasion, and symbolic interaction (Waisbord, 2019). However, the ontological status of communication as such has not been adequately elaborated. What defines communication scholarship? What is the object and subject of communication? Most important of all, what is communication? These questions are and seem to remain valid in the foreseeable future.

This article problematizes the role played by a football fan club—Çarşı—in one of the largest social movements in Turkish political history, the Gezi Park protests of June 2013. The authors suggest that as “unusual suspects” in social movements, Çarşı’s role in the Gezi Park protests can be understood with the conceptual toolbox provided by theories of contentious politics. Since action repertoires, or “known sequences for acting together,” are key to contentious politics and social movements, Çarşı’s organized and effective performance during the Gezi Park protests shows how previous encounters with the police can be decisive in terms of social upheavals. This study suggests that Çarşı members, who were already accustomed to making ethical judgments on a variety of issues both political and non-political, should be taken as a prominent example of how supporters on terraces and fan clubs facilitate the framing processes described by the social movement literature.