Screening for Erdoğanism: Television, post-truth and political fear

Abstract

The majority of current political communication studies focuses on digital and social media, and overlooks the centrality of television for the production and endurance of strongman politics in the Global South. By focusing on the journalistic television productions aired during the June 2018 election period in Turkey, this article unpacks the televisual logic that is incarnated in different modalities of telling and narrating of televisual genres. I propose two main themes: the ‘political fear’ of physical and social security threats, and ‘post-truth communications’ as the main televisual idioms for a vision of the future that is either secure or chaotic, that is, with or without Erdoğan. By combining political economy, content and textual analysis, I scrutinise the production dynamics of the televisual economy and the control and content of factual segments.

Theorizing and mapping media ownership networks in authoritarian-populist contexts: a comparative analysis of Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Turkey

“…Similarly, Erdogan used all punitive and rewarding mechanisms available to punish the adversarial media owners (such as tax fines or by way of the judicial system) and rewarded the loyal media owners through mobilizing state resources for their financial rents. As a result, the most popular outlets, regardless of whether they are owned by the same owners, serve for Erdoganism by often producing, circulating, and multiplying the same affirmative messages (Çelik, 2020b).…”

Populism and Post-Truth in International Politics: Climate Change, Migration, and Covid-19

“…There are six articles in this volume evaluating postmodernism and alternative facts (Wight, 2018), democracy (Hyvönen, 2018), securitisation (Rychnovská & Kohú, 2018), international justice (Lohne, 2018), publicist and pluralism (Michelsen, 2018), and Brexit (Marshall & Drieschova, 2018). There are some studies highlighting television productions (Sirman & Akınerdem, 2019;Çelik, 2020), sustainable energy transformations (Fraune & Knodt, 2018), security studies (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2018), neoliberalism (Mavelli, 2019), consensus theory (Bufacchi, 2020), diversity in unity (Dege, 2019), critical theory (Schindler, 2020), ecology (Hoyng & Es, 2020), disinformation (Romanova, Sokolov & Kolotaev, 2020), and the European Union (Kolotaev, 2020). There are also studies extensively focussing on Turkey and Turkish politics.…”

Digital Political Participation and the Digital Divide: Insights from the Cambodia Case

“…One is that in authoritarian regimes, autocratic leaders have made use of digital media for non-democratic ends. For example, the co-optation of the digital space has allowed to target critics and dissenting voices, thus adding pressure to civil and political liberties (Altheide, 2013;Çelik, 2020;Nyabola, 2018). In Cambodia, the co-optation of digital media and crackdown on liberties happened after the elections of 2013 and peaked in 2017, just one year before the general elections of 2018; channels for political engagement were closed and, consequently, opportunities for political participation were reduced, thus contributing to a democratic regression (Cambodian Centre for Independent Media, 2018;Croissant, 2018;Lamb, 2018;Shahbaz, 2018).…”