Slayt 1 - Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies

SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND
MEDIATIC PARTICIPATION IN TURKEY
Islamic Lecture Series, University of Copenhagen, Denmark,
March. (2011)
Nurçay Türkoğlu
Marmara University, Faculty of Communications,
Istanbul, Turkey, nurcayturkoglu@marmara.edu.tr
Abstract
• Transformation of “mediation for citizenship” to
“positive realities” due to culture industry
• Global formats in Istanbul TV studios = coding of
kinship and hometown neighbourhoods for those
immigrated to Istanbul
PART-1
Media, citizenship and
consumerism in Turkey
TRT 1968-1992: Public Broadcasting for
Cultural Citizenship
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PB for CC (BBC model)
News
Studio talk shows
Imported TV series: Star Trek, Fugitive, Dallas, Columbo,
Charlie’s Angels, etc. + cartoons: Walt Disney, Tom and
Jerry, Lassie, Yogi Bear, Pink Panther, Sesame Street, etc.
• Eurovision song contest
• Domestic TV series/dramas: adaptations from Turkish
literature,
1990’s: Private TV’s
• Video cassette industry (mainly for Turkish immigrants in
Europe)
• Adaptation of Global Formats (i.e. CrimeWatch, soap
operas)
• Infotainment (transformation of programme formats)
• News Channels + Thematically Broadcasting
• War of Ratings (infotainment & Televole’s)
• Gulf War (without testimony)
Turkish popular TV of 2000’s
melting pot for rural and urban lifestyles
• Studio-live programmes set in business plazas at the middle of the
metropolitan city of Istanbul carry the residuals of the feudal / premodern traditions.
• There used to be village-like settings for studio audience who
immigrated to Istanbul from rural regions.
• Recently there are modern settings accompanied by social problems
inheriting pre-modern realities, alongside popular TV serials which are
mostly located in urbanized village settings, followed by costume
dramas and spectacular locations.
• Most recently; globalized Turkish TV drama serials for exportation
(mainly 70 serials to 20 countries)
• Current: media struggles are not just economical but politically
oriented (pro-government TV’s since 2005)
Spectacular Hell for Customers:
(Infotainment + promise for remedy)
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Wheels of Fortune (Çark-ı Felek )
“Sister Seda” (Bacı) helps
“The Voice of Women” kills
Health experts, medicals (live calls)
Heart-to-heart (oral culture) from sister Gönül to
Dr. Oz Show: live chat, hugging, medical help
• Global Formats: Blind Date, Big Brother is
Watching, Survivor, PopStar, Deal or Not Deal, etc.
Urbanized village sets of TV series
versus
Village-like TV studios
PART-2
THEORY IN PRACTICE:
RESEARCH 2010
Critical Social Theory And The Multiple
Methodology Of The Audience Reception Studies,
• ethnographical field notes (TV studio, home, school, local cafes,
villages nearby Istanbul),
• indepth interviews and focus groups which thematical codings
emerge upon the open ended questions (with TV producers, studio
hosts, studio audience + women audience at home, urban and rural
groups of audience, communication students),
• critical discourse analysis (on the content),
• genre analysis (global formats-local adaptations) and
• data analysis (other media on the audience participation: internet
forums, newspaper and magazine articles, photos, videos, columns,
ratings, etc.), along side the recent sociological studies highlighting
the transforming urban life in Turkey.
Research-2010
• focus material: talk shows, entertainment, TV games,
contests with studio audience participation within logic of
reality TV
• 36 shows in 8 nationwide channels broadcasting
nationwide in Turkey, April-May 2010
• Text, production process and the audience (6 groups of
people)
• Total no of interviewees: 20 studio audience + 70 home
audience + 10 producers + 150 media students + 40
primary school students + 20 villagers
36 shows in 8 nationwide channels (APRIL-MAY 2010)
FOOD
CARE-JUSTICE-CONFRONTATION
KANAL D
3-2-1 PİŞİR
Daily
ATV
MÜGE ANLI İLE TATLI SERT
Daily
KANAL 7
İKBAL'LE ŞİFALI YEMEKLER
Daily
SHOW TV
SABAHIN SEDASI
Daily
STV
YEŞİL ELMA
Daily
KANAL 7
NUR ERTÜRK'LE HER SABAH
Daily
KANAL 7
SERDEM'İN MUTFAĞI
Wknd
KANAL 7
EBRU İLE PAYLAŞTIKÇA
Daily
SHOW TV
DERYA'LI GÜNLER
Daily
STV
AİLE MAHKEMESİ
Daily
KANAL D
TAM TADINDA
Daily
FLASH TV
YALÇIN ÇAKIR POZITIF
REALITY
Daily
KANAL D
NE YAPMALI ?
Daily
ATV
DEFNE HER ŞEY BAMBAŞKA
Daily
MARRIAGE: ROMANCE + CARE
TV GAMES
SHOW TV
SURVIVOR
Sat.day
SHOW TV
WIPE OUT
Wdndy
ATV
ESRA EROL'DA EVLEN BENİMLE
Daily
STAR
YAKARTOP
twice
STAR
ZUHAL TOPAL'LA İZDİVAÇ
Daily
KANAL 7
YETENEK AVCISI
twice
FOX TV
SU GİBİ
Daily
SHOW TV
YEMEKTEYİZ
daily
FOX TV
BENİMLE EĞLENİR
MİSİN?
daily
36 shows in 8 nationwide channels (APRIL-MAY 2010)
HEALTH
TALK-SHOW-MUSIC-CABARET
KANAL D
DOKTORUM
daily
SHOW TV
HERKES İÇİN SAĞLIK
daily
STAR
DOKTOR ÖZ SHOW
daily
DEBATE
KANAL D
SHOW TV
ABBAS GÜÇLÜ İLE GENÇ BAKIŞ
SİYASET MEYDANI
KANAL D
BEYAZ SHOW
friday
KANAL D
DİSKO KRALI
saturday
KANAL D
MEDYA KRALI
sunday
KANAL D
MUHABBET KRALI
monday
KANAL D
BKM MUTFAK (cabaret)
sunday
FLASH TV
CEYLAN SHOW
(Eastern Anatolia)
monday
FLASH TV
KARADENİZ SHOW
(Northern A.)
tuesday
FLASH TV
KÜSTÜM SHOW (Central
Anatolia)
Wdnsday
Wdnsdy
thursday
MEDIATORHOOD
CONTENT
Broadcasting per
week
Confrontation:
justice/ missing/
religious
%31
Food-cooking
%19
Marriage:
romance + care
Games
Health
%18
%12
%10
Music-entertainment
%8
Political debate
%2
musicentertainment
8%
games
12%
health
10%
political debate
2%
cooking
19%
marriage (izdivaç)
romance + care
18%
confrontation:
justice, missing,
religious
31%
neighbourhood groups
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spatial practices reproducing the hometown culture work for the
neighbourhood groups in musical TV shows. (Ceylan Show for Eastern
Anatolia, Karadeniz Show for Northern Anatolia and Küstüm Show for Central
Anatolia).
in mediatorhood programs; demanding individuals lost their connection with
the community. Working in a kind of labour process, show production relies on
loose jointed (flexible) informal relations; unregistered employment,
voluntary workers of reproduction deprivation.
Studio is not a substantive or liberating space therefore, just like a space of
transition to the prosperity that calls immigrants for a transitory period.
Those who wish to settle down here are like the illegal immigrants waiting for
the blessings of the power elite of the studio. Frequent participators say that
“this is not a meeting place where you can meet your friends, this is business”.
Daytime studio audience
• retired men and women or housewives with no
stable jobs or professions
• trapped in-between of ‘home-town’ traditions and
the modern life style,
• deprived of social security and unsheltered,
• appeal to TV hosts for urgent support to their
subsistence to survive.
AUDIENCE AT HOME ON PEOPLE AT THE STUDIO:
DO YOU THINK THEY ARE ROLE PLAYING AT THE STUDIO?
Facts are real
4%
They enjoy
themselves
3%
People are
real 25%
Nothing is
real 18%
Moderator
deals with the
reality 25%
Partly real
25%
“hosts will deal with the reality”
neighbourhood mediator
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head man/woman of the neighbourhood,
youth of the neighbourhood,
sister,
imam,
head school teacher,
cook,
doctor,
guide
MODERATORS DEAL WITH THE REALITY
Failure at the studio,
taking refuge at the nature
STUDIO EXPERIENCE: HOMEOSTATIC
‘vicious circle’
HOME
ROAD
BACK
STUDIO
CAMERA
 Take the decision to go for the road to
the studio
 Call the cell phone of the production
staff
 “where do you live?” is the essential and
only question
 Pick-up the shuttle at the nearest
 Meet the ‘sister of the neighbourhood’
 Be patient, it takes about one hour to
three hours until you get into studio
 Fronts and back seats are preorganised, no hope to be seen for the
backs
 Studio is not a place for shy people
 Back stage is better to take a photo with
the host
 Everything looks bigger, shiny and
beautiful on the screen
Studio is not a place for shy people
Desperate voices:
• “Please find our daughter Müge
Anli, this is all we want, first
comes the God and than you”
(old poor couple, searching for
their missing daughter)
• “estagfurullah- don’t say such a
thing” (M.A., host)
Dominant voices:
• “enough is enough, I have heard
that some of my fans pause my
image on TV or web and gaze at
me, I don’t like it, I am not a
celebrity, I just want to get
married” (an educated woman
of 50)
• !!
Framing the Culture
Mediated charity
• Marriage and other mediatorhood programmes on
TV are not just entertainment;
• studios are places for charity; (sevap). To be the
mediator of a marriage is blessed in pre-modern
mentality;
• this way of socialization through arranged
marriages is to include a person inside the society.
Market of Marriages (İzdivaç)
• Blind dates for poor men & old
maid (stay at home)
• Where are you from?
• Where will we live?
• Your horoscope & My
horoscope
• Production: “we will arrange
everything: travel,
accommodation, clothing, makeup, ceremony, job, etc.”
• Participant: “İnşallah!”
• Traditional blind date: family
roots VS modernized blind date:
“just for fun”
• Regional / provincial roots are
rational to hold still the identity.
• Destination is the future
• Horoscope is a sort of
modernized destiny (searching
for the individual)
• Production staff: “good hearted
relatives” for the poor
• “God Helps! if it is in my
fortune!”
Local People at Glocalised Media
Productions
• Gift-promotions +
Women’s “heart-to-heart”
talk
• Semi-professional casting
(cheap)
• “Just like everybody does
it!”
• Freak individuals
• Phantasm of being a Pop
Star : Heroes/Heroines of the
day
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Plurality # Polysemy
Visibility # Expression
Competition= Hostility
False-representation
Lack of citizenship
Reproduction of
conservatism: resolving
uncertainty
• Format: The rules of the
game: Big Hunt for the
Poachers
CONCLUSION
• reality shows are definitely fictional;
• embedded audiences are semi-casts
• television studios are not ideal for public
communication.
• TV is not a place for public sphere
Cultural Ethos of Spectatorship: Screen as the
Location for the Poachers
• Daily life practices have their own way of handling
conflicts. Unlike the expectations from an identity as a
whole, daily life practices are actions in a particular place
and a particular time,
• Located in an ever-changing media flow, the actions are
hard to be accused for any lack of solidarity.
• Sources of the Cultural Ethos: grass-rooted traditions (i.e.
Marriage) support the legitimacy of the daily needs
• The non-committal style of the spectatorship: “television
screen is a place for fun”
• Does it deserve more than that?
• Poachers cannot get into a “dialogical communication”
with anyone
Reality and fiction are transposable
• Connection between having comfort at old-style neighbouring of premodern times and the rational of modern human rights for a better
living occurs paradoxically at the postmodern studio systems.
• images of the fabricated needs / necessities call for audience-consumer
attention globally.
• marketing of goods and pleasures; promises of job, money and
healthcare for those who are deprived, work together in a mediated
society. Hometown and ‘good-old community’ nostalgia is a good
source for media market
• People who have real problems in their own locality are lost in the
mediascape.
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culture industry: mediated familiarity
media ethnography
T. Adorno: “culture industry”
J. Habermas: “public sphere”
E. Goffman: “civil inattention” (1959)
G. Anders: TV switches far & near (1964)
D. Morley: TV sells suburban dreams (2000)
P. Dahlgren: Media and Civic Culture (2005)
S. Livingstone: public & private / audience public
or customer (2005)
Turkey is a vast country with many contrasts