Thesis
Imaginative democracies: mapping representations of democracy in Turkey’s press
Southern Cross University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25918/thesis.184
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Abstract
Positioned between Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and between East and West, Turkey occupies a strategic geopolitical space. The relationship between Turkey’s space, media, democracy and identity is the focus of this thesis. Using contemporary sociospatial theory as a backdrop, this research explores how Turkey’s unique geocultural and geopolitical position has impacted imaginings and representations of its democracy. It interrogates how the media is positioned within this space and the role of the media in constructing and projecting imagined democracies. It also investigates appropriate frameworks that can effectively foreground the spatial dimension in the critical discourse analysis of media texts within this context, and proposes a new approach, Critical Spatial Discourse Analysis (CSDA), to achieve this end. The content of two newspapers at contrasting ends of the political spectrum is examined: Cumhuriyet and Sabah. Critical Spatial Discourse Analysis is developed and applied as an innovative, space-sensitive analysis of media texts, with a focus on representations of democracy in the Turkish press from 2005–2016.
This study proposes the concept of imaginative democracies as an emplaced, spatialised view of democracy. This highlights the variety in the ideation of democracies that are as inherently and inescapably bound to spatial contexts as they are to specific historical and social ones. Using Edward Soja’s critical geographical imagination and Thirdspace perspective as an overarching lens, it advances a re-location of the idea and practice of democracy, in which the same critical insight is given to the conceptualisations and cultures of democracy as has been devoted to its institutions and procedures. Several key arguments are developed. First, it makes more sense to speak of Turkey’s democracies rather than its democracy. Like its shifting geocultural and geopolitical imaginations, the Turkish democratic imaginary is an arena of competing stories. Second, like its political system, Turkey’s media system has demonstrated its own culture that is firmly emplaced in unique spatiotemporal settings. The spatialities of Turkey’s society, culture, politics and media are actively constitutive of its own unique configurations. This thesis finds that not only Turkey, but its media can be thought of as a Thirdspace. The contemporary Turkish social, cultural and political landscape is a site of constant negotiations between ‘actual’ and ‘imagined’, involving alternative and simultaneous modes of spatial configurations. Turkey’s media is also a strategic location from which alternative, concurrent, and often colliding perceptions of the world and Turkey’s place within it are articulated. Infusing the imaginings of Turkey’s democracy are these very representations of culture, place and space.
Details
- Title
- Imaginative democracies: mapping representations of democracy in Turkey’s press
- Creators
- Fulya Vatansever
- Contributors
- Leticia Claire Anderson (Supervisor) - Southern Cross UniversityRob Garbutt (Supervisor) - Southern Cross University
- Awarding Institution
- Southern Cross University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Theses
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
- Publisher
- Southern Cross University
- Number of pages
- x, 323
- Identifiers
- 991012991897402368
- Copyright
- © Fulya Vatansever 2021
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Resource Type
- Thesis