An Ethnographical Approach: Female Blogosphere In Turkey

Year 2020, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 61 - 82, 31.05.2020

Melike Aslı Sim

https://doi.org/10.33708/ktc.713543

Abstract

This paper is about the preliminary ethnographic fieldwork of a work-in progress conducted on the female blogging practices and the female blogosphere in Turkey, focusing specifically on how blogging reshapes women’s cultural and social environment. The study attempts to understand the role of blogging as a medium in women’s self-formation processes and explore how female bloggers construct their identities via online media representations and negotiate disclosure, fame and labor in an age of extreme self-display. Based on an anthropological approach, the study explores the spaces within which women seek “self-realization”, “publicity” and “employment opportunities” in the digital world, particularly, through the practice of blogging. Taking female blogosphere as a field, the study examines how blog production is manifested in Turkey, through the female bloggers’ struggle for hope. Preliminary research demonstrates that blogging acts as a medium of hope for many female bloggers. Given the heterogeneous nature of female blogosphere, experiencing this hope shows differences. At times, upper mobility opportunities are expected, but sometimes hope is realized to provide feelings like happiness, appreciation, self-realization and usefulness. Networking and socialization opportunities are also other motivations of bloggers. The aim of the study is to see how these women use blogging as a media practice to explain themselves in social media platforms. Thus, through the framework of hope (Hage 2004), relatability (Kanai 2019), fame and visibility notions, material formation of identities in this process, the nature of labor production in blogs as well as the construction of female subjectivities within celebrity culture will also be discussed.

Keywords

Blogging, Ethnography, Women Bloggers, Hope Labor, Self-realization, Fame

Türkiye’deki Kadın Blog Dünyasına Etnografik Bir Bakış | An Ethnographical Approach: Female Blogosphere In Turkey

Abstract

Bu makale; Türkiye’deki blog dünyasına, blog yazmanın kadınların kültürel ve sosyal çevrelerini yeniden şekillendirme biçimlerine odaklanarak, toplumsal cinsiyet perspektifinden incelemekte olan bir çalışmanın başlangıç aşamasındaki etnografik alan araştırmasını konu edinmektedir. Makale, blog yazmanın kadınların kendini gerçekleştirme süreçlerindeki aracı konumunu anlamayı ve kadın blog yazarlarının sanal dünyadaki medya temsillerini nasıl inşa ettiklerini; kendilerini ifşa etme, şöhret ve emek konusunu nasıl müzakere ettiklerini araştırmayı hedefler. Antropolojik yaklaşıma dayanan bu çalışma, blog yazma pratiği doğrultusunda kadınların dijital dünyadaki “kendini gerçekleştirme”, “kendini bulma” ve “kamusallık” arayışlarına ışık tutmaya çalışmaktadır. Kadın blog dünyasını bir alan olarak ele alıp kadın blog yazarlarının umut arayışları üzerinden Türkiye’deki blog üretimine bakan bu çalışmanın amacı, kadınların kendilerini sosyal medya platformlarında açıklamak için blogları nasıl bir medya pratiği olarak kullandıklarını göstermektir. Çalışmada; umut (Hage, 2004) çerçevesi altında, ilişkilendirme (relatability) (Kanai, 2019), şöhret ve görünürlük nosyonları; kimlik oluşumu, emek ve aynı zamanda şöhret kültüründeki kadın öznelliği konuları tartışılacaktır.

Keywords

blog yazma, umut emeği, kendini gerçekleştirme, şöhret

References

• Angrosino, Michael V. 2002. “Conducting a Life History Interview.” Pp. 3-44 in Doing Cultural Anthropology, Michael V. Angrosino, ed. Prospect Heights: Waveland.
• Banet-Weiser, Sarah. 2011. “Branding the Post-Feminist Self: Girls’ Video Production and YouTube Forthcoming” in Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls' Media Culture, ed. Mary Celeste Kearney. New York: Peter Lang.
• Bernard, H. Russell. 2011. “Interviewing I: Unstructured and Semistructured” in Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Fifth ed. AltaMira Press.
• Bianet - Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi. 2016. “TÜİK 8 Mart Dolayısıyla Kadın İstatistiklerini Paylaştı.” Retrieved November 20, 2018 (https://bianet.org/bianet/kadin/194897-tuik-8-mart-dolayisiyla-kadin-istatistiklerini-paylasti).
• Bonilla, Yarimar and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States.” American Ethnologist 42(1):4-17.
• Bourdieu, Pierre.1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
• Briggs, Charles L. 2007. “Anthropology, interviewing, and communicability in contemporary society”. Current Anthropology 48(4):551-566.
• Couldry, Nick. 2004. “Theorising Media as Practice.” Social Semiotics 14(2):115–32.
• Dedeoğlu, Saniye. 2012. Women workers in Turkey: Global industrial production in Istanbul. London: Tauris Academic Studies.
• Duffy, Brooke E. 2018. “Interview With Brooke Erin Duffy: Love And Aspirational Labor In The Creative Industries” by Ergin Bulut. Journal of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Communication, Hacettepe University 5(2): 302-309.
• Eltantawy, Nahed. 2013. “From Veiling to Blogging: Women and media in the Middle East”. Feminist Media Studies 13(5). 
• Emerson, Robert M. & Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw, 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, pp. 1-170. University of Chicago Press.
• Federici, Silvia. 2014. Caliban and the Witch: Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
• Hage, Ghassan, 2004. Ghassan Hage in conversation with Dimitris Papadopoulos: “Migration, hope and the making of subjectivity in transnational capitalism”. International Journal for Critical Psychology 12: 95-117.
• Ilkkaracan, Ipek. 2012. Why so few women in the labor market in Turkey? Feminist Economics 18(1): 1-37.
• Jurkiewicz, Sarah. 2018. Blogging in Beirut: An Ethnography of a Digital Media Practice. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag.
• Kanai, Akane. 2019. Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture: Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
• Kandiyoti, Deniz. eds. 1991. Women, Islam and the State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Kılıç, Azer. 2008. “The Gender Dimension of Social Policy Reform in Turkey: Towards Equal Citizenship?” Social Policy & Administration 42:487–503.
• Kogacioglu, Dicle. 2004. “The Tradition Effect. Framing Honor Crimes in Turkey”, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 15(2): 119-151.
• Kuehn, K. and Corrigan, T.F. 2013. “Hope Labor: The Role of Employment Prospects in Online Social Production”. The Political Economy of Communication 1(1):9-25.
• Linde, Charlotte. 1993. Life Stories; The Creation of Coherence, Oxford University Press.
• Marwick, Alice E. 2013. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. New Haven. Yale University Press.
• Pahwa, Sonali. 2014. “At home in the network: Women’s digital and social mobility in Egypt” On the Ground: New Directions in Middle East and North African Studies, edited by Edwards, Brian T. UK: Akkadia Press.
• Radsch, Courtney C. and Sahar Khamis. 2013. “In Their Own Voice: Technologically Mediated Empowerment and Transformation Among Young Arab Women,” Feminist Media Studies. Special Issue: Women and Media in the Middle East 13(5):881-890.
• Robben, Antonius C.G.M. and Jeffrey A. Sluka, eds. 2007. “Fieldwork in Cultural Anthropology: An Introduction,” “Part I:Beginnings”. Pp.1-32 in Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Robben, Antonius C.G. M. 2007, "Fieldwork Identity: Introduction." Pp. 59-64 in Ethnographic Fieldwork.
• Rottenberg, Catherine. 2018. The rise of neoliberal feminism. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Sluka, Jeffrey A. 2007. "Fieldwork Conflicts, Hazards, and Dangers: Introduction." Pp. 217-222 in Ethnographic Fieldwork.
• Zareie, Ayoub. 2013. “From Blog Writing to Self-Consciousness: A Study of Iranian Bloggers”, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 91:66-71.