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- Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020
Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020
- Editorial
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- Articles
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The ‘non-speaking narrator’ as a methodological tool of analysis for various practices of discourse
By Can KoçakThis article proposes the ‘non-speaking narrator’ as a methodological tool of analysis and writing with reference to the film Persona, directed by Ingmar Bergman. Focusing on the dialectic between the two characters of the film, the article brings forward the idea that the narrative is relayed by the constant silence of one of the characters. Since the nature of that silence changes the extent of the lingual content, it leads the talking character into divulgence. The ‘non-speaking narrator’ thus brings forward silence as a way of being heard, suggesting a new perspective also to everyday life conventions in communication. This power of the non-speaking narrator as a methodological tool derived from practice has the potential to generate multiple interpretations and can be applied to various areas of communication studies.
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Tailoring a method: Adaptation of design thinking to transmedia journalism
By Dilek GürsoyDesign thinking is not an alien concept to the field of transmedia storytelling. However, the distinction between fictional and non-fictional approaches to transmedia production indicates that there is an insufficiency in existing production methods, especially when transmedia news stories are taken into consideration. The lack of journalism perspective in existing transmedia production approaches calls for reconsideration of these methods. Therefore, this research proposes a toolkit which draws out the significance of design thinking for the practice of transmedia journalism that rests upon a complex, collective and human-centred production. The toolkit is later evaluated by a one-day workshop on the grounds of collectivity in process, sensibility to content, creativity in outcome and simplicity in design. Consequently, the research shows that the proposed design thinking toolkit serves as an effective comprehension, cooperation, adaptation, distinction and education tool for the field of transmedia journalism.
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‘Intuition as Method’ as an approach for information design
By Melike ÖzmenInformation design is an interdisciplinary field of research and practice. According to International Institute for Information Design (IIID), information design is the defining, planning and shaping of the contents of a message and the environments, with the intention to satisfy the information needs of the intended recipients. Although IIID’s definition indicates a relationship between information, information designer, the environment, and the users, the definition lacks the roles of the users’ participation and the interaction amongst information, the environment, and the users in the process of designing information. It is possible to define three accounts in the design process. Information design approaches often impose a hierarchical relationship between these three accounts. Bergson’s ‘Intuition as Method’ and its rules can be adapted to bring these three accounts together on a horizontal formation and give the roles of these three separate accounts to the designer instead of applying a hierarchical structure in the design process.
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A multidimensional perspective on lifestyle analysis in Turkey
By Müge ÖztunçLifestyle segmentation has been prominently used in marketing and communication to define consumption patterns and marketing communication processes. This article underlines the significance of a multidimensional approach to lifestyle analysis. Bourdieu’s statistical technique of ‘multiple correspondence analysis’ permits to find unexpected dimensions and offer visual representation of the relationships between categories. This technique has been used to re-analyse Konda’s 2008 Lifestyle Research data, which was one of the most influential and widely circulated lifestyle segmentation research papers of its time, that introduced the categories of ‘anxious-moderns’ and ‘conservative-moderns’. The patterns identified through multidimensional analysis have been used in discourse analysis that permit to interpret the complex and heterogeneous nature of social dynamics.
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How to approach collecting music on streaming services
By Onur SesigürConsumption, collection and curation activities on streaming music services are a relatively new phenomenon that has not yet been offered an abundance of ways to be approached. This article addresses the information nature of a song and the collection and curation practices on a streaming platform to propose a methodological approach at the intersection of personal information management (PIM) and collection studies. By discussing the state of ownership and experience on streaming, this methodological approach uses the concept of mediality to redefine the collectible as information and decentralizes it by putting the emphasis on the act of collecting. By viewing streaming songs as collectable information objects and focusing on the interaction and experience a listener has with the songs and the environment of the songs, an outline of how a streaming music collection can be studied is provided. The concepts of bookmark for the streaming song and address book for the personal streaming playlist are proposed to study streaming music consumption, collection and curation at the intersection of PIM and collection studies.
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Negotiating boundaries in a hybrid climate: The story of a trans-disciplinary documentary film research
More LessHow can one apply trans-disciplinary methods to a practice-based research? The article addresses this question through a self-reflexive piece on a transdisciplinary documentary film presented as a Ph.D. research. The research focuses on the summer holiday practices of veiled women in Turkey to explore the triangular relationship between bodies, spaces and practices. The author argues that a trans-disciplinary research requires a multimethodological approach and demonstrates how documentary film analysis, fieldwork, participant observation, interviews, ethnographic filmmaking and documentary film practice can be applied together methodologically. Additionally, the article explores how artistic methods and narratives are used by the researcher to visually represent veiled women. Concepts such as negotiating through boundaries, third space and hybridity constitutes the recurring themes of the article.
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Art-based methods for Participatory Action Research (PAR)
By Zeynep KuntBy reflecting on alternative forms of knowledge co-production through art-based methods, the article discusses the potential of Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a responsive research praxis. Art-based methods have widely been used in research engaging communities through giving access to the worlds of participants. At the intersections of disciplines, benefiting from a range of art forms from photography to theatre, this approach provides the space and tools for the exploration of multiple perspectives about shared problems or questions. In this respect, PAR is a significant methodology for communication studies with its alternative ways of knowledge production by positioning ‘dialogue’ and ‘participation’ at the centre.
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- Commentaries
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Measuring freedom: Rethinking ranking methodologies
By Aslı TunçThis article is a critical analysis of the methodology of press freedom indices of two independent international watchdog organizations, Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF-https://rsf.org/en). The author argues that press freedom indices tend to offer us a homogenous view of mass media, which facilitates comparisons between countries by masking significant differences and discusses the challenges of dealing with the difference in the conceptualization of media freedom. As a social scientist, she also brings validity and reliability issues, which are crucial in quantitative research methods, into the discussion.
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Without a blink: Machine ways of seeing in contemporary visual culture
By Diğdem SezenIn the last decade following the technological and commercial advances in digital image production and in artificial intelligence, human vision-centred understanding of visuality has changed profoundly. Machine vision technologies (MVTs) are used across a wide spectrum of activities ranging from surveillance to medical diagnosis, to adaptive visual filters on social media. This commentary calls for a rethinking of visuality that takes both technological advances and lessons learned from cultural studies into consideration.
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The politics of self-reflexivity in ethnography
More LessThis short commentary aims to describe the role of political subjectivity and the researcher’s memory in fieldwork by focusing on a self-reflective account of my ethnographic fieldwork. This reflection comes after two years of ethnographic inquiry into sensory experience and observation of how memory is performed in relation to personal photographs and objects. It is part of an ongoing Ph.D. thesis about the post-memories of Armenian Genocide descendants in the diaspora, where I seek to understand how they remember the past in the present by observing their sensory engagement with the past. As well as this, the fieldwork shows the necessity of auto-ethnographic inquiry of the researcher, given that I am Turkish. This commentary ultimately asks what the role is of political subjectivity in ethnographic fieldwork, thinking especially of visual mediation in the diaspora.
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An ethnography of Gazete Sujin: Women-centred journalism of Kurdish women
More LessIn this commentary the news practices of Kurdish women media has been examined in terms of gender and human rights-based journalism. The work emphasizes the significance of an ethnographic method on studying a minority media since it discusses that the method broadens perspectives in order to understand different dynamics of news making process. This study is mainly based on the author’s MA dissertation which focused on a Kurdish women news portal, Gazete Sujin, in 2017.
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