Browsing by Author "Arda, Balca"

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Citation Count: 0
Aesthetic Approach for Critical Sociology of Contemporary Communication Technology
(Sage Publications inc, 2024) Arda, Balca
Critical theory has already marked that technology often threatens civil liberties, personal autonomy, and rights. Heidegger, later Marcuse, emphasized how technology is not value-free in its own revealing power of the surrounding environment, external and inner nature. Throughout this paper, I explore how the aesthetic approach engages with critical theory and contributes to the sociology of media and communication. For this, I will theoretically survey the terms of sociality under the forces of immediate communication, ubiquitous surveillance, and the compression of time and space that Baudrillard and Virilio once problematized through the lens of critical technology theory to adapt it to media and communication studies. I contend that techno-aesthetics that converge with Ranciere's dissensus can provide practical suggestions on an updated vocation of critical sociology. This article discusses the potential of aesthetic and social criticism of media for democratizing technology that Feenberg inserted. It is urgent to acknowledge the changing spatio-temporal aesthetic regimes that affect the societal imagination and limits of sociality and action to determine the next steps for achieving a commons-based society.
Calmer persuasive technology for mental health and well-being: Mindfulness-based mobile applications
(Kadir Has Üniversitesi, 2023) Ustunsoy, Cansu; Arda, Balca
Over the course of the last two decades, technology has become more distracting, more persuasive and more pervasive than ever before. We are surrounded by alarms, reminders, and notifications. As a result, we are constantly distracted, unable to focus on one task and forced to switch tasks constantly or multitask. This technological overload is contributing to the levels of mental health problems such as depression or anxiety. The aim of this thesis study is to develop an in-depth critical understanding of the root causes of technology becoming more persuasive over the years; in order to gain insight on how technologies can become calmer. In this context, we have chosen MBMAs (MindfulnessBased Mobile Apps) as a case study. This study provides an in-depth analysis of three of the most popular MBMAs worldwide: Calm, Meditopia and Headspace via CMDA (Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis); as well as EIs (Expert Interviews) with MBMA designers working in these firms and an additional EI with a mindfulness trainer that has no ties with these firms; to gain insight on professionals’ perspectives on the issue.
Citation Count: 0
Cinematic Visual Representation of Refugee Journeys in Turkey in the Context of Precarious Class Dynamics
(Transnational Press London, 2020) Arda, Balca
In this article, I comparatively analyse the imagery of precarious class through the narration of refugee journeys in Turkey for two different films, with an emphasis on the visuality of cinematic narration. Whilst The Guest Aleppo to Istanbul (2017) by Andac Haznedaroglu and More by Onur Saylak certainly offer different portrayals of refugees in Turkey, both reflect on the precarious class dynamics in the context of migration and reveal the complex interplay of citizenship, meritocracy and suffering. By focusing on precarious status, these fictional representations illustrate that the incoming non-citizens provide the opportunity of self-reflexibility for the host community members and expose the fragility of the border between the citizen-self and the refugee. I contend that such distinct comparative portrayals encompassing precarity instead of humanity, as common ground between host and new arrival populations, necessarily requires drawing upon a broader literature on the human conditions for politics of justice rather than pity.
Citation Count: 2
Ephemeral Social Media Visuals and Their Picturesque Design: Interaction and User Experience in Instagram Stories
(Sciendo, 2021) Arda, Balca
This article examines the temporality of ephemeral visual posts to social media with an emphasis on Instagram stories. Drawing on theories of the spectacle, it is my contention that interaction and user-experience design, as it pertains to social media platforms, highlights the contemporary conditions and motivations in our society of abundant visual consumption. This article investigates what it means for a social media user to attend to such time-related visual experience. Throughout this piece, I critically survey the relationship between ephemeral Instagram stories' popularity and the high speed temporality of the social media sphere with emphasis on the digital picturesque. Perishable daily sharing on social media reflects a contemplative glimpse into a personal lifespan presented as an object of mass appreciation. I examine how ephemerality as a component of design impacts online sociality through the picturesque visual mode. Contemporary boredom and competitive engagement in high-technological communication networks inform how we might direct digital publics to find alternative pathways to sociality.
Citation Count: 0
Görsellik ve Hakikat: Türkiye’deki Suriyelilere Dair Sosyal Medya Görsel Paylaşımlarında Hakikat Üretim Pratikleri
(2021) Arda, Balca
Sosyal medyada paylaşılan görseller, bugün katılımcı pratiklerin hakikat üretimindeki etkisinin artmasıyla kamuoyu oluşturmakta önemli bir yere sahiptir. Bilgi kaynaklarının geleneksel kitlesel medya kurumlarının tekelinden çıkarak sade vatandaşın çevrimiçi haber oluşturma ve bilgi yayma imkânı elde etmesi, görselin dikkat çekme ve gündem oluşturma amacıyla kullanımını daha da belirginleştirmiştir. Bu makale, Türkiye’deki Suriyeli algısını çevrimiçi kamusal alanda görsel kullanım pratikleri üzerinden incelemektedir. Bu araştırmanın amacı; sosyal medyadaki görüntü tabanlı haberler, görsel-işitsel mesajlar, söylem destekleyici veya oluşturucu argümanlar olan klipler, çok fazla paylaşılan ve hızlı yayılan imaj veya videolarda Suriyelilerin nasıl temsil edildiğini analiz etmektir. Bunun için, Suriyeliler hakkında paylaşılan görseller incelenmiştir. Türkiye’deki Suriyeli imgesinin Twitter sosyal medya platformunda paylaşımını incelemek için #ülkemdesuriyeliistemiyorum ve #suriyelilerkardeşimizdir hashtag’leri (#) altındaki görseller nitel yaklaşımla kategorize edilmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda ortaya çıkarılan veri setleri çok düzlemli söylem çözümlemesi yapılarak analiz edilmiştir. Makale, hakikat üretiminde çevrimiçi katılımcıların yatay bilgi yayma pratiklerini sorgulayarak günümüzdeki bilgi kirliği sorunsalı tartışmasına görsel iletişim yönünden katkı sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Sosyal medya platformlarında meydana gelen Türkiye’deki Suriyelilere ilişkin tartışmalarda, görüntüleri paylaşan kullanıcıların objektiflik ve tarafsızlık kaygısı taşıdıkları anlaşılmaktadır. Bu analiz, Suriyelilerin Türkiye’deki koruma statüsünün meşruiyetinin çeşitli parametrelere bağlı olduğunun ve Suriyelilere ilişkin söylemin sosyal medyada görsel kanıtlara başvurularak üretildiğini göstermiştir. The images become the vehicle for online mass participation of ordinary users to influence media and set the agenda on specific topics among the public. The monopoly of traditional mass media institutions of information sources has been shattered through the horizontal social media practices of knowledge production and dissemination. In this age of truth skepticism, the article examines visual communication methods that activate knowledge production by taking a case study of the host communities’ social media interaction on the Syrian immigrant population living under temporary protection in Turkey. The goal of this article is to identify the role of the information mediators such as clips, memes, GIFs, and videos as image-based news, audiovisual message, to construct arguments in social media. To study contrasting approaches to Syrian refugees in Turkey, I further collect images shared under two antagonistic online groupings under the hashtags #ülkemdesuriyeliistemiyorum (I don’t want Syrians in my country) and #suriyelilerkardeşimizdir (Syrians are our siblings). I conducted the multimodal discourse analysis on this visual inventory. By this, this research-based article contributes to the studies on online participatory practices of knowledge production through visual communication. As such users who share images of Syrians in Turkey have concerns about the objectivity and impartiality of their claims. This analysis demonstrates that the legitimacy of Syrians’ status in Turkey depends on various parameters that users in social media refer to through the display of visual evidence.
Citation Count: 1
Görsellik ve Hakikat: Türkiye’deki Suriyelilere Dair SosyalMedya Görsel Paylaşımlarında Hakikat Üretim Pratikleri
(2021) Arda, Balca
Sosyal medyada paylaşılan görseller, bugün katılımcı pratiklerin hakikat üretimindeki etkisinin artmasıyla kamuoyu oluşturmakta önemli bir yere sahiptir. Bilgi kaynaklarının geleneksel kitlesel medya kurumlarının tekelinden çıkarak sade vatandaşın çevrimiçi haber oluşturma ve bilgi yayma imkânı elde etmesi, görselin dikkat çekme ve gündem oluşturma amacıyla kullanımını daha da belirginleştirmiştir. Bu makale, Türkiye’deki Suriyeli algısını çevrimiçi kamusal alanda görsel kullanım pratikleri üzerinden incelemektedir. Bu araştırmanın amacı; sosyal medyadaki görüntü tabanlı haberler, görsel-işitsel mesajlar, söylem destekleyici veya oluşturucu argümanlar olanklipler, çok fazla paylaşılan ve hızlı yayılan imaj veya videolarda Suriyelilerin nasıl temsil edildiğinianaliz etmektir. Bunun için, Suriyeliler hakkında paylaşılan görseller incelenmiştir. Türkiye’deki Suriyeli imgesinin Twitter sosyal medya platformunda paylaşımını incelemek için #ülkemdesuriyeliistemiyorum ve #suriyelilerkardeşimizdir hashtag’leri (#) altındaki görseller nitel yaklaşımla kategorize edilmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda ortaya çıkarılan veri setleri çok düzlemli söylem çözümlemesi yapılarak analiz edilmiştir. Makale, hakikat üretiminde çevrimiçi katılımcıların yatay bilgi yayma pratiklerini sorgulayarak günümüzdeki bilgi kirliği sorunsalı tartışmasına görsel iletişim yönünden katkı sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Sosyal medya platformlarında meydana gelen Türkiye’deki Suriyelilere ilişkin tartışmalarda, görüntüleri paylaşan kullanıcıların objektiflik ve tarafsızlık kaygısı taşıdıkları anlaşılmaktadır. Bu analiz, Suriyelilerin Türkiye’deki koruma statüsünün meşruiyetinin çeşitli parametrelere bağlı olduğunun ve Suriyelilere ilişkin söylemin sosyal medyada görsel kanıtlara başvurularak üretildiğini göstermiştir.
Instrumentalization and implementation of artistic and cultural practices for integration: The case study of Syrians in Turkey
(Kadir Has Üniversitesi, 2022) DURSUN, MURAT; Arda, Balca
This thesis aims to explore the interaction of three crucial phenomena: migration, integration, and perception of art and culture through the case study of Syrians in Turkey. For this purpose, the study examines the instrumentalization and implementation of artistic and cultural practices in the integration process of immigrants who migrated to Turkey due to the Syrian civil war in 2011. Migration affects both the host society members and the immigrants, whether voluntary or involuntary, for economic, political, social, or cultural reasons. Also, as seen in the example of Syrians in Turkey, although the initial purpose of migration is temporary, many immigrants become settlers in the receiving country, and since it was understood that immigrants would be permanent, policies and practices for integration have started to be discussed. In this sense, since it is understood that the Syrians in Turkey will be permanent, it requires research that offers new perspectives on what can be done about integration. For this purpose, I interviewed professionals such as coordinators, managers, employees, and artists in art centers and non-governmental organizations that use cultural and artistic activities in order to communicate between the local people and the immigrants in the provinces where Syrians live heavily, to explore the instrumentalization and implementation of artistic and cultural practices in the integration process. As a result, institutions' interviews demonstrated that art, artistic and cultural activities have an essential role in the integration process because they bring people from different countries, cultures, and different social groups together, as in the example of Syrians and local people provided communication, contact, and interaction beyond conflict.
Mediative performance of creative precariat in the age of digitalization
(Kadir Has Üniversitesi, 2022) Özmen, Ceylin; Arda, Balca
In this thesis, I define the artists who perform physical performances as the artist precariat. Starting from the concept of precariat, I am researching how the life of the precariat artist was affected socially and economically in the transition from physical performance to meditated performance in the age of digitalization. Since this research coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, I will have better analyzed the companies that were positively and negatively affected by the lockdown and the dimension of precariousness experienced by the artists. In this thesis, the formation of mediatized performance (distributing the video and audio recordings of the produced performance to different media channels) will be explained, to understand what the concept of contemplation is, and to understand the possible losses in art when contemplation becomes cool (artificial) in physical stage art. In addition, I expressed what the concept of precariat means in different studies and why I need to use this concept in this study. Data obtained by semi-structured interviews, which were held with stage company owners and physical performance artists (snowball sampling) and participant observation in field, were analyzed by discourse analysis techniques. Based on the collected data, the relationship between transforming art and artist insecurity will be examined. My analysis is composed of three sections: (1) to examine the measures and difficulties faced by art center owners, audiences, and artists regarding digitalization with the concepts of Baudrillard's “immortality” and Barthes’s “the author is death”. (2) Investigating the social precariousness created by the financial precariousness of flexible working in the arts sector (in the context of age and gender). Examining the concept of “precariat class” used by Guy Standing in his work on precarious working and flexible employment by focusing on the artist group and adding dimension (depth) to the concept in this direction. (3) To explore the adaptation process of precariat art to mediation shifting in the light of Byung-Chul Han’s concept of the “Banopticon” and Durkheim’s study of suicide. As a result of the interviews and fieldwork outputs, the death of art, which was defined metaphorically in the first place, eventually turned into the actual end of the artist. I contend that creative stage artists have difficulties in the transition process because their digital media knowledge and skills are insufficient, rendering them financially and socially precarious. Unemployment and insecurity experienced by the precariat artist in the culture and art sector affect not only the artist himself, but also the family members of the artist, art-loving individuals and the society. For this reason, the artist's insecurity becomes a collective problem rather than an individual one.
Citation Count: 0
Multimodal online dissident culture in Instagram: A critique of the Turkish economy
(Sage Publications inc, 2024) Baş, Özen; Bas, Ozen
Ever-present mass surveillance has blocked the flourishing of a traditional dissident culture in Turkey. Focusing on popular 'just for fun' Instagram accounts during the lira's freefall that began in the autumn of 2021, this study seeks to identify the creative strategies for digital social resistance embedded in multimodal content sharing of posts, which are composed of visuals, text, and sound. For this, we employed a multimodal-type analysis of Instagram posts regarding Turkey's economic crisis, followed by an interpretative content analysis aiming to (1) identify, categorize, and compile a typology of the main countersurveillance strategies inherent in multimodal posts, such as memes, edited videos, and animations, Photoshop-crafted still images, and (2) explore the contextual traits of the connected dissident culture. We discuss how these multimodal-type posts support connected dissident group formation while maintaining confidentiality while criticizing governmental conduct of economic policy making in Turkey.
Citation Count: 0
Political Engagement Through Visual Mediation: The Visuality of the Christchurch Attack and a Cross-Governmental Analysis of Performative Populist Responses
(Usc Annenberg Press, 2023) Arda, Balca
This article investigates the role of visual communication technologies in political engagement through a case study that examines politics in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shooting on March 15, 2019. It explores how the live-streamed display of the attack reproduced the features of personalized framing in social media, and how such mediation has been conceived by populist politics and instrumentalized to counterbalance this peculiar act of violence. Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, evoked empathy among different religious groups and solidarity with Muslim communities by supporting the #HeadscarfForHarmony campaign on social media. At the same time, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the video footage of the mosque shooting for his election campaign to incite anti-Christian sentiment. This comparative analysis offers a cross-governmental perspective and questions how the political culture of populist governmentality determines the resources for citizens' participation through patterns of communication. I contend that the political culture of citizen engagement in populism is eligible to be radically changed to correspond to contemporary visual communication design technologies.
Citation Count: 0
SANAL SINIF ESTETİĞİ: GÖRSEL İLETİŞİM TEKNOLOJİSİ, KATILIM VE HETEROKRON ORTAK ZAMAN
(2023) Arda, Balca; Son, Ayşegül Akdemir
Bu makalede sanal sınıflar yoluyla eşzamanlı eğitimin sağladığı anında iletişimin, sosyal gözetimin görsel iletişim teknolojilerinin uygulanmasına ilişkin soruları nasıl ortaya çıkardığı incelenmektedir. Covid19 Pandemisi sırasında eğitimin eşzamanlı ve eşzamansız çevrimiçi ve hibrit yöntemlerle küresel ölçekte dönüşümü, olağan öğretme ve öğrenme yöntemlerini yeniden biçimlendirdi. Bu nedenle, anlık sanallık deneyimi, öğrencilerin sosyalleştiği ve politik kültürle karşılaştığı sınıflara ilişkin kamusal alan kavramını da etkiledi. Türkiye'deki uzaktan eğitim sürecindeki öğrenci deneyimleri üzerine yürüttüğümüz bu araştırmada nitel içerik analizine dayanarak, online eğitime dair deneyimlerini ve tutumlarını anlamak için 325 üniversite öğrencisi ile çevrimiçi anket yapılmıştır. Sanal sınıf katılımcılarının sosyal eğitim dünyalarını dijital platformların estetik olanakları aracılığıyla nasıl inşa ettikleri teorik olarak incelenmiştir. Daha önce kuramsal düzeyde ele alınmış olan eleştirel estetik teorilerine dayanarak, iletişim teknolojilerinin sağladığı zaman ve mekân sıkıştırmasının öğrencilerin derse katılım deneyimlerine, görsel iletişim kullanımına ve gözetime karşı günlük direnişlerine nasıl dönüştüğünü ortaya koymaktayız. Araştırma, günümüzde uygulanan çevrimiçi eğitim tasarımının kamusal alanı teşvik etmekten uzak olduğunu ve tartışmalara aktif katılım yoluyla kamusal alan yaratmadaki rollerini azımsadıklarını ortaya çıkarmıştır. Gelecekte hibrit ve çevrimiçi eğitim modüllerine daha iyi bir geçiş için sosyal alanların kaybının ele alınması ve sorunsallaştırılması gerekmektedir.
Citation Count: 0
Who Deserves to be Refugee?: The Instrumentalization of Art and Culture in the Solidarity Discourse of UkrainianRefugees in Social Media
(2022) Arda, Balca
This article explores the online display of artistic ability and cultural practice to express support for the resistance in Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees while blaming the Russian attack on the country starting in February 2022. Social media engagement is essential in constructing discursive traits of belonging through bottom-up articulations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomies. Here, I question the distinguished characteristics of representation related to art, artistic practices, and abilities under solidarity social media posts in the case of Ukrainians fleeing their homes. Social media users who include art and culture concerning solidarity use a discourse of inclusion to depict refugees as parts of civilization and hence not reducible them to the bare life position. This study is guided by critical multimodal discourse analysis to understand better how social power is enacted, replicated, and resisted by social media content. I contend that these social media posts that convey specific art and culture-related representations serve to distinguish characteristics of war-torn Ukraine, people displacement, and Ukrainian refugees from the generic tendencies of otherization reflected on the ‘Southern’ refugee figure deprived of capability or motivation for logos.