Communication Rights and Forced Mobility

Track for the 4th Turkish Migration Conference

July 12-15, 2016, University of Vienna, Austria

Track Chairs: Katharine Sarikakis and Deniz Özalpman, University of Vienna, Austria

Organized by Regent's Centre for Transnational Studies, London, and the Media Governance & Industries Research Lab at the University of Vienna, this track aims to bring together a variety of approaches to help us better understand the dis/connections of communication rights of the world citizens experiencing forced mobility.

While the so called "refugee crisis" became a 'code' for European media and politicians to describe the extraordinary movement of people toward the continent, people on the move have inadvertently caused 'Europe' to come face to face with its strength to uphold Human Rights and Communication Rights for protecting the vulnerable and its weakness to act in such a way. Potent images have raised old ethical questions of journalistic practices, but at the same time have exposed the concrete impact of policies on people's lives – and deaths. While the media and journalists are finding themselves challenged to report on human tragedy and human agency, 'staying neutral' has become an impossible and possibly ethically questionable task. On the one hand, people on the move are being reported on in terms of natural catastrophe metaphors; on the other stories of survival and death aim to humanise the numbers of people seeking refuge. The paper in this track document, analyse, speculate and interrogate the journey, destination and experience of communication from all possible perspectives that is connected with people’s rights to be granted protection and their human rights to be respected.

First Panel: Beyond Borders: Constructing and maintaining communicative spaces

Chair: Katharine Sarikakis

• Nour Halabi, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
  Title: Nostalgia and home-building in Sarouja restaurant

• Recep Volkan Oner, Faculty of Communication, Gazi University / A.Asli Simsek, Faculty of Law, Atilim University
  Title: Romani People and right to the city in Turkey: Gentrification in Çanakkale Fevzipaşa neighbourhood

• Arda Umut Saygın, Faculty of Communication, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
  Title: The reception analysis of the short movie BAWKA (FATHER)  

• Deniz Özalpman, Faculty of Communication, University of Vienna
  Title: Turkish TV drama series  

• Isabelle Mariacher, Faculty of Communication, University of Vienna
  Title: Gentrification in Istanbul and its (in)adequate mediation of "distant" suffering – a documentary analysis

Second Panel: Seeking Refuge and the Media

Chair: Deniz Özalpman

• Kevin Smets, Free University of Antwerp
  Title: Mediated communication among Syrian refugees in Turkey and Belgium  

• Katja Kaufmann, Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt
  Title: "The smartphone is the most valuable thing we have"

• İlke Şanlıer Yüksel, Migration Research Center, Koç University, İstanbul, Turkey
  Title: Use of communication technologies and the social media by refugees in a mediatized world

• Derya Kurtuluş, Faculty of Communication, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey
  Title: The representation of Syrian refugees in Turkish mainstream media

• Arda Umut Saygın, Faculty of Communication, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
  Title: Peace Journalism or mainstream (common) journalism: Approach of refugees in Turkey's written press