A Quantitative Approach: Hope Labor Among Turkish Female Bloggers

Abstract

This study investigates the blogosphere in Turkey from a gendered perspective, focusing on how blogging reshapes women's cultural and social environment. Based on a quantitative approach, a snowballing survey method is conducted, to explore the spaces within which women seek "self-realization," "self-formation" and "publicity" in the digital world, particularly, through the practice of blogging. There are two main questions that undergird this project: "Do women, performing in social media, unintentionally become subjugated to a form of exploitation and alienation, as the literature on digital labor suggests?" "Is hope labor is influential in female bloggers' blog usage and content writing? Research findings demonstrate that these women, while constructing their identities as bloggers, incorporate to the neoliberal restructuring of Turkey via articulation of blogging with the global market system. Although blogs provide employment opportunities and economic gains, main motivation behind women's blogging practices remain to be self-realization and self-fulfillment, leaving hope labor less influential in blog writing. Traditional views like unemployed women participate to public sphere via blogging activities wriggling out of their inherited gender roles also remain to be an over determination since employed women feel more emancipated through blogging.

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“…Studies in Turkey on the exploitation of digital labour on social media platforms have increased in recent years (Aytekin and Yandım, 2017;Duman and Özdoyran, 2018;Kılıç, 2019;Dağtaş and Yoldaş, 2020;Çeliker-Saraç and Aksoy, 2021;Karaca, 2021;Sim, 2021;Özdemir, 2022). Aytekin and Yandım (2017), in their study using multiple case studies and content analysis methods, concluded that the capitalists of social media companies sell their user information, the content they produce and all their online activities to marketing companies and realize informationbased exploitation.…”

“…That study also concluded that data was used to create surplus value and become the commodity of commercial organizations as unpaid labour. Sim (2021) conducted a field study on female bloggers in Turkey. That research concluded that while women were writing blogs, they were also integrated into the neoliberal reshaping of Turkey with the global market system they entered through blogging.…”