Techno-Cultural Narrations: How did the Media Technologies Impact Social Life in Turkey?

Abstract

Oral history narrations give a detailed account of how social change actually happened. Subscribing to a holistic view, this paper pursues the directions of the historical changes in the Turkish media ecosystem since 1980's through the narrations of 50 media professionals and media consumers. We used Nvivo for qualitative analyses and KNIME for quantitative analysis of narrations. These narrations gave us important clues on how people adapted themselves to such fundamental changes in media technologies. Our analysis revealed that media professionals were crafty enough to be innovative in adapting themselves into the new work practices, and had developed personal practical solutions to certain emerging technical problems. Media consumers on the other hand, were enthusiastic enough towards the new technologies. It is evident that the Turkish society in general adapted itself to a sweeping change in media technology and created a kind of techno-culture typical to developing countries which principally import such technologies as a part of their modernization processes.