Multimodal online dissident culture in Instagram: A critique of the Turkish economy
Abstract
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.
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Biographies
Balca Arda (PhD, York University) is the Department Chair and Assistant Professor of Visual Communication Design at Kadir Has University. She focuses on the impact of emerging communication design technologies on social justice and humanitarian challenges. Her studies engage with social media, user experience research, media aesthetics, critical theories of communication technologies, and inclusive communication design.
Özen Baş (PhD, Indiana University) is an Assistant Professor of New Media and the Vice Dean of the School of Communication, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey. She studies political communication: Cognitive and participatory effects of emerging media use on different sociodemographic groups. Her work focuses on the content and use of media messages for informed citizenship and political participation.
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Article first published online: November 23, 2023
Issue published: May 2024
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