DIGITAL FORAYS: Mediating the News: Digital Platforms & Publics

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Many dynamic “alternative” news portals & collaboratives have developed during/since the Arab Spring.  How do they spread information and create publics beyond the traditional news cycle? Most often this happens through websites, social media and by creating dynamic content across various digital entanglements. Yet how do they mobilize their messages across different platforms specifically? Why one platform over another? For instance, why Instagram videos vs Tweets / Youtube channels versus Facebook – how might we understand the logic and practice of creating media, public, and engagement through their various digital practices – and how are these embedded in a larger media landscape where “traditional” media are often connected with the state. This week questions the role of the app/medium/phone in how these organizations reach, disseminate, and engage digitally with their (counter) publics.

Picture Courtesy of Gürkan Özturan

• Join the Kevorkian Center with Josette Khalil (MEGAPHONE), Gürkan Özturan (Dokuz8 Haber), Lina Attalah (Mada Masr) and discussant Bilge Yeşil on September 24, 2020, at 12:30 pm (EST) to think through these questions and discuss together issues of digital platforms and publics. To register please follow the link here or copy and paste the link to your browser: bit.ly/NYUKevoDF924

In order to prepare for this event, please read the following documents provided to you by our panelists. You can find the readings here. Please note that we will be adding new readings up until the week before the event, so kindly please keep checking the folder!

Lina Attalah is an Egyptian media figure and journalist. She is co-founder and chief editor of Mada Masr, an independent online Egyptian newspaper and was previously managing editor of the Egypt Independent prior to its print edition closure in 2013. She is active in the fight against the restriction of honest journalism.

• Josette Khalil leads the product development and  R&D effort at Megaphone, a social media native news platform covering Lebanese politics. With a 10-year experience in design and design entrepreneurship, she specializes within the Megaphone team in user engagement and media design. In addition to being on the editorial board, her day-to-day involves analyzing audience engagement with the published material, story-editing of videos, and content optimization. Josette’s personal research and art practice revolves around the intersection of subjectivity, agency, and history with technology and more specifically social media.
• Gürkan Özturan is the executive manager of rights-focused independent citizen journalism platform dokuz8news. He was trained in the field of European Studies as a researcher on radicalization during his two masters degrees at Centre International de Formation Europeenne and Istanbul Bilgi University. Mr. Özturan now works as a journalist and executive manager at dokuz8NEWS and from time to time appears on international media as a commentator on Turkey. Previously he contributed to several publications in Turkey and Europe, writing on digital rights & liberties, commenting on populist movements and increasing radicalization & polarization. He has served as a board member for various anti-racism and human rights NGOs and social movements, currently, he is a board member for Turkey-European Foundation and Media Research Association. Özturan is a registered member of the Journalists Union of Turkey and the International Federation of Journalists.
• Discussant: Bilge Yeşil is an Associate Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and Doctoral Faculty of Middle Eastern Studies at The Graduate Center. Yesil’s research interest is in global media and communication with a particular focus on Turkey and the Middle East, global internet policies, online surveillance and censorship. Her book, Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State (University of Illinois Press, 2016) examines Turkey’s media system as the byproduct of the tensions between longstanding authoritarian state forms and the country’s experiences with globalization in the post-1980 era.