Turkey, the Middle East & the Media| Editorial Introduction

Abstract

This special section on Turkey, the Middle East, and the Media brings together scholars whose research focuses on and problematizes the various aspects of the phenomena commonly labeled as transnational media flows. Within the past two decades, there has been an abundant use of the term transnationalism in the study of globalization in general, and in media studies in particular. This concentrated focus has yielded a wide variety of rich and meaningful analyses in disciplines ranging from anthropology to political science, geography, and sociology. Yet, in many instances, arbitrary and superficial (and, in some cases, intellectually bankrupt) utilizations of the concept rendered it void of any critical value.  In the study of the global dimensions of the media, the transborder characters and related consequences of media flows have often been regarded in a generalizing discourse of fusion and cultural hybridity, and the paradigm of globalization has often been employed in a blanket manner