On October 26, 2020 at 18:00 pm (CET), prominent journalists, academics and experts from Turkey will come together for a panel event on media and disinformation organized by the Turkey-based think tank Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) and co-hosted by IPI Turkey National Committee.

The event, “Media and Disinformation: Turkey Case”, will be held in Turkish and broadcast online on YouTube. It can be viewed here online.

Event description below.

Very little is known about the interest and actor network structure of Turkey’s digital media ecosystem. This is an anomaly considering that Turkey has more than 70% internet penetration and, according to the UK-based media analytics company WeAreSocial, Turkey is one of the top countries ranked in terms of social media usage. Despite restrictions, Turkey is still one of the most active countries in terms of discussion and dissemination of political information online and ranks among the most active countries in terms of using social media for political communication purposes. Successive crises, such as the failed coup attempt in July 2016, terrorist attacks, elections, and protests have been heavily ‘digitally mediated’, rendering digital media an important focus of analysis in understanding wider Turkish social and political forces.

Yet, as per the 2018 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, the Freedom of the Net Report, and the Open Society Institute Sofia’s Media Literacy Report, Turkey is also one of the most vulnerable countries to disinformation, bot usage, and cyber-attacks. Turkey is also a difficult country to study in terms of disinformation because it is already plagued by high levels of news contamination. The overall poor state of the information environment in the country renders disinformation a norm, not an exception, which makes it harder to isolate the researched anomaly within a wider pool of other anomalies.

All of this makes a deep-dive into Turkey’s digital media ecosystem—how information flows and how certain actors facilitate or impede this flow.  EDAM’s seminal study provides the first detailed mapping of the digital media ecosystem, including disinformation, fact-checkers and implications for the journalism, including regulatory suggestions.

EDAM will hold a virtual launch event co-hosted by IPI to disseminate its findings on the 26th  of October at 7 pm.

Panellists include:

  • Sinan Ülgen – Chair, EDAM (Moderator)
  • Akın Ünver – Academician, Kadir Has University & Executive Board member, EDAM
  • Afşin Yurdakul – Anchor, Habertürk TV
  • Cansu Çamlıbel – Editor-in-Chief, Duvar English & IPI Turkey National Committee member
  • Emre Kızılkaya – IPI Turkey National Committee Vice-chair & Journo.com.tr Project Editor