‘Fake News’ and News Engagement in Turkey

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 panel is Suncem Koçer, whose focus is on the Turkish news and online media environment. User engagement with online information here is especially polarised – how do users evaluate the information and misinformation they encounter here, and how do they choose what to circulate to their own networks?

The project focussed on the recent Turkish local elections (before the re-runs of some of the contested polls), using focus groups, media diaries, and semi-structured interviews. News users generally had very low trust in the news media, yet still accepted the news narratives being constructed by the sources with whom they are ideologically aligned.

There is also an acceptance of post-truth contexts where users accept that something may be a fact for one person and a lie for another. This results in users consulting multiple contrasting news sources, in order to explore whether or how a given story is covered in both or may be partisan misinformation.

Users are no longer very actively sharing the news online, in general. This is because of a fear of state repression: people are afraid of being arrested for sharing particular anti-government content, and such fears are based in actual precedent. But people also create ‘safe zones’ for themselves, by sharing news in a more circumscribed, paraphrased way or focussing on what they believe to be ‘safe’ topics.

There is also a very deliberate choice of different platforms for sharing content, with the expectation that such shares will reach different audiences. Users are especially worried about sharing content publicly on Twitter, and some have multiple anonymous accounts in order to avoid state surveillance and repression. Overall, in light of the current political situation, there is a great deal of mistrust, despair, and conformism in using and sharing the news.