East Within the East: Representation of Syrian Identity in Twitter as a Form of Self-Orientalism
Journal Title: International Peer-Reviewed Journal of Media and Communication Research - Year 2021, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
Turkey has faced a major refugee crisis after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. Turkey is currently hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees. The growing number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has raised a problem of social integration and representation. Hate speech towards Syrians has proliferated on platforms such as Twitter. At the heart of this digital discourse there is an influence of neo-orientalist refugee representation that dominate the Western media. The West has closed its doors to refugees from the Islamic geography defined as "dangerous and the other" by the neo-orientalism. Refugees are left out as "unidentified others" of the new world. The concept of "other" in self-orientalist approach has been combined with Zygmunt Bauman's conceptualization of stranger. Bauman's definition of "stranger" in which he integrates the term of "refugee" also appears in the self-orientalist discourse adopted on Twitter. The orientalist perspective internalized in Turkey, especially after the westernization process, adopts this Western discourse. This discourse is reflected most intensely on social media. In the study, the self-orientalist discourses of the middle class, educated and young pro-sumers towards Syrian identity on Twitter were examined through tweets. The study aims to reveal how the self-orientalist discourse towards refugees is represented through digital media and to define the stereotypes that negatively affect the social integration of the refugees.
Authors and Affiliations
Merve Zeynep Sarıbek,
Keywords
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