The Precarization of journalistic labor: A study on local journalists in Eskişehir

With the globalization, changes in every aspect of our lives have deeply affected the labor market. Precariat is a concept that expresses the ever growing segment of the world with concerns about the future with the increasingly flexibilization of labor markets by globalization. From this point of view, the concept, opens up a field of debate that is conducive to revealing and examining precarious and flexible forms of labor. The inclusion of intellectual labour in the production rather than manual labour is the result of the increasing share of the service sector. Journalists who are white-collar are a group of professionals suitable to be examined in terms of precarizaton of labour, especially under the changing structure of the media sector. Journalists are one the groups who experience this precarization for many reasons, such as the progress of information technology, the gathering of the media sector within the holding companies. In this research, the precariat perception of the local journalists working in Eskişehir and the factors that make up this perception are examined. As a result of the research, it was determined that interviewed journalists lacked seven types of security that define the precariat. These securities are; labor market security, employment security, job security, work security, skill reproduction security, income security, representation security. As a result, journalists do not feel inclined to prekarya as a new class, but rather they are confronted as a precarious and increasingly alienated and precarized labor force.