Alternative media practices of migrant communities in the context of community communication: the example of Al Harmal Newspaper

The domination of multinational companies that emerged with the effect of globalization has monopolized the media sector. This situation prevented polyphony in the media and made the representation of minorities or other communities in the media problematic, which forced these communities to create media where they could make their voices heard. These media practices, which are defined as alternative media in the literature, have been an important tool for immigrants to integrate with the culture in the geographies they migrated to, to make their voices heard or to maintain communication with their homeland. With these thoughts, Syrian immigrants living in Sanliurfa formed their own media practices in 2014 under the name of Al Harmal Newspaper. These media practices, which are evaluated in terms of opening an alternative field to mainstream media in the literature, are the subject of the thesis and in this context, Al Harmal Newspaper has been examined in terms of functional and structural features of alternative media. In the first part, immigrants are dealt with as a community and the relationship between migration and community is tried to be revealed. In the second part of the definition of alternative media, the historical development of literature with examples from very large to be due to the world and Turkey is discussed in a limited framework. In the third part, as an example of community media, which is a sub-branch of alternative media, Al Harmal Newspaper has been examined with the literature review, semi-structured interview and content analysis methods, whether it has the characteristics of community media in the context of alternative media. In the analysis of the obtained data, al it was understood that Harmal Newspaper offered an alternative perspective to the mainstream media. Keywords: Alternative media, community media, immigrant, Al Harmal, newspaper