The use of media among first generation immigrants from Turkey who live in the United States of America and its effects on immigrants transnational identities

This dissertation explores the relationship between contemporary processes of international migration and mediated communication practices across the transnational social space, specifically in the case of the immigrant community from Turkey in New York and New Jersey area in the USA. The theoretical framework of transnational studies and diasporic media studies is articulated for understanding the media usage and appropriation of mediated texts by immigrants and the formation and transformation of identities of immigrants through diasporic and transnational Turkish-language media.Based on a media ethnography approach, which includes thirty in-depth interviews, participant observation developed during nine months of fieldwork and discourse analysis of news from Hürriyet and Zaman newspapers, this disssertation discusses certain forms of communication and cultural expression and evaluates the diasporic uses of transnational television viewing, the Internet, and the formation of new hybrid identities among immigrants from Turkey. Looking at different forms of media use and cultural practices provide a useful method for analyzing the changing dynamics of identity formation within the transnational community from Turkey. This study underlines the importance of the role of transnational media as a central mechanism of deterritorialization and reterritorialization for both ethnic and collective identity representations. It also explores transnational Turkish-language media -in this case two newspapers- contribute reproducing nationalism among Turkish immigrants in the USA. It is argued that the development of transnational media and the increasing transnational networks among contemporary immigrant communities not only challenges the traditional conceptualization of cultural integration but also suggests possibilities for linking new generations with new ethnic and collective identity expressions.