Podcast public sphere in Turkey: Descriptive assessment

In this study, the podcast space in Turkey is described. On 17, 19, 21 and 23 November 2021, the "200 most popular podcasts" list was followed on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It has been observed that these lists that are followed have similarities. It has been observed that the lists are updated at intervals of two or three days, and although the rankings change, there are no fundamental changes in the list. Since Spotify is the platform where podcasts are listened to the most in Turkey, the lists on this platform were taken into consideration, and the list of the 200 most popular podcasts was looked at between 17-23 November 2021. A sample of 189 podcasts was taken from podcasts that had been on the list for at least three days. The identified 189 podcasts were classified and their structures were analyzed. While making this classification, a model adapted to communication-media studies of the classification suggested by Carvalho, Aguiar, and Macial (2009) regarding the use of podcasts in the field of education was used. According to this classification, podcasts are classified according to their length, format, content producer and purpose. In this research, 189 podcasts were examined according to the language used, content producer, episode durations, broadcast intervals, continuity, formats, genres, purposes and topics. Developments in communication technologies have been effective in the emergence of a new social order. To explain this new social order, Webster (2014) mentions five dimensions of the information society. From this point of view, the information society will be discussed in the context of technological developments, transformation in the economic structure, globalization and restructuring of time and space. When we look at the technological dimension of the information society, there have been three turning points: the emergence of the internet and the spread of personal computers, the discovery of the world wide web and the transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0. In this society, there is an economic structure different from the industrial period. There has been a transition from a structure in which tangible products are produced to an information-based economic structure. In the next dimension, the relationship between information society and globalization is mentioned. Technological developments paving the way for the information revolution connect the local and the global. In the first part of the study, the concept of information society will be tried to be explained based on these dimensions. In the first part, public sphere discussions in the information society are also included. Although public sphere debates were discussed in Jürgen Habermas's doctoral thesis, "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere", published in 1962, the history of the public sphere goes way back. In this section, the development of the public sphere since Ancient Greece will be discussed. The public sphere in the feudal period in the Middle Ages will be mentioned, after Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, where the private and public spheres were strictly separated. While in the feudal period, a representative public sphere in which the powers were public was mentioned (Habermas, 2004), a form of publicity emerged outside the domination of the state in the 18th century. With the disappearance of feudalism, the bourgeois class that emerged in the 18th century took power economically and began to make political and social demands. This new form of publicity is different from representative publicity. Towards the 18th century, the bourgeois class built the literary public space in coffeehouses and lounges. Men, nobles and ordinary people can enter these spaces, discuss public issues and voice their criticism. This form of public sphere later went beyond the boundaries of the cultural sphere and became influential in the emergence of the political public sphere. Habermas sees the commercialization of the press as the cause of the collapse of the public sphere. He claims that with this commercialization, the public sphere returned to a fragmented structure as in the feudal period (Özbek, 2004; Timisi, 2003). Culture has turned into an area that is consumed, not produced. At the same time, it sees the fact that mass media such as TV and radio are not suitable for instant response and participation as a factor that prevents discussion and negotiation, which is very important for the public sphere. Different authors have critically approached the Habermasian model of the public sphere. There are writers who emphasize the exclusivity of Habermas's model of public sphere and talk about plural and fragmented publics as opposed to his singular public sphere (Fraser, 1990; Negt and Kluge, 2004). Nancy Fraser (1990) tries to reconstruct Habermas's model of the bourgeois public sphere from a feminist perspective in her article "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Really Existing Democracy". Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (1993) also attempted to define an alternative to Habermas's model of public sphere in their work "Public Sphere and Experience" and talked about the proletarian public sphere as an oppositional public sphere. In the first part of the study, these approaches will be discussed. There has been a spatial transformation in the concept of public sphere; The agora in Ancient Greece and the palace in the Middle Ages were replaced by lounges and coffee houses in the 18th century. In the first part of this study, the transformation of the public sphere and the relationship between the public sphere and the internet will be examined in the light of the information society discussions. Developments such as the widespread use of the Internet, paving the way for everyone to access the Internet, the possibility of users' participation with the transition to web 2.0, the elimination of the limitations of time and space have started discussions about the potential of the Internet to create a democratic public sphere. From this point of view, in this section, the potential of the internet to be a democratic public space will be discussed, and positive and negative approaches to this claim will be presented with reasons. In the second part of the study, the development process of radio, one of the representatives of verbal communication tools, in the world and in Turkey will be discussed together with technological, social and political developments. In the 1920s, regular radio broadcasts began to be made in the world and in Turkey. For reasons such as the persuasive power, speed and low cost of radio, states have tried to use this mass media more effectively and to keep it under control. However, the radio has always been a tool that is tried to be reached by the masses who want to have their voice heard. In this section, amateur radio broadcasting, community radios and internet radios will be discussed within the scope of activities for the democratization of radio. With the changes in radio broadcasting in the 2000s, internet radio broadcasting emerged and the concept of podcast was introduced. In this section, the characteristics of podcasts will be examined based on the common points that podcast definitions focus on in the literature. Podcasts can be defined as audio files that can be accessed, transported and downloaded over the internet (Newman and Gallo, 2019, p. 8; Ülkü and Öze, 2019, p. 125; Geoghegan and Klass, 2007, p. 5; Şener 2020, p. 217). Podcast, which was seen as an extension of radio at the time of its emergence, later started to be handled separately from radio. In this section, the characteristics of podcasts will be discussed based on the definitions of podcasts in the literature. The similarities and differences between radio and podcast will be discussed. Later, in this section, the developments that paved the way for the emergence and popularization of podcast technology in the world and in Turkey will be discussed. This section will be completed by trying to draw a framework of the podcast universe in the world and in Turkey, based on the researches. In the third and last part of this study, studies on podcasts in the literature will be included. Looking at the literature, it has been seen that studies have been conducted for podcast users. Studies on the demographics of podcast users and the motivations of podcast users were examined. In the literature, there are studies in which podcast broadcasts are handled by content analysis method. There are also studies in which podcasts are examined in the context of gender. There are also studies in which podcasts are analyzed structurally similar to this study. In this section, the studies in the literature will be examined as comprehensively as possible. Finally, the research findings will be presented in this section. According to this study, when we look at the podcast public space in Turkey, it is seen that the majority of podcasts are made in Turkish, but they are also broadcast in English and German languages. Podcast producers are mostly individual producers. Long podcasts are heavy. Producers usually produce podcasts of 16 minutes or longer. Episodes are usually published sporadically. In terms of continuity, it was seen that 47 podcasts did not have episodes in the last three months. Solo format is preferred. The common podcast/chat format is the second preferred format after solo. Podcast publishers concentrate on 3 types: informative, supportive, hobby/leisure. Keywords: Podcast, Public Sphere, Turkish Podcasts, Information Society, Spotify.