Emel Uzun*
On August 2-10, 2024, Instagram was blocked by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) for nine days, turning into the second major societal and legal pressure crisis of the summer. When the idea to write an article about this ban emerged, the restriction was still in place, and the issue was being hotly debated in news programs. The criticisms framed around the violation of the right to access media, coupled with the anger brought about by the hastily passed stray animal law without any public consensus, left us feeling increasingly squeezed. After all, Instagram is often described as a platform where you can find a bit of entertainment and lifestyle content, making it more refreshing than X.
We were also feeling a sense of deprivation. One of the automatic actions we did whenever we picked up our phones was no longer available. A few days later, people started saying, “In some ways, it’s actually a good thing!” The term “Instagram detox” began to circulate. People started saying things like, “I feel a bit more relaxed, I can read books, and I feel less angry.” Immediately afterward, these attitudes were criticized. Theater actor Kฤฑvanรง Kฤฑlฤฑnรง addressed this group as “cute conformists deriving detox from a violation of rights.” Sharing experiences of life without Instagram was stigmatized by this reaction, and as far as I could see, the discussion ended there. Then, just as we were still trying to understand why Instagram was blocked and why Facebook, which is owned by the same company, was not, Instagram was reopened. Everyone returned to their stories, posts, and reels as if they had just come back from a long vacation. I watched several funny videos representing Turkey’s reunion with Instagram. It was clear that Turkey missed Instagram.
Of course, the sudden and unexplained shutdown of a media platform is a violation of legal, social, and economic rights. Let that be acknowledged with all its legitimacy. However, in this article, I wanted to tackle two issues, even though I cannot provide definitive answers here. The first is related to the question of what we, as a society, are doing with Instagram. I don’t aim to answer this question in this article, as it requires extensive research. The second issue this article seeks to discuss is the often-highlighted notion of the “empowered audience” in the social media age.
Different social media platforms develop various usage patterns in different countries, shaped by cultural, social, and political structures. Due to the conditions we are in, almost every platform in our country is used in response to political dynamics, as there is already a lot of pressure felt in the public sphere. The general consensus is that X has become a kind of news source in Turkey because national channels and newspapers do not meet the demand for news. YouTube is seen as a reformulated version of the mainstream media and national television channels that have disappeared in our country. In other words, YouTube, among other things, is defined as a platform where television is re-regulated. Instagram, on the other hand, is a visual platform. Its primary medium is visual content. It is a place where we meet our daily visual and video needs. Although it is not just an entertainment platform, it is also a major economic venture.
But as I mentioned, looking at my own social media usage, Instagram is still somewhat of a space where one can escape the daily politics that every citizen of this country is bombarded with, as it is a place where you can follow content related to daily life, food, fashion, and countless other interests. When access to X is blocked, the decision is often seen as political, as its connection with the government and social opposition is clear. But when a platform so filled with daily activities, a bit of joy, and fun, and important to a large segment of the population as an economic space is banned, the reaction was much stronger.
During this process, we learned that a significant commercial movement is happening on Instagram. Experts said that its daily cost was 2 million TL during that period. Aside from the commercial activities carried out by influencers, it is also a place where small and medium-sized producers find a space to sell and promote their products. It provides access to entrepreneurial ideas that can help us break out of the unemployment and poverty we are trapped in, especially enabling many economically weaker and more vulnerable women to become entrepreneurs.
This platform is not just about Instagram entrepreneurs. We are also talking about millions of people who use the platform without earning an income from it. For them, it may be just a tool for having fun and clearing their minds. Perhaps Instagram means more than just fun for these people. For example, it may function as a way to be part of a collective or to reach out to like-minded people. Personally, I closely followed “Instamom” accounts during the early days of my motherhood. It was invaluable at that time to be able to connect with other women whose experiences were in harmony with my own through these accounts and to learn from their experiences. In other words, there are many forms of interaction on these platforms, whether we foresee them or not. We need to understand them better.
To ask the question “What are we doing with social media platforms?” one must attribute power and agency to the audience. This agency is often readily accepted in this era. With the rapid digital transformation in this period, the idea that the audience can choose, not choose, transform the message, produce content, and generate economic income through these platforms became even more significant. In other words, from the moment the ordinary audience became not only a passive viewer but also a media content producer, the question of what the audience does with the media became popular again. But after this last Instagram ban, I can’t help but wonder, “Can we still talk about the increasing power of the audience?”
The question “What do audiences do with media and media messages?” did not emerge in communication research until the 1960s, even though the study of communication dates back to the early 20th century. Early on, it was concluded that mass media had an absolute effect and power in shaping opinions. Theories such as the “magic bullet” and “hypodermic needle” created the idea that individuals exposed to media messages could not escape the meaning and impact of these messages. Just as we cannot escape the effect of a bullet that hits our body, it was argued that we are absolutely influenced by the media messages we are exposed to. Both liberal pluralist approaches and the thoughts produced by the Frankfurt School thinkers essentially emphasized the power of media tools and the weakness of the audience. In the next phase of communication research, studies were conducted that questioned the absolute power attributed to the media, revealing initial findings that challenged this idea. These studies suggested that media messages were not directly injected into audiences but rather filtered through opinion leaders before entering public circulation. In other words, the media might not be as powerful as previously thought[2]. The idea that the audience might also have power continued to be defended more and more strongly from that point on in the media literature.
The most significant breakthrough came in the 1960s with the contributions of the British Cultural Studies School. When the idea emerged that the audience was also an agent and could read media texts in certain ways, research began attributing critical, negotiating, or even rejecting positions to the audience for the first time.
At the point where we stand today, the approach of the “media-producing new audience” continues to be heavily emphasized. On the other hand, in this age where mass media is largely digitalized, the magnitude and comprehensiveness of the media’s power are being understood through new concepts. In other words, many ideas continue to be produced about both the agency of the audience and the decisive universal power of the media industry. This is not seen as a contradiction. Because understanding the social impact of media has brought us to a point where political-economic approaches have regained importance. In other words, while the media is increasingly being interpreted as a power center for global capitalist forces, we continue to claim that the audience is gaining power in this determinative environment.
In my opinion, since Barack Obama’s first run for the U.S. presidency in 2008, and more definitively since Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, we have returned to the approach of media’s strong effects. Since the first time we heard the name Cambridge Analytica and the acceptance of “voter behavior” manipulation through social media platforms, it would not be an exaggeration to say that communication research has, in a way, returned to the era of the strong effects of media. At the very least, it is a fruitful debate for speculation.
All these social media restrictions show us once again how powerless the audience actually is. Yes, social movements can be organized on X, civil society can express itself on this platform more successfully than ever before, and news flows censored in the mainstream media can be followed on X. But there are still those who can suddenly pull the plug on the device.
We were the first country to ban the digital literature application Wattpad. During the days when the ban continued, Hรผseyin Yayman, the head of the Parliamentary Digital Media Commission, said, “Our nation wants Tik-Tok to be shut down.” All these developments show that the bans may continue. Therefore, it seems that the efforts to suppress and weaken the “over-empowered” audience/producers on social media will continue.
What I’m saying is, as citizenship rights weaken, believing that we are growing stronger as an audience no longer seems very convincing to me.
[1] Academic literature is still trying to answer the general question of “What is being done on Instagram?” Since the platform is new, it is first being described in certain cultural and social contexts. The question we know the least about is, “What are we doing with social media platforms?”
[2] However, this approach discussed the possible weakness of the media, not the power of the audience. The agency of the audience was introduced by active audience research.
*Emel Uzun was born in 1983 in Akรงakoca. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Ankara Universityโs Faculty of Communication. She continued her doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently working as a research assistant at Hacettepe Universityโs Faculty of Communication.
This article was originally published in Birikim Magazine in Turkish and translated into English by Politurco.
