Stimulation of the collective memory of the 1999 Turkey earthquake through the Turkish media coverage of the 2023 earthquake

Yasmin Aldamen 1 * , Dilana Thasleem Abdul Jaleel 2
More Detail
1 Department of Journalism, Media, and Digital Communication, Faculty of Arts, The University of Jordan. Amman, JORDAN
2 Department of New Media and Communication, School of Communication, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, TÜRKİYE
* Corresponding Author
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, Volume 14, Issue 2, Article No: e202420. https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/14407
OPEN ACCESS   481 Views   318 Downloads   Published online: 26 Mar 2024
Download Full Text (PDF)

ABSTRACT

Turkey has been struck by several powerful earthquakes. Since the 1999 earthquake was the most recent and devastating earthquake before the last one happened in February 2023, many of these media channels’ depictions of the 2023 earthquake in Turkey may have been impacted by the collective memory of the 1999 earthquake. Collective memory of disasters and conflicts frequently takes on special significance as a mechanism for society to cope with the catastrophic events they have witnessed. Collective memory aids societies in dealing with the consequences of such events by giving a feeling of continuity as well as a structure for interpreting and comprehending what occurred. The media and social media are important in developing and conveying collective memory. They play an important role in framing events, transmitting details, and providing a forum for public debate. Social media, in addition to traditional media, has emerged as an innovative platform for the construction and diffusion of collective memory. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the Turkish media depicted the collective memory of the 1999 earthquake in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake. If the collective memory of the 1999 earthquake is invoked in media coverage of the 2023 earthquake, how is it depicted in terms of lessons learned, public response, and influence on Turkish society? The study’s findings indicate that the analysis of Turkish media coverage pertaining to the 2023 earthquake has demonstrated a restricted collective recollection of the 1999 earthquake.
Keywords: 1999 Turkey earthquake, 2023 Turkey earthquake, collective memory, mass communication, media depiction

CITATION

Aldamen, Y., & Abdul Jaleel, D. T. (2024). Stimulation of the collective memory of the 1999 Turkey earthquake through the Turkish media coverage of the 2023 earthquake. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 14(2), e202420. https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/14407

REFERENCES

  • Aldamen, Y. (2017). The role of print and electronic media in the defense of human rights: A Jordanian perspective. Jordan Journal of Social Sciences, 10(1), 119-131. https://doi.org/10.12816/0040694
  • Aldamen, Y. (2023a). Can a negative representation of refugees in social media lead to compassion fatigue? An analysis of the perspectives of a sample of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey. Journalism and Media, 4(1), 90-104. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4010007
  • Aldamen, Y. (2023b). Understanding social media dependency, and uses and gratifications as a communication system in the migration Era Syrian refugees in host countries as a case study. Social Sciences, 12(6), 322. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12060322
  • Aldamen, Y. (2023c). Xenophobia and hate speech towards refugees on social media: Reinforcing causes, negative effects, defense and response mechanisms against that speech. Societies, 13(4), 83. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13040083
  • Aldamen, Y. (2023d). How the media agenda contributes to cultivating symbolic annihilation and gender-based stigmatization frames for Syrian refugee women. Language Discourse & Society, 11(2), 22. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10291208
  • Aldamen, Y. (2023e). Refugee journalist phenomenon as a consequence of migration and refugee crises: The role of social media in transferring refugees role from “has been affected” to “has affected”. Studies in Media and Communication, 11(6), 358-370. https://doi.org/10.11114/smc.v11i6.6202
  • Aldamen, Y., & Hacimic, E. (2023). Positive determinism of Twitter usage development in crisis communication: Rescue and relief efforts after the 6 February 2023 earthquake in Türkiye as a case study. Social Sciences, 12(8), 436. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12080436
  • Ariely, G. (2021). Collective memory and attitudes toward asylum seekers: Evidence from Israel. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(5), 1084-1102. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1572499
  • Bird, S. E., & Dardenne, R. W. (1988). Myth, chronicle, and story: Exploring the narrative qualities of news. In J. W. Carey (Ed.), Media, myths and narratives: Television and the press. SAGE.
  • Birkner, T., & Donk, A. (2020). Collective memory and social media: Fostering a new historical consciousness in the digital age? Memory Studies, 13(4), 367-383. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698017750012
  • Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Invisible mediators of action: Classification and the ubiquity of standards. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 7(1-2), 147-163. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2000.9677652
  • Dominey-Howes, D., & Gorman-Murray, A. (2014). Queering disasters: On the need to account for LGBTI experiences in natural disaster contexts. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 21(7), 905-918. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2013.802673
  • Edy, J. A. (1999). Journalistic use of collective memory. Journal of Communication, 49(2), 71-85. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1999.tb02794.x
  • Erdik, M. (2001). Report on 1999 Kocaeli and Duzce Turkey earthquakes. Structural Control for Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 2001, 149-186. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812811707_0018
  • Erll, A. (2011). Travelling memory. Parallax, 17(4), 4-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605570
  • Fanta, V., Salek, M., & Sklenicka, P. (2019). How long do floods throughout the millennium remain in the collective memory? Nature Communications, 10, 1105. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09102-3
  • Ferron, M., & Massa, P. (2012). Psychological processes underlying Wikipedia representations of natural and manmade disasters. In Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (pp. 1-10). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2462932.2462935
  • García-Gavilanes, R., Mollgaard, A., Tsvetkova, M., & Yasseri, T. (2017). The memory remains: Understanding collective memory in the digital age. Science Advances, 3(4), e1602368. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602368
  • Ghezzi, A., Pereira, A. G., Vesnic-Alujevic, L. (2014). The ethics of memory in a digital age: Interrogating the right to be forgotten. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428455_1
  • Gibson, P. L., & Stones, S. (2021). Remediation and remembrance: “Dancing Auschwitz” collective memory and new media . Journal for Communication Studies, 5(10).
  • Halbwachs, M. (1925). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire [Social frameworks of memory]. Librairie Félix Alcan [Félix Alcan Bookstore].
  • Haskins, E. (2007). Between archive and participation: Public memory in a digital age. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 37(4), 401-422. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773940601086794
  • Hobbins, J. (2021). Collective memories and professional ideals: Teachers’ experiences of a disaster. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 64, 102479. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102479
  • Hoskins, A. (2011). 7/7 and connective memory: Interactional trajectories of remembering in post-scarcity culture. Memory Studies, 4(3), 269-280. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698011402570
  • Hoskins, A. (2017). Memory of the multitude: The end of collective memory. In A. Hoskins (Ed.), Digital memory studies: Media pasts in transition. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315637235
  • Huyssen, A. (2000). Present pasts: Media, politics, amnesia. Public Culture, 12(1), 21-38. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-1-21
  • Jalali, R. (2002). Civil society and the state: Turkey after the earthquake. Disasters, 26(2), 120-139. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7717.00196
  • Kanayama, T., & Ogawa, A. (2020). Collective memories of disaster through community radio: A case study of the great East Japan earthquake. Journal of the Institute of Information and Communication Engineers, 38(1-2), 134-135.
  • Kansteiner, W. (2002). Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies. History and Theory, 41(2), 179-197. https://doi.org/10.1111/0018-2656.00198
  • Kitch, C. (2005). Pages from the past: History and memory in American magazines. University of North Carolina Press.
  • Le Goff, J. (1992). History and memory. Columbia University Press.
  • Lule, J. (2001). Daily news, eternal stories: The mythological role of journalism. The Guilford Press.
  • McQuail, D. (1985). Sociology of mass communication. Annual Review of Sociology, 11, 93-111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2083287
  • Merrin, W. (2014). Media studies 2.0. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203083581
  • Meyers, O. (2007). Memory in journalism and the memory of journalism: Israeli journalists and the constructed legacy of Haolam Hazeh. Journal of Communication, 57(4), 719-738. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2007.00365.x
  • Mohammad, R., & Aldamen, Y. (2023). Media dependency, uses and gratifications, and knowledge gap in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Afghanistan and Turkey. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 13(3), e202324. https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/13097
  • Neal, A. G. (2005). National trauma and collective memory: Extraordinary events in the American experience. Routledge.
  • Newman, N. (2021, 23 June). Turkey. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
  • University of Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2021/turkey
  • Niethammer, L. (1980). Oral history. https://doi.org/10.14765/zzf.dok-2478
  • Olick, J. K. (1999). Collective memory: The two cultures. Sociological Theory, 17(3), 333-348. https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00083
  • Qu, Z, Wang, F., Chen, X., Wang, X., & Zhou, Z. (2023). Rapid report of seismic damage to hospitals in the 2023 Turkey earthquake sequences. Earthquake Research Advances, 3(4), 100234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eqrea.2023.100234
  • Sezen, H., & Whittaker, A. S. (2006). Seismic performance of industrial facilities affected by the 1999 Turkey earthquake. Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0887-3828(2006)20:1(28)
  • Similarweb. (2023). Top websites ranking. similarweb. https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/turkey/news-and-media/
  • Simpson, E., & Corbridge, S. (2006). The geography of things that may become memories: The 2001 earthquake in Kachchh-Gujarat and the politics of rehabilitation in the pre-memorial era. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(3), 566-585. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00706.x
  • Taffal, A. (2015). Collective memory: A universal phenomenon the Palestinian collective memory as a case study. Central European Political Studies Journal, 3(15), 204-220.
  • Toraman, C., Kucukkaya, I. E., Ozcelik, O., & Sahin, U. (2023). Tweets under the rubble: Detection of messages calling for help in earthquake disaster. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.13403
  • van Dijck, J. (2004). Mediated memories: Personal cultural memory as object of cultural analysis. Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 18(2), 261-277. https://doi.org/10.1080/1030431042000215040
  • Volkmer, I., & Lee, C. (2014). Shifting the politics of memory: Mnemonic trajectories in a global public terrain. In B. Zelizer, & K. Tenenboim-Weinblatt (Eds.), Journalism and memory (pp. 50-65). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263940_4
  • Wazzan, A., & Aldamen. Y. (2023). How university students evaluate the role of social media in political polarization: Perspectives of a sample of Turkish undergraduate and graduate students. Journalism and Media, 4(4), 1001-1020. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040064
  • WHO. (2023). Türkiye earthquake: external situation report no.5: 13-19 March 2023. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/WHO-EURO-2023-7145-46911-68823
  • Wilson, G. A. (2013). Community resilience, social memory and the post-2010 Christchurch (New Zealand) earthquakes. Area, 45(2), 207-215. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12012
  • Yasseri, T., Gildersleve, P., & David, L. (2022). Collective memory in the digital age. In S. O'Mara (Ed.), Progress in Brain Research (Part of volume: Collective memory, Volume 274, Issue 1, pp. 203-226). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.07.001
  • Zelizer, B. (1992). Covering the body: The Kennedy assassination, the media, and the shaping of collective memory. University of Chicago Press.
  • Zelizer, B. (1995). Reading the past against the grain: The shape of memory studies. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12(2), 214-239.
  • Zhao, H., & Liu, J. (2015). Social media and collective remembrance. The debate over China’s great famine on weibo. China Perspectives, 2015(2015/1), 41-48. https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.6649
  • Zilio, L. D., & Ampuero, J.-P. (2023). Earthquake doublet in Turkey and Syria. Communications Earth & Environment, 4, 71. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00747-z