Turkish transnational media in Melbourne: a migrant mediascape

The explosive rise in new forms of media and communications technologies has had a profound impact on the experiences of first-and second-generation migrants in multicultural societies. New possibilities for transcending old national understandings of community through the rise of globally linked networks of transnational ties invite closer examination. The globally dispersed Turkish diaspora uses a variety of new technologies to keep in touch with family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues across the globe. The networks arising through such activities have come to complement and sometimes to replace the traditional importance of face-to-face communities in the establishment of feelings of community, inclusion and belonging. A current research project in Melbourne has been investigating the Turkish community's use of both old and new media to establish, assert and consolidate their own sense of community, beyond the limiting national frames of Turkish, Australian or even Turkish-Australian identity constructs.