Media Use as an Avenue to Political Identity in an Authoritarian Context?

Abstract: The current exploratory interview study investigates the link between media use and political identity formation in an authoritarian regime context – Turkey. It aims to find out how emerging adults achieve identity exploration and commitment in a country that is characterized by violations of civil liberties and human rights infringements. In such contexts, the political identity development of emerging adults is likely to draw on alternative, non-conventional forms of engagement such as media use. But the complex relationship between political identity development and media use in emerging adults is so far understudied. In the current study, semi-structured interviews were carried out with a purposeful sample of N = 22 emerging adults and subjected to an inductive coding procedure. Findings reveal four pathways of identity exploration and commitment through media, especially social and entertainment media, displaying the highly agentic nature of identity formation: (1) Discovering uncharted paths and authenticity in safe spaces; (2) Oscillating between approach and reproach; (3) Issue-based personalized commitment embedded in lived experience; (4) Validating one’s views – disengaging from conventional politics. In Turkey, emerging adults resort to alternative covert spaces and endorse non-conventional exploration and commitment activities within social media, entertainment media, their social networks, as well as the arts, forming oppositional political identities driven by lived experience.