Mediated Aspirations and Structural Walls: Daily Media Practices Among a Peripheral Roma Community in Türkiye

ABSTRACT This article examines how media usage trends of Roma people intersect with urban peripherality and structural inequalities. The study designed as a two‐stage comparative ethnographic field study and conducted in 2016 and 2025 on a Roma community living in Izmir Province of Türkiye, focuses on the ongoing deprivations of the Roma population in education, employment, housing, and digital infrastructure, examining how they integrate media technologies into their daily lives and their own assessments of these issues. The study was conducted using participant observation and semistructured interviews with 40 individuals from different age and gender groups. The findings indicate a significant shift from television‐based media consumption to increased interaction with digital platforms due to the proliferation of smartphones and recent internet connectivity. Use of digital media platforms by Roma people offers significant opportunities in terms of social visibility, interaction, and active content creation; however, the high expectations fostered by digital platforms have negative impacts on disadvantaged groups, creating a significant ontological incompatibility between these expectations and the fragile social realities of disadvantaged groups. The “mediated hopes” constructed by members of disadvantaged groups collide with the wall of existing structural limitations, triggering a deep sense of disappointment and social alienation, particularly among group members.