Negotiating visibility: Women in comedy and polymediated politics in Turkey

This article examines the polymediated performances and political humor of women comedians in Turkey’s emerging comedy landscape. Based on a long-term ethnographic study conducted between January 2024 and June 2025, we explore how the comedy scene operates as a male-dominated field that simultaneously includes and excludes women, revealing the constraints women comedians face, including patriarchal norms, censorship, and the precarities of neoliberal creative labor. Through participant observation and interviews, the study highlights how women comedians utilize polymedia—the selective and multidimensional use of media platforms—to overcome these constraints, cultivate audiences, and craft feminist and political critiques. Women comedians build networks of solidarity while competing for limited resources, using polymedia as a means of empowerment and survival. Their efforts reveal both the potential and the limits of polymediation, as they contend with unequal access to audiences, line-ups, and institutional support. Their strategies illuminate the entangled dynamics of gender, digital media, and power within Turkey’s contemporary comedy landscape.