Abstract:
Increased autonomy of individuals to select content in online media has raised serious scholar concerns. It is argued that individuals now could abandon po-litical news for more entertainment exposure; or they could avoid content countering their ideas, and tend to view more of like-minded messages. While a majority of studies testing such hypothesis have been conducted on Ameri-can society, the literature on Turkey lacks studies that reveal audiences’ moti-vations in media use, particularly their responses to high polarization. This study focuses on urban and young (18-30 aged Internet users’ per-ception of media and news and their media use habits. The research is based on sixteen semi-structured interviews conducted with young Internet users in Istanbul. The sample included both pro-governmental (Justice and Develop-ment Party or Nationalist Movement Party voters and oppositional partici-pants (Republican People’s Party, Good Party or Peoples’ Democratic Party supporters as well as a generational stratification along Z Generation (18-24 aged and Y Generation members (25-30 aged. The findings are analyzed in the light of both socio-psychological theories on information exposure and more contemporary debates on polarization, post-truth and generational trends in media use. This research demonstrates that instead of living in echo chambers where they increasingly interact with only like-minded messages, individuals can also grow an awareness towards polarization and partisanship in media, and mechanisms to cope with disinformation.
