
Murat AkserUniversity of Ulster · School of Communication and Media
Murat Akser
PhD. Communication and Culture
About
84
Publications
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Introduction
Murat's research focuses on independent filmmaking practices, particularly new cinemas like Dogme, American independent cinema and New Turkish cinema. He also studies film genre writing and intertextuality. His most recent work examines film parody, Turkish indie filmmaking practices and alternative media production.
Additional affiliations
October 2013 - present
October 2013 - present
October 2013 - present
Education
October 2001 - October 2006
September 1999 - May 2002
Publications
Publications (84)
This paper reveals the ways in which media autocracy operates on political, judicial, economic and discursive levels in post-2007 Turkish media. Newsmakers in Turkey currently experience five different systemic kinds of neoliberal government pressures to keep their voice down: conglomerate pressure, judicial suppression, online banishment, surveill...
Turkey has been undergoing a transition in governance over decades, most recently in the sociopolitical transformation from Kemalist laicism to Islamic-dominated politics. The shifts have been uneven, with government frequently overtaken by military control, and then returned to some form of democratic functioning, with associated changes in the la...
The relationship between Turkish media conglomerates and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has shown increased conflict since 2009. The AKP, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has displayed increasing fear of and suspicion toward Turkey's liberal media. Censorship of the news in Turkey intensified after the failed coup a...
In the case of Turkish cyber hacking groups, the definition of cyber terror does not apply. Instead, a new type of cyber activity is defined, that of disruptive discursive hacking, to identify the concerns of these attacks.
This book looks at the structural, economic and political reasons why the current media system fails urban educated young professionals in Turkey and led them to a month long resistance and protest through the use of social media during OccupyGezi movement.
This article is an exploration of leadership in media education and some of its identifying features. As lecturers in media studies and production, our teaching philosophy weaves through these themes: active learning (Budhai 2021), learning by doing (Schank et al 2013), peer and self-assessment (Iglesias Pérez, Vidal-Puga, and Pino Juste 2022) and...
Popular cinema in Turkey had mostly relied on adaptations of Hollywood cinema in its golden age in the 1960s to the 1980s. Transnational remakes of the time codified a negotiated aspect of modernisation discourse: nation-state myth, belief in progress/science and migration/visibility of women in cities. With the advent of television, the classic mo...
This article attempts to explain the current situation of the Turkish media system through the media systems approach as a case study with special attention to the concept of media capture. We propose that the Turkish media system’s shift is heavily influenced by media capture. We associate four of Hallin and Mancini’s media systems concepts relate...
While Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical concepts are already present in video game studies, this article focuses on his terminology and mechanisms as they can be applied to a video-game-specific, player interpretive journey, rather than a broader ontology. The aim is to offer examples of key terms in his work, used in context, to elucidate how the...
This article offers a critical reading of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree) through an exploration and critique of the mythmaking and monumentalization surrounding the Gallipoli Battle and the multiple ways in which Ceylan’s film unsettles the foundational myths of the last century in Turkey. Ceylan’s scenes and characters are co...
The deadline of receiving articles is extended to May 15th 2022
“Rhythm is an expansion of the elements that are part of the duration. In the visual arts, however, it is the way space is reconfigured to show the inner music of the individual. Rhythm is the pulse of colors, shapes or matter that appears in the appropriate time in the visual space. I...
This article examines the historical roots of the role of successive Turkish governments' fear of media and Turkish media's fear of government authority with respect to the development of press freedom over the long run and closely analyzes the historical pressures imposed on journalists through legal and informal means. We focus particularly on th...
World Cinema on Demand brings together diverse contributions by leading film and media scholars to examine world cinema’s dialogue with the transformations that took place during 2010-2014, engaging directly with ongoing debates surrounding national cinema, transnational identity, and cultural globalization, as well as ideas about genre, fandom and...
In the beginning of the pandemic most countries shut down film productions, film
theatres and universities where new generation of filmmakers were trained. These
developments came just after the bright future promised in academic studies and reports in
the UK and Ireland on the future of cinema (Stolz, A., Atkinson, S. A., & Kennedy, 2020; Barton
a...
استفحل الوباء جميع أرجاء البسيطة مُعطّلاً اقتصاديات العالم المعاصر، مُحطّمًا كلّ الحدود والحواجز الجغرافيّة، مُنهكًا كلّ المجالات الاقتصاديّة والثقافيّة دون استثناء. وهذا ما جعل انتاج وتوزيع وتظاهرات السينما، في شتى القارّات، يمرّ باضطرابات ملموسة ممّا يجعل ظروف انتاج وتوزيع السينما حول العالم تتطلّب استقصاءً وبحثًا معمّقًا. وهذا ما يوجب علينا تجاو...
استفحل الوباء جميع أرجاء البسيطة مُعطّلاً اقتصاديات العالم المعاصر، مُحطّمًا كلّ الحدود والحواجز الجغرافيّة، مُنهكًا كلّ المجالات الاقتصاديّة والثقافيّة دون استثناء. وهذا ما جعل انتاج وتوزيع وتظاهرات السينما، في شتى القارّات، يمرّ باضطرابات ملموسة ممّا يجعل ظروف انتاج وتوزيع السينما حول العالم تتطلّب استقصاءً وبحثًا معمّقًا. وهذا ما يوجب علينا تجاو...
There have been more than 150 popular Hollywood films that presented Turkey and the Turks in an Orientalist manner. That is, after more than sixty years of participating in Western democracy, having established a liberal market economy, and enjoying a functioning multi-party democratic political system, the image of Turkey in Hollywood
is still emp...
Writing on Northern Ireland post troubles society is a challenge in itself; identifying and deciphering the social media culture wars between multiple opposing parties within the Northern Ireland is even a bigger challenge that Paul Reilly tackled in his book Digital Contention in a Divided Society. The book is a solid case study of affective publi...
This issue of CINEJ Cinema Journal observed the slow recovery from the destructive effects of COVID-19 global pandemic on filmmaking, film distribution and exhibition, and teaching film at HE institutions. One development that is on the agenda is diversity and inclusion in film industry, film education and film studies/criticism as institution. The...
In 2021 we have received a variety of books on cinema and media from these publishers: American University of Cairo Press, Amsterdam University Press, Auteur, Bloomsbury Academic, Columbia University Press, Edinburgh University Press, IGI Global, Intellect, Liverpool University Press, transcript Verlag, University Press of Mississippi and Wayne Sta...
This issue of CINEJ Cinema Journal witnessed the devastating effects of COVID-19 global pandemic on filmmaking, film distribution and exhibition, and teaching film at HE institutions. Global shifts in production and distribution gave rise to new stars, streaming services. The diversity of film sets was gaining momentum as film productions were halt...
In 2020 we have received a variety of books on cinema and media from these publishers: Amsterdam University Press., Bloomsbury Academic, Columbia University Press, Edinburgh University Press, Intellect, Nordicom, Peter Lang, Routledge, University of Illinois Press, and Wayne State University Press.
Late in 2019 film studies lost two of its founding members that help define the field as a discipline with their work in the last 50 years. Thomas Elsaesser was one of the founding members of the editorial board of CINEJ Cinema Journal. His contribution to the study of German Cinema, founding of Amsterdam School of Cultural Studies and training of...
On july 27, 1966, the renowned Turkish film director Halit Refig ̆ angrily left a panel dis cussion on Turkish cinema. Organized by the film writers’ association Sinematek, the panel was titled “The Social Structure of Turkey, Turk ish Cinema and Its Future.” According to Refig ̆, the panel had expanded from a discussion of Turkish cinema and its...
In 2018-19 we have received a variety of books on cinema and media from these publishers: Bloomsbury Academic, Brill, BFI, Columbia University Press, Edinburgh University Press, IB Tauris, Manchester University Press, Peter Lang, Policy Press, Routledge, University of California Press, University of Illinois Press, Wayne State University Press.
Defined by some critics as the ultimate national cinema movement piece, Halit Refiğ’s I Lost My Heart to a Turk (1969), the love story of a German woman and a Turkish worker in the ancient town of Kayseri becomes an allegory for the Turkish nation’s identity crisis. This paper identifies the parameters used by Refiğ to position the Turkish identity...
Akser looks at the establishing factors of the production mode in Turkish cinema from the perspective of finance, production regime, the role of the screenwriter, and presentation of stars. Focusing on the organization and production of the Turkish film industry, this chapter also draws attention to the change within Turkish cinema from an artisana...
Halit Refiğ had impact on Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and practitioner. He worked his way up from the 1950s as a film critic and became a film director practicing until the day he died. He also worked along with other directors like Metin Erksan, Lütfi Akad, Memduh Un, Duygu Sagiroglu. Ertem Görec, Nedim Otyam, Ilhan Arakon at Mimar S...
Halit Refiğ had impact on debates around Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and as a practitioner. Instrumental in establishing the Turkish Film Institute under MSU along with his director colleagues like Metin Erksan and Lutfi Akad, Refiğ lectured for many years at the first cinema training department. This translation is from his 1971 coll...
Turkish Cinema studies goes back to 1968 with the publication of Nijat Ozon’s filmography. Before that, there has been film criticism by journalists in short-lived film magazines and newspapers. The first theoretical attempt define Turkish cinema as a culturally distinct cinema came from a film director, Halit Refiğ’s Fight For a National Cinema (U...
Ozlem Koksal’s book focuses on the representation of minorities in Turkish cinema from a transnational perspective. The book examines recent filmic explorations of the three large minorities that disappeared from Turkey after World War I and with the establishment of Turkish Republic in the 1920s: the Greek, Jewish and Armenian minorities. The book...
The School of Creative Arts & Technologies at Ulster University (Magee) has brought together the subject of computing with creative technologies, cinematic arts (film), drama, dance, music and design in terms of research and education. We propose here the development of a flagship computer software platform, SceneMaker, acting as a digital laborato...
Halit Refig had impact on Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and practitioner. He worked his way up from the 1950s as a film critic and become a film director practicing until the day he died. He also worked along with other directors like Metin Erksan, Lütfi Akad, Memduh Un, Duygu Sagiroglu. Ertem Görec, Nedim Otyam, Ilhan Arakon at Mimar S...
The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival was established in 1964. It is considered by many to be Turkey’s foremost film festival—a festive environment where film critics, directors, stars and spectators mingle in press conferences and parties, a spectacular event likened to Cannes Film Festival by those organising and attending it (Akser, “Antalya”...
This paper is about two things. On the one hand it tries to observe some of the changes after the digital revolution, changes that had an impact on film festivals. The digital projection and acceptance of digital films to film festivals have been achieved. Yet an aspect of this digitization is under attack. The film submissions through digital port...
Stefania Milan’s book is about the interaction between social movements and how they use media technologies. Her main premise is that communication technologies are instrumental in giving social movements a voice, and that beyond this, they are part of the impact of the social movements and they affect the way these movements operate.
The research literature on online dating has mostly concentrated on two strands of research: on who uses these services and why-how misrepresentation of self happens. The early assumptions of who were the shy people used online dating to their advantage. Yet further studies revealed that more aggressive, and less shy people overly use these service...
Independent Filmmaking around the Globe calls attention to the significant changes taking place in independent cinema today, as new production and distribution technology and shifting social dynamics make it more and more possible for independent filmmakers to produce films outside both the mainstream global film industry and their own national fil...
The democratic rights claimed to be enshrined but curtailed under the AKP government’s repressive regime was counterbalanced by Redhack, a Turkish hacktivist group online. Through their diverse tactics such as resistance, revelation and countering Redhack’s activity led to a digital transformation in Turkish politics. Redhack’s opposition is toward...
Mobile learning applications are widely used in various levels of education process. In developing and developed countries, educational institutions use tablets and personal computers for supporting learning processes. Mobile learning practices are generally used for overcoming time-space constraints in traditional learning process. This study cove...
How can we define "new" in cinema? Is it creating a new film movement where a new group of filmmakers emerges to call themselves the next independent movement? Is it a new cinema in an age when every day some new technological delivery system (3D, Blu-ray, VOD) changes methods of distribution and exhibition? What about a sudden shift in production...
This volume covers approaches concerning the relationship between innovation in cinema and the politics of filmmaking in new cinema practices in Turkey. The contributors focus on historiography, genres, mainstream and art cinema production, and transnational cinema, as well as changing narratives and identities. The new cinema movement in Turkey is...
This volume covers approaches concerning the relationship between innovation in cinema and the politics of filmmaking in new cinema practices in Turkey. The contributors focus on historiography, genres, mainstream and art cinema production, and transnational cinema, as well as changing narratives and identities. The new cinema movement in Turkey is...
This paper is an attempt in interpreting the relationship between the adoption of new communications technologies such as the internet and how they are transformed and used in expression of a resisting cultural identity through content creation, namely internet flash animation in Turkey. The study discusses the Turkish adaptation of media of commun...
The list below includes the names of scholars who anonymously reviewed submissions to CINEJ during 2013. The assesment of manuscripts prepared by these reviewers has contributed to the quality of scholarship CINEJ published during the year and we are very appreciative of this service.
This essay will hunt down and classify the concept of the national as a discourse in Turkish cinema that has been constructed back in 1965, by the film critics, by filmmakers and finally by today’s theoretical standards. So the questions we will be constantly asking throughout the essay can be: Is what can be called part of national film culture an...
Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival: Between the national and the global The first edition of the Antalya Golden Orange International Film Festival was launched fifty years ago in 1964, at a time when the international success of the director Metin Erksan ignited national support for the creation of a Turkish film festival. Antalya Golden Orange Fi...
This is a reading of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive through psychoanalytic approach of Lacan from the perspective of formation of fantasy and shifting identities. Lynch constructs his films consciously choosing his themes from the sub(versive/conscious) side of human mind. Mulholland Drive has been analyzed several times from different approaches r...
Film theory has lost itself in the woods among debates of the mind and the senses. There are those who are interested in a more tactile sense of the real in film studies. This issue of CINEJ focuses on the documentary truth and how it aims to present us a real and a better world.
This paper outlines a theory of style and performance in Canadian film based on geography, gender and genre. It is possible to form a theory of Canadian cinema based on theme-genre (strong women, nature as oppressor in dysfunctional family melodramas) in which female characters, as well as their personas, interact with both a physical geography and...
CINEJ Cinema Journal is a newcomer to the field of film studies. It is committed to publishing fresh and original research in the fields of film and media studies. The need for such a journal is result of emergence of fresh perspectives in film studies and the absence of an outlet to incorporate such ideals.
Typescript. Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Film and Video. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-148). System requirements for Internet version: Adobe Acrobat reader. Microfiche.
In this study, the revolutionary intellectual, as portrayed in the March 12 novels, is discussed. First, the intellectual is defined and the qualities of the revolutionary intellectuals in March 12 novels discussed. It is argued that they had a persistent criticism of the bourgeois class and sympathy for the underprivileged people. They had a missi...