Children and Youth in Turkish TV Series: An Analysis of Media, Culture, and Ideology
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Abstract
This study examines how child and youth characters are represented in Turkish television series and analyzes these representations within the context of media, culture, and ideology. In Türkiye, television series stand out as important cultural narratives that reach large audiences and reproduce societal values. Since childhood and adolescence are critical periods in the formation of individuals' identities, it necessitates an examination of media representations targeting these age groups. The research was conducted on twelve Turkish television series broadcast between 2003 and 2024, in which child and youth characters played a central role in the narrative. Qualitative content analysis was used in the study; the representations of children and youth in the series were analyzed through thematic and categorical coding. The findings show that child and youth characters in the series are frequently constructed around violence, crime, and authority relationships; conversely, representations focusing on education, daily life, and multifaceted identity development remain limited. Furthermore, it was determined that the series reproduce ideological discourses such as family, gender, national identity, and moral values through their representations of children and youth. The study concludes that the representations of children and youth in Turkish television series are not merely narratives for entertainment purposes; It also reveals that these representations are an important part of ideological meaning-making processes. The findings show that these representations are predominantly concentrated along the axes of violence-crime and historical-ideological value transmission.
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