Migration and Media: Attitudes toward Syrian Media among Syrian-Immigrant University Students in Gaziantep

This study aims to understand the attitudes toward Syrian media held by Syrian-immigrant university students living in the city of Gaziantep. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 50 young immi-grant students from different academic departments using a semi-structured questionnaire. On the ba-sis of these interviews, a quantitative overview was produced detailing the main sources of their knowl-edge and the traditional communication channels they follow in Syrian media, including newspapers, magazines, and radio. This overview was then enriched qualitatively with ethnographic data based on students' discourses, meaning routes, the ways they make sense of their relationship with the media, and the descriptions that directors of the most popular communication channels offered of their own social positions and broadcasting policies. Although it has been argued that disparaging coverage and representations of immigrants in Turkish media have led young Syrian immigrants to eschew Turkish media and to follow Syrian media instead, the results of this study indicate that they do not do so in any significant way. The findings of this study suggest that Syrian-immigrant audiences in Turkey have two main tendencies in relation to Syrian media: closing themselves off to the media completely and using it to connect with those left behind in Syria.