Description
In authoritarian environments, how can citizens publicly contest conservative gender norms? The political science literature on media and authoritarianism largely focuses on news coverage and digital platforms. This paper turns the spotlight on entertainment media by examining the roles dramatic serials play in oppositional discourse. I argue the public visibility and emotional resonance of highly popular TV serials make them a form of pop cultural capital – i.e., an attractive, efficient vernacular resource – that social media users draw on in expressing political preferences and seeking to persuade others. Drawing from sociology and media studies, the paper treats citizens of authoritarian regimes as both audiences and mediators of TV content. I theorize the “everyday” contention practice of pop cultural contestation: how and why these individuals creatively repurpose characters and plot lines from TV dramas in relatively “benign” and thus low-cost social media posts. Focusing on gender roles, I develop my argument in the context of the ruling AKP’s “New Turkey” – a conservative socio-political project with an explicit biopolitical component – by using the most-watched Turkish family drama Kızılcık Şerbeti (Cranberry Juice, 2022-2024). I create a dataset of Twitter (X) and Instagram posts referencing the series in the four months prior to the May 2023 elections. I then use intertextual analysis to extract focal points of discourse on female characters, identifying common frames that challenge regime-prescribed gender roles and call for political change. My findings advance studies of authoritarianism by examining the micropolitics of gender contestation through a vernacular media lens.
