Digitalisation and Precarisation in Sports Journalism in Turkey: Invisible Emotions of Sports Journalists

Sports journalism in Turkey has been based solely on football. Other sports, especially amateur sports, have been covered in a limited way, except for the Men’s Basketball National Team and the international successes of basketball clubs or the championships of the Women’s Volleyball Team in recent years. The processes of denunciation and the precariatisation of labour in the Turkish media have led to the news sources of newspapers and televisions depending on agencies. Sport is a social organisation where emotions are intense. It is possible to trace the traces of an emotional intersection by both the spectators, the newsmakers and the athletes. The study will have two main axes. First, it will be questioned how the news production processes are shaped by the reporters working in the Istanbul bureau of İhlas News Agency, and how the journalism traditionally hegemonised by football and Istanbul teams in football affects the reporters’ perspectives. In this respect, the professional dimension of digitalisation processes in journalism, especially in sports journalism, will be emphasised and it will be tried to be understood how it affects the self-definition and self-perception of journalists. At another stage, it will be tried to question how working conditions and social media affect news making processes. Answers will be sought to the questions of digitalised working conditions, the digitalised daily lives of sports journalists, and which emotions are brought to the fore by the blurring of the boundaries of professional and daily life. It will be sought to answer the question of what contradictions the precariatised labour processes in sports journalism reveal in the self-presentations of journalists. In the study, in-depth interviews will be conducted with sports reporters working in the Istanbul bureau of İhlas News Agency and Istanbul-based Fanatik and Fatomaç reporters, and news-making processes will be investigated through participant observation.