Browsing by Author "Uzunoglu, Sarphan"

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Sponsorship and Brand Identity in Youtube Sports Content: Understanding Perceptions and Representations
(University of Vic, 2025) Uzunoglu, Sarphan
This study examines how sponsorships in You-Tube sports content influence brand identity and viewer perceptions, focusing on Londra Merkez, a Turkish program under Socrates Dergi. Analyzing 160 episodes and 53,459 comments across Seasons 4-7, it employs qualitative content analysis and NLP-based sentiment analysis to assess sponsorship integration and audience reactions. Grounded in Social Ex change Theory (SET), findings reveal a cost-benefit tension: 56% of sponsorship-related comments criticize ad frequency and intrusiveness (e.g., TikTak) while 26% praise incentives like giveaways (e.g., Y & uuml;zdeY & uuml;z, Socrates App). Authenticity Theory, Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), and Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism illuminate trust, viewer needs, and brand positioning dynamics. Highlighting digital sports marketing innovations, social media's role, and brand-sport synergies, this research offers a longitudinal perspective from Turkey's vibrant media landscape. It provides actionable strategies for optimizing sponsorships, contributing to current trends in sports communication and effectiveness.
Trolling or Astroturfing? Tracing Terminological Drift and Its Democratic Costs in Turkish Political Journalism
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2026) Uzunoglu, Sarphan
The terms trolling and astroturfing are widely used in Turkish political journalism but are often conflated, producing significant conceptual ambiguity and normative confusion. This article offers a theoretical and empirical intervention to clarify these forms of digital manipulation and to examine how they are framed in media discourse. Drawing on a stratified-random sample of 200 news and opinion articles published between January 2023 and April 2025, the study applies media content analysis across seven ideologically diverse Turkish outlets. Articles were coded using a six-dimension schema addressing conceptual framing, actor and sponsorship cues, functional intent, astroturf linkages, normative stance, and solution discourse. Findings reveal a pervasive pattern of label inflation, with trolling used as a catch-all term encompassing both decentralized harassment and coordinated, sponsor-driven propaganda. Explicit references to sponsorship were rare, and discussions of platform governance or policy solutions were largely absent. The article proposes a revised conceptual framework to distinguish trolling from astroturfing more precisely. It contributes to broader discussions about hybrid influence campaigns, media framing strategies, and the role of journalism in sustaining democratic accountability in digitally polarized environments.
Weaponizing Soft Power: The Israeli Army's Use of TikTok
(Sage Publications Ltd, 2025) Uzunoglu, Sarphan; Cakici, Zindan
This article analyzes how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) use TikTok's platform-specific aesthetics, affective dynamics, and algorithmic visibility to construct state legitimacy in the context of ongoing geopolitical conflict. Through content analysis of all 750 videos published between September 2020 and March 2025, the research reveals how the military integrates short-form visual styles with emotionally charged messaging centered on themes such as hope, threat, and national mourning to produce curated narratives. Platform-native elements like music, hashtags, and meme-driven trends function not only to enhance engagement but also as tools of symbolic warfare and selective representation. The videos, categorized by format, emotional tone, spokesperson identity, and demographic portrayal, revealed a strategically consistent narrative that emphasized Israeli heroism, resilience, and collective mourning, while omitting representations of Palestinian civilian suffering in a manner aligned with the communicative logic of military public diplomacy. This study contributes to digital militarism and soft power literature by illustrating how military institutions adapt to media ecosystems where visibility and emotion are strategic resources. In particular, it demonstrates how the IDF deploys personalization, storytelling, and cultural commemorations as platform-native soft power strategies, reconfiguring military communication into forms of emotional diplomacy tailored to TikTok's algorithmic logics.