Public Spots as a Neoliberal Governmental Risk Strategy in Contemporary Turkey

Abstract

In recent years, Turkish audience has been increasingly exposed to a new media product called ‘public spots’. These are less than a minute short clips produced on issues (such as health, security, social solidarity, and environment) that the Turkish state (and its governmental apparatus) finds crucial to ‘inform’ and ‘educate’ the public. Whilst the content and scope of these clips are varied, the thread that weaves them is the goal of improving public awareness on potential risks of life. As such, these clips point to a new relationship that the Turkish state aspires to form with the public. In this article, we rely on the literature on neoliberal governmentality, and its core concept, ‘indirect governance’, to understand the fabric of this relationship. We use three aspects of indirect governance, i.e. ‘attribution of responsibility to the individual’, ‘development of precautionary measures’, and ‘generalization of population’, to discuss the changing nature of state-society relations in contemporary Turkey. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p304