Popular culture shapes people's thoughts, feelings, and identities, and it also serves as an arena where power and dominance are established and reproduced. Woven into everyday life, it is a language, a rhythm, and a shared memory that permeates almost every moment of our lives. Although often considered “here today and gone tomorrow” and therefore fleeting, popular culture reveals the cultural sensitivities, desires, contradictions, and transformations of social life. Thus, the nature of popular culture requires recording relevant discussions and transmitting academic knowledge in this field to future generations and the scientific community.
Considering viral TikTok dances becoming global trends, YouTubers and influencers becoming opinion leaders, cinematic universes dominating global markets, K-Pop's international fan bases, and fan tourism developing around series and films, the boundaries of popular culture have become more fluid than ever before. In today's world, where the boundaries between producer and consumer, global and national/local, mainstream and alternative are increasingly blurred, popular culture deserves to be addressed in its contemporary dimensions.
At the 2nd International Communication Studies Congress, held in partnership with İletişim Studies and hosted by Hacettepe University between November 19-21, 2025, we examined the subject from a broad perspective, ranging from the relationship between popular culture and nostalgia to the changing media of popular narratives, from contemporary advertising strategies to social media representations, from celebrity studies to identity and performance in cinema and television series, and from digital representations of lifestyles to violence and digital memory.
This issue, which emphasizes a critical approach to popular culture, will not be limited to the studies presented at the congress, and will examine the popular culture texts, practices, and technologies that define our era, as well as the political, economic, and cultural networks of relationships behind them, from different geographies, communities, and perspectives. Beyond a simple “high/low culture” dichotomy, we aim to make popular culture a tool for understanding societal reactions, expectations, desires, consumption practices, everyday life, and shared imaginings. We invite submissions on these topics and themes:
You may submit articles on the social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of popular culture within these topics through the Dergipark system between September 1, 2026 and September 15, 2026.
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/moment
Gökçe Baydar Çavdar
Gülay Acar Göktepe
Emre Canpolat