MED 532 Spring ‘25

THE DIGITAL DELUGE

UNTRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

What do we do now?

PROF. DR. HALUK ŞAHİN
(Emeritus)
ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY

AN OPEN LETTER FROM A COMMUNICATIONS DOYEN
TO ALL COMMUNICATION PROFESSIONALS**

FOREWORD

Truth and lies have become intertwined. We see ourselves passing through a deep crisis of truth. The most toxic ideologies, built on lies, are on the rise. People are drowning in cultural garbage, vile clamor, and amidst the unending commotion. Most of them accept it as normal to live in such a world while the values that give life its deepest meaning are tossed into the trash.

The earth is ablaze.

New wars are breaking out, and those already underway are not ending. Democracy, which should be based on the informed decisions of rational people, has turned into an irrational game of deception.

One cannot help but ask: Is this the end of history? How did it come to this?
And, of course, what can be done now?

This is a question that communicators must ask before anyone else. Because they are the architects, engineers—at the very least, the technicians—of this age of deafening noise that crushes humanity. They must first ask themselves: What is my role in this clamor? What can I do?

Untruth has consequence.The ethics of the communication profession, with roots reaching back 2,500 years, demand this reflection.

As Turkey’s first communication doctorate holder, and according to some, a “doyen” of the field, I have considered it my duty and responsibility to ask these questions and seek realistic solutions. My primary audience is professional communicators, communication academics, and communication students. However, in this era of hubhub, we are all, to some extent, communicators—especially politicians. These questions concern all of us. We may all be mentally exhausted and long for silence! Yet, we must all reflect on these questions.

I have chosen to present my thoughts in the form of a letter, connecting them to my lived experiences. I have tried not to limit my perspective to Turkey alone but to also keep an eye on the world. If I have spoken a bit too much about myself, it is because I respect concrete experiences over abstract discussions. Not sharing the lessons I have learned would be a waste. It is our duty to leave a mark on the paths we walk alone. Who knows? Others may follow, and a trail may form.

PRE-POSTSCRIPT

Dear communication professionals,

When I refer to myself as a “doyen” of communications, I do not use it as a compliment or an “honorary” title.. According to dictionaries, a “doyen” or “dean” ” is the most senior person in a profession, not necessarily the most successful or the oldest. By lucky coincidence, as the first person to receive a Ph.D. in Mass Communications (Indiana University, April 20, 1974), I find myself in that position academically speaking. Professionally, I am also quite senior. My first published interview in the mainstream press dates back to 1965, my first television program to 1974, and my first newspaper column to 1975.

As for the open letter… You might rightfully object the word “open” in this day and age. “Open” letters are no longer common. The letter has changed and become a post, a message, a text, a note, and content. In digitalized societies, especially among young people, letter-writing has been replaced by messaging or texting. Writing a letter in the traditional sense, much like writing poetry, is now among the skills that the new communication environment has marginalized or even killed.

I believe both are significant losses diminishing the joy of living.

Young people in pursuit of “awareness” are unaware of this. I always say: Our greatest losses are those we do not realize we have lost—like clean air, silence, and drinking water directly from a fountain with our hands.

Yet, we quickly adapt to our greatest gains, behaving as if they have always been there.

Although I may seem to be wandering from topic to topic, much like taking a walk through the fields, I trust that when you read the letter in its entirety, you will see the coherence. There is much I wish to convey, to express, and to share.

In communication, technological advancements have outpaced evolutionary development. Biology has succumbed to technology. We are the achievers, beneficiaries and the victims of this shift.

The primary area of exploitation is no longer working hours but leisure time. I was among the first to identify this phenomenon with concrete data and to describe it using the term “the colonization of leisure” in collaboration with J. P. Robinson (Media, Culture and Society, 1980).

Much has changed over the past 50 years. The pace of change has accelerated even more in the last decade.

Now is the time for communication professionals to pause, reflect, and share concerns.

Who were we, who are we, and who will we become? Whose side are we on, and who are we against?

We are facing a a major crisis in communications, even in democracy. What shall we do?

FROM LEAD TYPE TO AI

As is customary in letters, let’s begin by asking how you are: I hope you are doing well. However, I suspect that you may not be feeling entirely at ease. The ground we are trying to stand on is constantly shifting. Print newspapers are making a last-ditch effort to extend their lifespan. Radio has become marginal, television no longer holds the prime spot in households, and movie theaters are empty. Many communication skills that have become professionalized are now being taken over by Artificial Intelligence or AI.

Long-held assumptions that have turned communication into a quasi-sacred field are being shattered along with fundamental definitions. The pace of change is so rapid that even short or mid-term planning has become impossible. Yes, sending messages has become easier—almost everyone can now speak and be heard, not in different languages like in the Tower of Babel, but—

The noise makes it impossible to understand what anyone is saying.

How did we get here?

As the first person in this country to earn a doctorate in Mass Communications, I feel responsible for seeking answers to this question.

This open letter is a reflection of that responsibility. We have 73 Departments of Communication, hundreds of professors of communşication, and thousands of graduates of schools of communication in this country now. Upon suddenly realizing that it had been exactly 50 years since I received that first doctorate—1974 to 2024—I decided to write. Fifty years, half a century! In a field like mine is a long time indeed!

Isn’t it amazing that when I started to study for my graduate degrees (1968) , the term “ communication” (“iletişim”) did not even exist in our language (Turkish).. We called it “haberleşme” or “muhaberat” (correspondance). The articles I wrote for Bursa newspapers as a teenager were composed manually by arranging individual lead letters taken from boxes!

Now, 50 years later, as I write these lines on a computer, I change the font at the touch of a button, making it larger or smaller. What I can achieve with AI programs is truly mind-boggling!

Undoubtedly, much has changed. However, some fundamental aspects have remained the same. In this letter, I aim to separate the wheat from the chaff—the changing from the unchanging, and what should change from what should never change. I want to get to the core, the very beginning of the communication conundrum.

Since we are living in the Age of Communication, we must reflect on the work we do.

WHAT IS OUR OCCUPATION?

What are we good for? What is our skill? What do we know better than others?

In 1974, when I told my grandmother, who lived in Bursa, that I had completed my doctorate in Mass Communications in the United States, she asked, “So, what will you do?” At that time, the term “mass communication” didn’t exist, and my grandmother’s view of doctors was limited to those in white coats who measured her blood pressure. She was wary of them.

Not knowing how to explain it, I mumbled, “Oh, you know… journalism, radio, television, and stuff…”

“So, will you be fixing them?” she asked. I laughed a lot. It turns out she had a point. I spent my life learning that this topic wasn’t as funny as I had thought.

The same year, after completing my PhD at Indiana University in the U.S., I returned to Ankara to become a teaching assistant at the School of Press and Broadcasting, affiliated with the Faculty of Political Sciences. However, I unexpectedly found myself working as a television program consultant to TRT’s (Radio and Television Corporation of Turkey) General Manager, İsmail Cem.

We were living in the highrise MESA apartments in Çankaya. One night, past midnight, there was a knock at the door. I got up and opened it to find two men standing there. One of them, looking very apologetic, said, “Doctor, sorry to bother you at this hour. We have a patient upstairs… Could you…”

“Sorry, but I’m not that kind of doctor,” I replied.

“What kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a Doctor of Mass Communications!”

The men, embarrassed, apologized and left.

According to a friend, one of them must have said said to the other, “Lately, there have been such weird diseases!”

Weird diseases!

I wonder what they would say if they saw our current situation! Back then, we had a black-and-white television that broadcast for only 5-6 hours a day and just two radio stations—one longwave and one mediumwave. And now, look where we are!

Yes, I confess, I am Turkey’s first doctor of Mass Communications. What’s more, I’m practically a museum piece! From time to time, I step out of my glass display case to give talks about this “weird disease” and its offshoots to doctors, assistants, and caregivers. Some even have pictures their picture with me…

This wasn’t my original plan. I ended in this field by chance.

And I’m glad I did!

When I was studying for the doctorate in the U.S., I used to see signs on the walls that said:

“A Ph D means learning more and more about less and less, until you know everything about nothing!”

Luckily, my field did not turn out like that. In communcations it’s neither possible to know everything nor to forget everything else!

It’s an intersectional area—what they call “interdisciplinary.”

Because of its name, it might seem new to us, but communication is one of the oldest fields of study—one of the first things learned and studied. Aristotle, known as the “First Teacher,” wrote his book “Rhetoric” on the subject 2,500 years ago.

Yet, in another sense, it’s a very new field. In the mid-19th century, thanks to electricity, communication broke away from transportation speed—it no longer moved at the speed of horses but at the speed of light. This was a revolutionary leap. Following the telegraph came wireless, radio, television, and computers, accelerating life as we know it.

The invention of the telegraph can be compared to the “Big Bang” that occurred 13.8 billion years ago. A whole new dimension had been entered.

And the universe of communication is still expanding…

From a scientific and academic perspective, this has been like throwing barley to birds with a ladle. Birds of all kinds—sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, economics, mathematics, literature—have flocked to feast on this new field, eager to digest it.

Eventually, this new feed stuff begins to establish itself as an autonomous field of study. Initially, there were no separate schools, no distinct master’s or PhD programs. But everywhere, the word “communication” was gaining prominence.

In my opinion, this transformation is as fundamental as humanity’s shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, or from agriculture to industry!

To understand our present and future, we must comprehend this process. This is difficult because we were born into it—just like the fish who live in the sea but are unaware of the sea itself!

YOU HAVE TO GET ON THE ROAD FIRST

“Fate” is a religious concept; it’s beyond me. But I do believe in luck. Because “luck” isn’t entirely at the mercy of other forces—it’s a possibility, an opportunity that can be created when desired. If you’re waiting for a prince on a white horse, you need to get down to the road where the horses pass.

That’s how it happened for me!

I was lucky because, back then, not only was the word “communication” a part of our language, but there were no graduate programs in this field in Turkey either.

In 1968, I went to the U.S. for a year on a UNESCO scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in journalism, but even there, communication studies were just emerging. It was still a subject discussed under major disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and history. There were only a handful of journalism schools teaching the craft of communication, along with rhetoric-public -speaking – theater schools, and a few radio and television departments.

Indiana University, which was renowned for its journalism school, had just established its radio-television department. You could pursue a master’s degree in either journalism or radio-television, but a doctorate was not yet an option.

My UNESCO scholarship was only for one year. However, since I had studied Law in Turkey rather than Journalism, I was told that completing my master’s in a year wouldn’t be possible. They required me to take additional courses to make up for my “undergraduate deficiency” in areas such as reporting, editing, and photography.

I followed their advice. The program extended to three semesters instead of two, turning into a year and a half. However, UNESCO couldn’t extend my scholarship. I didn’t want to return to Ankara empty-handed. Thankfully, the Dean of the Journalism Faculty, Richard Gray, offered me a teaching assistantship.

“We’re establishing a joint doctoral program in Mass Communications with the Radio-TV department, and you can pursue your PhD,” he said.

What luck! I had to get a doctorate to continue an academic career anyway.

All the plans for my life suddenly changed. Purely by chance! I hadn’t planned it this way. But I had stepped onto the road where the horses passed!

—

QUESTIONS BIG AND SMALL

When it was time to write my master’s thesis, I presented my proposal to my advisor, Prof. Dr. Cleve Wilhoit.

The year was 1970. The aftershocks of the 1968 youth movements that started in France were being felt worldwide. When I left Istanbul in 1968, Istanbul University was occupied by students, some of whom were my friends. Winds from the left were blowing strong, and everything was being questioned. Turkey had turned into a debate club…

As children of the 1961 Constitution, we had been asking big questions for years and offering grand answers. How did humanity transition to an agricultural society proceed ? How did feudalism collapse? Was the bourgeoisie progressive? How did the working class emerge? Why did Turkey miss the major trains and remain “underdeveloped”? How could it catch up with developed nations?

I arrived in the U.S. with these kinds of big questions in my mind—questions that, as Socrates put it, meant I was taking myself along wherever I went.

At that time, American university students were also asking deep questions. Along with the entire “establishment,” the media was also being questioned. This was primarily due to the Vietnam War—more specifically, the compulsory military draft during the war. Young people didn’t want to be drafted and die meaninglessly in a war on the other side of the world.

The American press, however, largely supported the war—just as it had supported all American wars in the past. Despite the deep religious roots of anti-war sentiment in the U.S., this was the case.

Didn’t the great newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst once tell his photojournalist, “You provide the pictures, and I’ll provide the war!”

For my thesis, I wanted to analyze the alignment between major media and American foreign policy. I intended to prove that the American press was a puppet of the American government. At the time, Noam Chomsky hadn’t yet shifted from linguistics to political issues or written *Manufacturing Consent* (1988). My chosen topic was an extension of the questions I brought from Turkey and those I heard from fellow students here.

When my advisor Dr. Wilhoit read my thesis proposal, he laughed and said, “Haluk, this is too big a question. I’d prefer if you narrowed it down and conducted an empirical study, perhaps a content analysis.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“For example, our local Monroe County council recently held meetings. How did our town’s newspaper, The Bloomington Herald, cover them? Who did they support or oppose? You could count articles and sentences…”

Now it was my turn to laugh.

“Cleve, that’s too small a question,” I said. “It’s not worth my time.”

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT: THOU SHALT BE CURIOUS!

Yes, in a way, I was stubborn. Intellectual curiosity—and persistence in that curiosity, without turning it into blind stubbornness—is a virtue. In both science and journalism, except for rare cases, what is not sought is not found. In fact, what is not sought is not even perceived. There is something called selective perception. Some day you discover that the thing you had been searching for have been right in front of you for years.

People without curiosity are better suited for other professions than journalism or academia. After all, lack of curiosity is a trait of peasants.

Eventually, we found a middle ground. Yes, I would count the “hairs on the fleece” and conduct a content analysis. But I would analyze “The New York Times” to see if the evaluative language in its coverage of Turkey changed in line with shifts in U.S. foreign policy.

I did just that. My hypothesis was confirmed. Indeed, the adjectives used in the newspaper changed depending on the state of relations with Turkey. With Cleve’s support, I presented my findings at a scientific conference and later published them in Journalism Quarterly —my first academic publication. (“Turkish Politics in New York Times: A Comparative Content Analysis,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol 50, Issue 4, 1973).

Throughout my academic career, I have always advised my graduate students to pursue topics they are genuinely curious about, rather than those that are trendy. Some topics are important from the outset, while others become important because you make them so. I’ve always told my PhD students, “Choose a thesis topic that makes you stand out as an expert, one that people will ask your opinion on even 25 years later!”

I was lucky. Due to my curiosity, the topic I chose—TRT’s autonomy—is still being discussed even 50 years after my PhD. (*Broadcasting Autonomy in Turkey: Its Rise and Fall,* Indiana University, Ph.D. Dissertation, February 1974).

I still have one piece of advice for those choosing an academic career:

“Know at least one subject better than anyone else; let people say, ‘If anyone knows about that, it’s him (or her)!’”

Even being the best in a small field is a significant privilege in this age of information abundance!

A TELESCOPE OR A MICROSCOPE?

The greatest benefit of my master’s thesis experience was gaining insight into the difference between the European approach, which examines grand historical and philosophical questions through a telescope, and the empirical American approach, which scrutinizes small concrete events under a microscope.

The American academia, partly funded by the business world, had pushed aside grand philosophical and historical questions, focusing instead on smaller, practical, and pragmatic inquiries—severing ties with the “world of ideas.” In contrast, European academia soared through philosophical clouds, refusing to abandon its dense language and looking down on research that prioritized concrete facts as a kind of engineering.

Over time, particularly after 1980, this gap began to close to some extent. Some American academics turned to European-origin Critical Theory, and departments dominated by this approach were established in various universities. Media Studies emerged within this context—analyzing media as an ideological cultural institution from a critical perspective, emphasizing postmodernism and psychoanalysis, and focusing on topics such as feminism and racism. This development allowed the European philosophical approach to finally plant its feet on the ground and engage with the tangible realities of contemporary life.

During this time, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with renowned European-born researchers who, despite being influenced by the Frankfurt School, reconciled with the empirical American approach—figures such as Paul Lazarsfeld, Elihu Katz, George Gerbner, and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. Sharing classrooms and discussions with them, and even inviting them to my classes, remain among my proudest memories. Those familiar with communication theory will recognize these names from their pioneering work in theories such as the “Two-Step Flow of Communication,” “Uses and Gratifications,” “Cultivation Theory,” and the “Spiral of Silence.”

True giants of communication studies!

THE SCHOOLED VS. THE TRAINED

That was the theoretical and academic side of things. I had been sent to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree in journalism at a university that suited this goal. Indiana University, in addition to its world-famous School of Music, was well known for its School of Journalism. The university was also at the peak of fame in certain sports, such as swimming (Mark Spitz) and basketball (Bobby Knight). Our depatment was named after Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent of World War II. Its primary mission was to train reporters and editors to work in newspapers, taking an insider’s view of the profession rather than an external, academic perspective. The faculty was composed of seasoned, well-known journalists, with only a few holding doctoral degrees.

It was there that I first encountered tensions that would later resurface in my life in Turkey, placing me in a unique position that required me to serve as a bridge between the two sides.

I’m talking about the conflict between the practically trained on the job (alaylılar) and the formally educated (mektepliler).

According o the on-the-job trained journalists, the formally educated ones—who roamed around with stacks of computer punch cards on the job —were clueless rookies who couldn’t even craft a proper headline. In contrast, the formally educated looked down on the trained-on-the- job journalists, as simpletons incapable of understanding even a simple statistical table.

The non-schooled were nicknamed “green eye-shades,” referring to their traditional visor caps, while the formally educated were called “chi-squares,” as they were seen as nerdy types obsessed with statistics and numbers.

Each side would confide in me to vent their frustrations about the other.

In my role, I often found myself translating between these two camps, balancing practical experience with academic knowledge—an experience that shaped my approach to the fiield throughout my career.

MODELS OF COMMUNICATION

There were also exceptions. For instance, the dean of our faculty, Richard Gray, had a PhD but had worked as an editor at Time magazine. In fact, most of those I refer to as “school-taught” had earned their doctorates not in mass communication,s but in related fields. Meanwhile, there were those who studied disciplines such as oratory and theater, continuing the 2,500-year-old tradition of “rhetoric”. Initially, journalism schools were met with skepticism and only found a place under their umbrella later. The same was true for Public Relations and Advertising, some of wh,ch which also sought to establish themselves within Business schools.

This tradition has deep roots. Sweet words and eloquent writing have been regarded as the highest of human skills since ancient times. The aim of rhetoric was to teach people how to speak effectively and thus persuade the masses. We can say that the first model of communication belongs to Aristotle:

Speaker – Speech – Listener – Effect

It wouldn’t be wrong to claim that all other communication models emerged from this one.

When we translate the questions posed by that model into today’s scientific jargon, we find ourselves in very familiar territory: How should a sender, who wants to persuade target audiences, construct their message to achieve the highest level of effectiveness? What are the formulas for messages that attract attention, convince, and are remembered? What should be emphasized, and what should be avoided?

If we strip away the technical jargon, aren’t we still asking the same questions? Don’t we still ponder these questions amidst today’s relentless flood of messages?

In the past, benefiting from communication education of this kind was a privilege exclusive to the aristocrats and upper classes who monopolized politics. For slaves, serfs, peasants, and women, such education was deemed unnecessary, as they had no need to influence crowds through speech.

Many of the fundamental principles of political communication that we discuss during every election season can actually be traced back to what rhetoricians said 2,500 years ago. And geographically speaking, right here, in our own lands!

Dear communication colleague, please forgive a little pedantry at this point in my letter: Do you know what it means to be able to see Assos and Lesbos, where Aristotle spent a significant part of his life, from the island where I am writing these lines? If we occasionally questioned where we live, perhaps our lives wouldn’t be so ordinary! Because we live in an extraordinary place. But we are unaware of it!

The importance given to rhetorical education in communication was not unique to the West. In the Islamic world, too, great expectations were placed on *balāghah* (eloquence) in the effective transmission of religious messages to the masses. It is known that its roots trace back to Aristotle through Averroes (Ibn Rushd).

For centuries, the admiration of Muslim masses for preachers who could “drip honey from their lips” was undoubtedly the result of education and experience. The influence of modern-day speakers who come from that tradition is linked to the rhetorical training provided in religious schools and madrasas, making it a subject worthy of analysis from a communication perspective.

The priests, imams, and rabbis who have become television stars have also learned the essence of the craft from this tradition—when to raise their voice, when to pause for a long time, and when to slam their hand on the pulpit for emphasis.

It is said that in sermon classes for priesthood students, they are given the following advice:
“The less confident you are in what you’re saying, the harder you should beat the pulpit!

So, my friends, there is no need for short-sightedness. Communication challenges and education did not emerge today; their roots go back to ancient times.

Don’t be deceived by technology, cheap tricks, and gimmicks. Humanity has not advanced in this field as much as it is believed. Looking down on and belittling the past is arrogance—an undeserved pride. It’s conceit, and both are barriers to learning. Yet we, as communicators, must always remain students.

TALK AND LEARN

With the weakening of the aristocracy in the West due to the Enlightenment and democracy, how the aspiring middle class spoke also gained importance. Recall the scene from Moliere’s 17th-century play The Bourgeois Gentleman, where the newly wealthy Monsieur Jourdain is astonished to discover that he has actually been speaking in prose all his life, rather than verse! He is delighted because he realizes he is not just an ordinary speaker but an effective communicator in prose.

Yet, he had been unaware of this all his life.

In Turkey, radio and television have been the leading teachers of proper speech for the masses. Those who remember the pre-television era are often amazed by how confidently people speak today when handed a microphone.

Back in the 1970s, when I was at the TRT, most people we approached for interviews in documentary programs would freeze up and could barely go beyond the most basic clichés. Over time, they found their voice. As television and radio spread across our country, with its rich linguistic diversity, regional dialects softened and began to fade. The standard Ankara Turkish—rooted in Istanbul Turkish—became the common language.

This was undoubtedly an important step for democratization and nation-building. However, from the perspective of cultural diversity, losses were also inevitable. In the 1950s, it only took a few sentences to tell where someone was from. These regional differences were a major source of our oral humor and comedy. That’s no longer the case. Furthermore, such distinctions are not considered desirable for national unity.

The impact of changes in communication technology on daily life often goes unnoticed. Yet, perhaps these are the most significant effects. There have been both gains and losses in terms of democracy: In the past, people who could imitate regional dialects—Armenian, Jewish, Greek, Thracian, Albanian, Laz, Kurdish accents—were considered charming conversationalists. Now, everyone speaks in the same “TV language.”

DEBATING SKILLS

I discovered that “good speech” is a conscious result of education and culture when, at 17, I was sent to the U.S. on an AFS scholarship in 1958 to complete my final year of high school. To receive a diploma, I was required to take seven mandatory courses: two literature classes (English and American), two math classes (Algebra and Geometry), one history class (U.S. History), and one public speaking course, known as *speech.*

I understood the others, but I couldn’t grasp why “Speech” was required. What was the connection?

They explained: This course not only taught effective language use and communication but also parliamentary debate rules—how to take the floor, object, respond, and reach a conclusion.

These were things that were never taught in Turkey and whose absence was felt throughout life. Our country has always been weak in terms of debate etiquette; it used to be even worse. In the politically polarized 1950s and 70s, it was unimaginable for people with opposing views to sit in the same place and discuss issues. Fights would break out instantly. In some places, even coffeehouses were segregated by political affiliation.

Our tradition wasn’t one of finding the truth through discussion, but rather one of reprimanding, putting people in their place, and delivering cutting remarks. Here, being unable to respond to a sharp remark was considered a big defeat. It was a source of shame.

Because they were considered “normal” and even acceptable, these cultural habits are not easily abandoned. They remain widespread even today, though some progress has been made.

Once again, mass media—especially television—has played a crucial role. It can be said that our people learned how differing opinions could be expresed in the same space from television debate programs. In 1975, during İsmail Cem’s tenure at TRT, we launched the Forum program and witnessed how people were initially uncomfortable sitting next to those with opposing views. A major turning point came with Ali Kırca’s Siyaset Meydanı in the 1980s and 90s, which deserves a democracy award for its contribution.

People learned to sit together, express their ideas, and then leave without fighting.

In our society, the most widespread form of oratory has traditionally been religious sermons. When I was a child in Bursa, I remember my female relatives going from mosque to mosque during Ramadan to listen to preachers they admired. The mosques would be packed on the days when these preachers—who could speak fluently, use their voices well, and manipulate emotions effectively—were giving sermons.

After transitioning to a multi-party political system, politics also saw the rise of charismatic orators who were highly admired by the masses, such as Osman Bölükbaşı and Bülent Ecevit. However, such orators preferred solo performances, avoiding Socratic dialogue and engagement in open debates.

In contrast, Americans, who were required to take “Speech” in high school, favored debate and discussion formats.

This shows that good communication habits can be ingrained in a society through education. A significant part of culture is shaped by these habits. Questions about what is said, how it is said, and the richness and depth of language fall within the domain of both culture and communication. In essence, communication both carries and shapes culture. How we speak determines who we are. And we reflect who we are by the way we speak.

It is unthinkable for a communication professional to remain indifferent to language issues and literature. Poetry included.

POETRY: THE ART OF DISTILLING EXPRESSION

The marginalization of poetry from the realm of public discourse can also be evaluated within this framework.

Yes, the poet within me nudges me once again.

I grew up in a home where friends would recite poetry from memory, and lines from Fuzuli and Ahmet Haşim were often repeated at the dinner table. Whenever we struggled to express our thoughts, we could always pull out a few lines from the memory shelf. Those who could recite poetry well—deep-voiced, eloquent, and witty speakers—were admired. Preachers coming from the sermon tradition still carry on this habit. In complex situations, when “words fall short,” having a few ready phrases in memory can be invaluable. Over time, these phrases become part of one’s communication skills, creating a shared space for connection.

As someone who writes poetry, wins awards, but does not declare himself a “poet,” I have always felt saddened by this loss. I have always advocated that anyone who wants to live life to the fullest should write poetry.

Whether you trace its origins to Homer or Yunus Emre, poetry is the pursuit of the most refined and effective form of expression. Writing poetry is a process of distillation—neither a word too much nor a word too little. Humanity, forever bewildered by its cosmic uncertainties and mortality, needs this. Whether addressing a lover, the public, or God (or gods), this endeavor is a defining characteristic of being human—a cry, a whisper, a song…

People always want to say something, even if they do not know what it is.

That’s why I say, life is impossible without poetry! Communication education without poetry and philosophy is shallow at best. It becomes a mere craft rather than an art.

Unfortunately, that is what is happening!

NOT A WIN-WIN STORY

The disappearance of poetry from public conversation is closely linked to the sidelining of letters as a form of personal communication. The same technological and social reasons are behind both losses. However, the loss of letter writing is one that cannot be compensated for with text messages or WhatsApp. It is a deprivation in terms of life’s excitement, aesthetics, and depth. To those who have missed out on the era of colorful, scented letters folded in special ways and filled with heartfelt notes, I can only say: My condolences.

There’s a Welsh word that captures the bittersweet longing for places and things that will never return: Hiraeth. What has been lost is not just a form of communication but an entire way of life—the age-old story of the water drunk by the cow, the cow running to the mountain, the mountain burning to ashes…

A letter was never just a simple message or note; it was a literary genre. Today, we read Kafka’s, Pushkin’s, and Halikarnas Balıkçısı’s correspondance as literary works in books and on tablets.

We often forget that the history of communication is filled not only with great discoveries but also with “hiraeth”. We only realize it when it’s too late.

Fifty years ago, Marshall McLuhan warned: “When analyzing media, always ask: What does the new communication technology add, and what does it render obsolete?”*

In other words, beware—while gaining something, you are also losing something. But we tend to focus only on what we gain.

As we will discuss later, the newspaper we have abandoned in recent years is no exception. While we have gained something through online connectivity, we have lost something by living without print newspapers.

In fact, McLuhan wasn’t as original as we might think when he posed this question.

Plato, in his dialogue Phaedrus around 370 BCE, voiced his skepticism about writing, saying: *“Writing will make us stop using our memory; it will lead to forgetfulness.”* He feared the obsolescence of memory.

In today’s world, where disinformation is rampant, we are concerned about the obsolescence of truth itself. Is there anything more valuable than truth?

HOW COMMUNICATION TRADITIONS CHANGE

Communication, even in its most personal form, is fundamentally a social phenomenon. Our language, religion, customs, geography, and social class shape how we express ourselves. Although cultural (communication) changes are happening at a faster pace today, large-scale transformations such as civilizational shifts take time. If any society should understand this well, it is ours. Issues that were debated 100 years ago still dominate our discussions. We can’t seem to move past them.

Those we thought were defeated are still fighting their rear-guard battles.

The differences between American and French humor persist due to such cultural factors. The expectations and traditions in fields like journalism and mass communication are among these. It’s no coincidence that the world’s most sensational tabloid newspapers are published in “elitist” Britain. Yet, no other Western country has managed to establish a public broadcasting service as reputable as the BBC. Similarly, investigative journalism flourished in America rather than Europe.

The press in the land of Marquis de Sade could never openly report on President Mitterrand’s illegitimate daughter, while the American press, steeped in puritanical morality, had no hesitation in covering Monica Lewinsky’s infamous stain on President Clinton’s pants.

Why is that? The fact that my graduate advisor demanded a quantitative content analysis for my thesis is not unrelated to this phenomenon. Concrete evidence matters.

Earlier, I mentioned how American social sciences prefer empirical approaches based on observation, measurement, and quantification. This approach, unsurprisingly, influences not only social sciences but many other fields—including journalism. No speculation, no exaggeration—only write what you see and can document.

For better or worse, American-style objective journalism traces its roots to European positivism, yet it also aligns perfectly with the straightforward and pragmatic lifestyle of the American people. “Hey reporter, go, see, and ‘write it like it is’—without unnecessary embellishment!”

In contrast, many of our early writers and journalists came from a background of ornate Divan poetry and intricate literature, which made our newspaper language complex and flowery.

GO ASK!

Due to “deficiencies” in my curriculum as a Law graduate, I had to take a reporting course taught by Mr. Holsinger (note, *Mr.*, not *Dr.*, meaning he was not schooled). He placed great emphasis on the “just the facts” tradition we know from movies—providing only the facts. However, he also required us to produce at least one “gee whiz!” story every week—something that would make people say, “Wow, imagine that!”

We protested. How were we supposed to find such people in a small Midwestern American town with a population of 35,000—25,000 of whom were students and 5,000 were faculty?

“If you look, you’ll find,” he said. He pointed to an elderly man selling hot dogs across the street.

“Did you know that man spent three years in a Nazi concentration camp?” he asked.

We rushed to the windows in excitement. “Wow! How do you know?” we asked.

“I don’t,” he replied. “But maybe he did. You have to go ask!”

In other words, neither journalists nor social scientists fabricate stories or rely on imagination—they go, ask, verify, and report with sources. The priority is always facts. Questioned truths… Verified facts…

This reminds me of something interesting: Nearly 40 years ago, around 1986, I participated in a panel discussion in Eskişehir at Anadolu University on what was then called “investigative journalism.” One of the speakers was none other than Uğur Mumcu, the greatest name in the field. At the time, he was covering highly complex and daring topics, and during his speech, he reiterated a principle that would later become almost proverbial:

“One cannot have an opinion without having knowledge (of the facts).”

At least, if you are a journalist, you cannot. And if you are an investigative journalist, you definitely cannot. Otherwise, you’ll end up harming people.

While we’re on the topic, let me mention this: The term *soruşturmacı gazetecilik* (investigative reporting) instead of “araştırmacı gazetecilik” (research-based reporting) is my own contribution to the professional jargon. Those interested can refer to my book *Kim Korkar Soruşturmacı Gazeteciden* (Who’s Afraid of the Investigative Journalist), published by Say Yayınları in 2012. It was a term I wanted to be used in Arena as its editor, the popular weekly news TV program presented by Uğur Dündar.

Even today, some find it odd, but conceptually, it represents a step forward. Let’s not forget: One of the fundamental tasks of theoretical work is to create new concepts. You start with a broad concept and then refine it with more specific terms, leading to new insights. For instance, instead of just saying “wind,” we categorize it into terms like *poyraz* and *lodos,* and then further into notus, boreas, eurus, etc. This is how the language of science is formed. The richer your vocabulary, the greater your capacity to understand and explain. Complex ideas cannot be understood or conveyed with mere imagery alone—one of the major shortcomings of today’s visually-driven culture.

Legendary Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet once asked his painter frend Abidin to make a picture of happiness. Sorry Abidin! Some things are hard to paint—words are indipensible.

In the 1990s, when we strated to use the new term, people asked, “What’s the need? Every journalist does research.” True, or at least they should. But some journalists delve deeper into issues that powerful sources do not want to be exposed. That’s why Uğur Mumcu was an investigative journalist—going beyond simple research to uncover hidden truths about powerful people and institutions, much like what Americans call an *investigative reporter.*

This is a career choice and a field of specialization. Uğur Mumcu paid the ultimate price for his commitment and efforts—with his life.

Journalism is serious business. This is why figures like Uğur Mumcu and Abdi İpekçi, who shared the same tragic fate, stand out as the founding figures of contemporary Turkish journalism. They took journalism seriously. However, some of those who came after them rejected this tradition and belittled their profession—causing it to lose credibility in the process.

HOW TO DISCUSS COMMUNICATIONS IN TURKISH?

Meanwhile, we owe thanks to those who have contributed to the social sciences and communication fields, ensuring that Turkish can be used to conduct academic discussions without reliance on foreign languages. Thanks to pioneers like Aydın Köksal, who took this issue seriously in the 1960s, we now use terms that have been introduced as equivalents of their counterparts in English. We are now fully equipped to partake in communication related topics without borrowing terms from other languages.

When I went to the U.S. for my PhD in 1968, the word *iletişim* (communication) did not yet exist in Turkish. We used *muhaberat* or *haberleşme.* The term *iletişim* is a perfect example of how linguistic creativity can meet societal needs. It includes *ileti* (message) and implies mutual interaction. In Turkish grammar, this is known as a “reciprocal verb,” which requires at least two subjects—like *paylaşmak* (to share), *sözleşmek* (to agree), and *öpüşmek* (to kiss). Our language is full of such wonders.

In Western languages, the term “communication” comes from the Latin “communicare”, which means “to share.” “İletişim” encompasses this concept perfectly—it’s a spot-on translation. Many other such examples can be found.

Now, with the arrival of artificial intelligence, it’s time for a new generation of linguists to step in once again. Take, for example, the recent term *deepfake,* which refers to using fake visuals and audio to defame people. I suggested we call it *kandırmaca* (deception). Will it catch on? If the communication community—if such a community exists—embraces it, then yes.

There’s not much reason for optimism, but such a community is badly needed. A network that brings together academics and practitioners, allowing them to collaborate and share concerns, especially on issues critical to healthy communicatio, such as freedom of expression. Why not? Both academics and practitioners have a vested interest in combating disinformation, for instance.

Laws may be needed. But do they have to be traps designed to imprison journalists who voice criticism? There may be a need for an institution for clarification and verification, like the one established by the Presidency’s Directorate of Communications. However, can such an institution remain unbiased when exposing misinformation, or will it selectively target certain individuals or organizations for political reasons? If it does, wouldn’t it itself be guilty of spreading disinformation? Wouldn’t it be better if the entire communication community acted together on these issues?

LEARN TO LOOK FROM THE OUTSIDE!

Over the past 50 years, communication and the information it conveys have deeply permeated the fabric of daily life and the economy. By chance, I happened to be the first to pursue a PhD in this field. But communication schools and practitioners have multiplid since. We are facing an ever-expanding sector. The production, processing, and exchange of information have become the most critical human activities. I

When I started my doctoral studies, communication was considered a tertiary discipline within the academic hierarchy, trying to establish its own curriculum after breaking away from rhetorical schools as a vocational training field.

Today, communications has become a central field. It has moved to the core. Now, everyone needs to study communications because everyone is a reporter, journalist, and editor. Everyone is a communicator. How a message is delivered effectively concerns us all. Communication ethics, like traffic and etiquette rules, are fundamental for everyone. Media literacy alone is no longer sufficient. Clearly, everyone—whether in university, high school, or even elementary school—must understand communications as both a content producer and information consumer. Not as an elective, but as an essential discipline.

We are talking about the future of humanity: How should Homo super communicatus be educated? What skills and ethical sensitivities should they possess?

The cost of misjudging or delaying the the value of communications can be severe. In my opinion, one of the fundamental reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was its insistence on viewing communication technology and infrastructure purely as a “superstructure” issue. According to classical Marxist analysis, the determining factor was the economic base—once that changed, all superstructure institutions, including communications, would follow suit.

This might have been true for industrial societies. However, in the post-industrial era, where the production and circulation of information had gained immense value, communication had already become an integral part of the economic infrastructure. Producing, processing, and distributing information had turned into an independent production sector. Information had become the primary input, commodity, and raw material of the economy. Treating it solely as an ideological reflection hindered economic growth, widening the gap between capitalism and socialism instead of closing it.

By fetishizing material commodity production, Soviet leaders missed the great transformation—similar to how the Ottoman Empire delayed the adoption of the printing press for 250 years. The lack of printing technology allowed an outdated educational system to persist, while Europe surged ahead.

To grasp such ruptures, we must learn to view our own situation objectively from an external perspective. One of the fundamental benefits of studying social sciences is that they provide us with the skills to take a step back and analyze from a distance. Being able to look at the labyrinth we are running through from above is a crucial skill.

The present is always pregnant with the future. In this regard, we must respect the intuition of art and literature and never overlook them.

Brecht’s alienation effect (*Verfremdungseffekt*) in his epic plays serves as an example of this. What was Brecht trying to say? “Stop, my friends, don’t get too caught up in what you see. There’s more going on behind the scenes, and I want you to see it!”

The same applies today—there’s more to the story. But what is it?

By nature, I have always tried to maintain a critical distance. I have avoided platforms offering ready-made solutions and have refrained from knee-jerk reactions. The only area where I saw myself as an activist—whether as a journalist or academic—was freedom of thought and expression, because I respected my work, and I believed that doing it well required a free environment. Just as a surgeon needs a sterile operating room to perform their job well, we—who are responsible for informing the public truthfull need freedom. Without it, we can become mere agents and extensions of lies and deception.

We know that Turkey faces significant challenges in this regard. Our historical record on this issue is far from impressive. We have yet to convince our society that knowing and openly speaking the truth —parrhesia—is beneficial for all.

With new technologies, while our ability to learn the truth has expanded, so too has forming lynch mobs against those who speak it.

We, my dear communication colleagues, are obliged to stand for truth and freedom! We cannot forget that we are not just ordinary individuals, but agents of a historical mission. Even if our children and grandchildren don’t ask, History will:

“What did you do at that time?”**

MUST KNOW HOW TO SAY “NO”!

Over the past few years, I have been working on writing my memoirs, distantiating the past and reflecting on my life from an external perspective. Doing so has allowed me to understand many things that I couldn’t grasp before. The pieces are falling into place. I can now better recognize turning points and sharp curves taken in my journey. I can even rearrange the portraits in my gallery of heroes and villains.

Overall, I can say that not only have I come to better understand my own life, but also life itself. While my trust in humanity has diminished, my admiration for those rare individuals who have remained truly human has grown.

Looking back, I have come to a clear realization: **The most important decisions I made in my life were the ones where I said “no.”**

In other words, my life was shaped not by what I chose to do, but by what I decided *not* to do. I am glad that I said no to that high-paying job when I was unemployed with two kids. I am glad I turned down that university offer because I did not feel comfortable about it.. I am glad I refused that Islamist publisher who wanted to publish my book. I am glad I declined that invitation. I am glad I rejected that phoney award. I am glad I refused that dubious position.

I am particularly glad I turned down administrative roles. I am glad I said no when Bülent Bey (Ecevit) and Rahşan Hanım came to my house to ask me to join their party.

In an era that aggressively promotes the idea of relentless positivity, this may seem counterintuitive, but life is not unipolar. For positivity to have meaning, negativity must exist as well. A life without a negative pole is an illusion. Totalitarian regimes have tried this many times—and failed. In my opinion, even the most technologically advanced digital totalitarians will eventually fail.

In my upcoming three-volume memoirs, I delve into the details of these decisions where I said “no.” However, in the background, I also provide a panoramic view of 50 years of communications history in Turkey and the world.

Both Turkey and the world have failed to say “no” to certain things—and as a result, they have paid, and are still paying, a heavy price.

*(First book: Babıali’ye Son Tren, (The Last Train to Babıali), Biz Kitap, February 2024)*

WE MUST BE ALL AROUND COMMUNICATORS

Yes, as we jumped from topic to topic in our tour of the field, the narrative got confusing — so let’s rewind briefly. We were in Indiana. (Between 1968-74). After returning to Turkey, I threw myself into the excitement of television and journalism. As I detailed in my memoir *Babıali’ye Son Tren, five years later, following countless ups and downs, I was compelled to return to academia in the U.S. After four years at Cleveland State University, I was granted tenure at the University of Maryland, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But my dreams were always here in Turkey. Without a second thought, I left one of the best journalism schools in the world to return to Istanbul and launch the Nokta magazine.

Years later, I became an associate professor, then a full professor, and eventually an emeritus at Istanbul Bilgi University. Throughout my life, I always thought that some day I would be forced to make a definitive choice—either no media organization would hire me, or no university would open its doors to me. Life would make that choice for me.

But that wasn’t quite the case. Neither side let me go, and I couldn’t let go of either.

In the digital age, such strict choices are no longer necessary.

In the past, studying journalism meant acquiring a set of distinct skills—shorthand, typewriting, layout, photography… Fields like radio and television were almost different professions altogether. But digital technology has torn down the walls between professions, even cutting through some of the pillars of communication itself. Digital opportunities now allow us to do almost everything from different locations and at different times. Today, an online news portal requires all kinds of skills. Libraries, films, programs—everything is at our fingertips. Teaching or learning no longer requires being in separate rooms or classrooms.

From an optimistic perspective, we could say that digital technology has created an environment in which the new “Renaissance individual” can thrive, breaking down rigid distinctions of the past.

Just as football players who can use both feet, their heads, and their speed are called “all around players,” we must all become “all around communicators!”

Having earned the first mass communication PhD as a Turk 50 years ago, I now consider myself lucky. I’ve had thousands of students. I’ve written 35 books in Turkish and English, produced thousands of articles, and hosted hundreds of TV programs and news reports. I am not affiliated with any media organization now, but I do have a blog of my owwn: haluksahin.net, where I occasionally touch on these topics.

The past has passed, the future in on the way here —but the two are not as disconnected as they seem. Especially in an era where the future is arriving at an accelerated pace. That’s why I wrote the following on my blog’s tagline:

“Yesterday hasn’t ended, but tomorrow has already begun; what day is it today?”

When discussing the past and the future, we’re not talking about frozen, static concepts, but rather evolving and dynamic phenomena. Despite the passage of time, two major historical events continue to impact our communication landscape: The delay in adopting the printing press for Turkish and the alphabet reform. Both continue to be debated.

The discussion about the printing press flared up once again around 20 years ago. Some argued that the 250-year delay wasn’t due to religious conservatism but rather economic conflicts of interest. Actually there’s no need to oversimplify—both factors likely played a role. Regardless, the cost of the delay has been immense—not only educationally but also in terms of the cognitive skills emphasized by McLuhan. According to the Canadian thinker, societies that did not gradually internalize literacy over several generations struggled to industrialize, individualize, and rationalize.

It has seemed reasonable to me; it is possible. However, who would have thought that we would now be in the days when printing presses are closing? The half-millennium-long era of messages being printed on paper with a printing machine is coming to an end. We will miss the smell of ink.

As for the alphabet reform, it is a great success. Although it has minor flaws, we now have a functional phonetic alphabet; reading and writing are easier than before. I am not engaging in propaganda for Turks to Turks. Among our neighboring countries, there are exactly seven different alphabets. Compare them: our new alphabet is the easiest and most phonetic among them. Those who claim otherwise are either ignorant, narrow-minded reactionaries, or worse—those who defend the old for ideological reasons. I am in favor of expressing myself more clearly and facilitating communication. The Latin alphabet has made literacy easier.

AND THEN THE DELUGE!

The biggest transformation of the last 50 years can be summarized as the shift from scarcity to abundance.

Those born after the 1980s don’t know scarcity. I’ve lived through both periods—the transition from the former to the latter and its accompanying growing pains.

I detailed this transformation in my book *From Mess Hall to Cafeteria* (2004), where I explained how communication evolved from a military mess-style “one-menu-for-all” model of bean stew, bulgur, and compote, to a cafeteria full of endless options. This transition, which could be likened to overeating after long hunger, led to the development of upset stomacs and disorders such as information overload.

The initial phases of the great flood were just beginning to show.

The transition was akin to moving from chronic malnutrition to obesity, and Turkey, in some ways, kept up with the pace—what Turgut Özal famously called a “leap forward.”

Let’s remember: In the 1950s, 60s, and even the 70s, Turkey was classified as a typical underdeveloped country by UNESCO standards.

When I arrived in Ankara in 1974 as Turkey’s first PhD graduate in mass communication, black-and-white television broadcasts had only begun in 1968, running for just 5-6 hours a day, five days a week—and they couldn’t be watched in most of the country. Many regions couldn’t even receive the two national radio programs available – Long Wave from Ankara and Medium Wave from Istanbul. Newspapers published in the press hub Istanbul could not reach much of the country in one day. Children in the hinterland ran after buses and trains begging for newspapaers for news or paper. Even in major cities, obtaining a telephone or a telex line could take years. Telegraph connections were in adequate.

I came to Turkey in 1974 from the relative abundance of America into a severe shortage of communication infrastructure. The first challenge was overcoming that scarcity.

New channels, frequencies, studios, and broadcasting towers were needed to rapidly bring Turkey into the modern communication era. Ironically, before modern transmission networks were established, information was, instead of the speed of electricity, physically transported in cassettes by train and bus to regional stations—this was called “package broadcasting.”

But we were the children of a generation that aspired to reach the level of “modern civilization.”
The air, like in advanced countries, had to be filled with signals. We had to use more. Airwaves or frequencies.

But not only the air! In accordance with the dictates of the consumer society and multiparty democracy, the sky, the mountains, the stones, the streams, the hills, and the slopes began to be filled with written and illustrated messages. The world had turned into a global billboard. Every place was a message space. Everyone wanted to be seen there. Including Turkey. F( or more information about this period, see. Yeni İletişim Ortamı, Demokrasi ve Basın Özgürlüğü, (The New Communication Environment, Demokrasi nad Greedom of the Press) Basın Konseyi, 1997.)

Between 1970 and 1990, the communication void in Turkey was rapidly filled, paralleling global trends. Satellite communication, FM bands, wireless connections—the capacity expanded, rapidly filling the empty airwaves. Then came the computer revolution! Ttransforming it into a communication tool triggered yet another leap forward.

And finally, the internet, social media, and artificial intelligence followed suit—bringing us to the present day.

The flood of information filling the airwaves marks a significant turning point in human history—akin to Noah’s Flood. According to religious mythology, God sought to reshape the world and start anew by flooding it with water. This story is told in detail in the Old Testament; the Bible and the Koran.

The story can be summarized as follows: First, God opens the gates of the sky, causing rain to pour down like a deluge for 40 days, submerging the earth. Then, He makes the underground waters gush out as powerful springs. Now, everything is water.

Similarly, in the relatively recent age of abundance, information rained down from above and gushed from below. Everything became information.

This informational deluge transformed all aspects of life—economy, politics, and social structures—all forced to recalibrate to accommodate it.

The ones most affected by this deluge, yet also the ones who should have the most say in how to navigate it, are us—the communicators.

HOMO SUPER COMMUNICATUS

We can close this parenthesis for now, only to return to it later. I will come back to the phrase “the air is filled with signals” and ask, “Is this the first time?”

For now, let’s stick to the technological front. Let’s remember that there is a dialectical relationship between technology and other social elements. As Marshall McLuhan famously said: “First we shape our tools, and then they shape us!”

Anthropologists have documented how the first sickle to enter a primitive village fundamentally altered relationships within the community. After the 15th century, communication technologies saw major advancements. The printing press was one such innovation. I won’t ask here whether the printing press was the child or the father of the Enlightenment. These are complex and mutually interactive relationships.

What about the rise of capitalism and its eventual transformation into imperialism? Was the telegraph invented because imperialism was expanding and building empires on which the sun never set? Or did all of this happen because the telegraph was invented? We can ask similarly profound questions about the internet and artificial intelligence. In my view, when serious communication problems arose during the pandemic, AI tools were rapidly developed and speedily marketed to wipe Homo Super Communicatus’s tears.

Without a doubt, all of these leaps are the results of complex, interwoven factors and forces.

They say, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” That’s true. But who does invention mother? Does it give birth to new needs? Or are new needs deliberately created?

I believe the most significant invention in communication technologies is the telegraph. With the telegraph, communication and transportation became separated. Before, the fastest news traveled only as fast as the fastest mode of transport. The telegraph propelled communication to the speed of light, breaking the chains of time and space.

We are all children of the telegraph!

The “big bang” that started with the telegraph continues. Wireless, cordless phones, radio, television, computers, the internet, social media, artificial intelligence… Sometimes as a consequence, sometimes as a cause, practical life gallops forward at full speed. Scientific revolutions, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, industrialization, capitalism, imperialism, and classical democracy—which presumes an informed society—can all be considered part of this 500-year package. This great flood does not seem likely to stop before it takes over the entire world, down to its smallest cell. It would be against the nature of things for capitalist capital to abandon fluidity and growth. At its latest stage, it has transformed itself into information, breaking down barriers one by one, turning the entire planet into its playground.

Because the air is packed with signals, because the “Homo sapiens” who previously couldn’t even imagine doing certain things to communicate has now surpassed even Superman. They are more than Supermen—they are something else entirely. They have the ability to connect with others and send messages from anywhere in the world to anybody in the world at any moment of the day.

Although not in a biological or species-wide sense, in a functional sense, they are evolving beyond themselves and becoming Homo super communicatus.

Anyone holding a smartphone is a Homo super communicatus who has surpassed Homo sapiens in communication abilities and left Superman behind.

This process has accelerated dramatically over the past 30 years, reaching an almost dizzying pace.

I remember, back in the early 1990s, while teaching a Communication Theory course at the University of Maryland, I told my students:
“Friends, one day, everyone will have a phone number, and we’ll be able to call them no matter where in the world they are.”
They looked at me as if to say, “This professor is really out there!”

Three years later, I had such a phone number. Today, we all have one. We’re not even surprised. We live as if we’ve always had them. In fact, we worry about how we could ever live without them.

Becoming Homo super communicatus was an incredible leap! Our lives are connected to it—in both senses of the word: dependent on it and plugged into it. We are tethered to it 24 hours a day, as if on a leash. Connected. Linked.

THE GREATEST CONTRADICTION

However, the greatest contradiction—or paradox—of our time emerges right here.

Homo super communicatus, equipped with a smartphone, has an incredibly high ability to send and receive information—but his ability to process it is insufficient.

The mouth of the funnel is wide, but its neck is thin. Extremely thin!

Some may call it human nature; others may argue that technology is evolving faster than evolution itself. Neurologists, however, insist that despite all technological advances, human cognitive processing remains highly limited.

You can send Tolstoy’s War and Peace (a 1,200-page novel) across the globe in mere seconds, but reading and understanding it still takes days. Just like it did 50 years ago.

I illustrate this paradox by comparing modern humans to a whale with the appetite of a shark. Its mouth is huge, its teeth sharp—but its throat is incredibly narrow. Forget swallowing a human; they say, even a volleyball would struggle to pass through. The food that reaches it either bounces back, gets stuck here and there, or ends up jostling in the throat.

Think about it: every single day, even ordinary people have War and Peace-sized amounts of information poured over their heads. They need constant entertainment, from cradle to grave. The world is grappling with massive problems.

Meanwhile, Homo super communicatus—dazed and overwhelmed—watches cat and puppy videos on social media.

First, his head gets stuffed with noise; then, he becomes stupefied. And this isn’t just happening in Turkey—it’s a global phenomenon. We often find ourselves saying, “People must have lost their minds!” They’ve gone mad—while holding in their hands the nuclear weapons that could destroy them. They have Artificial Intelligence that can defeat them in chess.

We must think in silence: What will be the end of all this?

In silence—far from the deafening noise…

Some people talk about memorychips and neoralinks. The have not been convincing yet.

We must think and discuss!

WHAT IS ALL THIS NOISE?

We spoke of “noise.”

In fact, we might as well exclaim, “What is all this noise?!”

Just as in all other fields, it is useful to revisit fundamental concepts in “communicology” from time to time. As the world spins furiously, is a ceratin concept still there? Does it still hold the same meaning? Or has it been hollowed out?

The novelist Kemal Tahir, who frequently emphasized the difference between Turkey’s civilization experience and that of the West, once remarked that in a country where everything is constantly changing, people should check their house door numbers every morning—because, “Who knows? They might have changed them overnight!”

The same applies to mass communication theory. I taught communication theory courses for many years in both the U.S. and Turkey. Those who have taken such courses know that they typically begin by tracing models of communication all the way back to Aristotle, introducing the basic elements of the communication process.

One of the most frequently referenced models is the Shannon and Weaver model, also known as the Mathematical Model of Communication. Developed by a telephone engineer in the 1940s, it has been both highly influential and widely criticized. We owe the concepts of “feedback” and “noise” to this model—concepts that push beyond Aristotelian models.

The purpose of feedback was to introduce an interactive loop into what was previously seen as a one-way flow of messages, making communication a two-way process. This idea opened the doors to Information Theory and cybernetics. You send a signal, receive a response, adjust your signal accordingly, and so on.

Meanwhile, noise refers to anything that disrupts, interferes with, or distorts a signal before it reaches the receiver. Technical issues, linguistic barriers, semantic confusion, environmental factors—anything that makes you exclaim, “Hello? operator, get off the line! I can’t hear anything!” To ensure successful communication, noise had to be eliminated or minimized. In other words, the measure of success was the fidelity between the message sent and the message received.

I suppose I don’t need to explain that hi-fi comes from high fidelity. Back in the day, we would spend big money on long-play records and HI-FI systems to get the most faithful reproduction of sound.

It never crossed our minds that one day there would be a signal transmission system called Wi-Fi that would allow us to receive those sounds every second of the day.

The relentless flood of information in this new era can be likened to a Niagara-like waterfall, fed by countless streams converging from all directions. Anyone who has experienced such noise knows that, no matter how high the decibels, after a while, it becomes imperceptible. You have to shout to be heard by the person next to you. Sometimes, even that isn’t enough. Soon, you find yourself surrounded by people shouting at full volume. Everyone is yelling. But no one understands anything—because the words blend together, turning into a cacophony of noise…

That space is now stuffed with noise. Or rather, interference. In fact, everything has become interference—even the most important messages. All messages have been flattened into a monotonous din. And now, the greatest communication skill is finding a way to break through that noise and make oneself heard.

During the Cold War, radio broadcasts suffered from signal interference. Various noise jammers would distort transmissions, making them incomprehensible—whistles, the sound of chopping wood, static, buzzing, you name it. If you broadcast another signal on the same frequency, you rendered the original unintelligible.

Now, the same thing has happened due to information overload. Every unread message has turned into noise.

We set out calling this the Age of Knowledge, the Age of Communication, the Information Age. But we have arrived at the Age of Noise!

GARBAGE COLLECTORS?

The problem is no longer a lack of communication, but an excess of it. Let’s say a fragment of a message manages to break through the noise and reach the receiver—will it be understood? Will it transform into knowledge in the democratic sense? Does the receiver even have time to process it? Do they have anyone to discuss it with? Or, for minds already boiling like cauldrons, is all input just garbage? Are we, in fact, garbage collectors?

Has real knowledge—once considered the indispensable vitamin of democracy—been replaced by hollow, nutrient-stripped husks of information?

Some shrug and say, “What difference does it make?” It makes all the difference!

Byung-Chul Han, a Korean-born German philosopher who examines the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and digital technology, and whom I believe we all should read, argues:

“The chaos of information we live in today has thrown us into a post-truth society, where there is no difference between right and wrong.”

That place, though seemingly overflowing with content, is actually a void—a void that offers no grip where even fumbling blindly in the dark.

I won’t delve into debates about post-truth or the post-truth society here. But one thing is clear: this is an utterly terrifying landscape for journalists and communicators alike.

If truth no longer holds value in the minds of an exhausted and bewildered public, if people can no longer discern where truth even comes from amid all the noise, then no matter how groundbreaking your story is, what difference does it make? The odds of your work being lost in the chaos—drowned in the cacophony—are staggeringly high.

The great poet Namık Kemal was mistaken. In his Hürriyet Kasidesi (Ode to Freedom), he wrote:
“A jewel does not lose its value simply because it falls to the ground.”

But today, when truth falls, it disappears into mountains of unused information—buried under heaps of digital waste. Oktay Akbal titled one of his short story collections Loneliness is Forbidden to Me. Now, in this new world of incessant, suffocating communication, loneliness is forbidden to everyone!

And here lies a cruel paradox: Humans need solitude more than ever. They need it to cope with the relentless, dust-like downpour of information, to clear their minds, to breathe. Without it, they will go mad. And they are going mad.

Byung-Chul Han suggests that this is one of the reasons depression has become as common as the flu in modern society. Another reason? The system deceives individuals—trapping them in an impossible cult of positivity, designed for relentless self-exploitation. A world where everything seems possible—when in reality, it isn’t—is filled with deep pits of depression.

No matter how much the postmodern individual is entertained, they will never be satisfied—because the system conditions them for dissatisfaction.

Yes, Homo super communicatus, who has surpassed even Superman as a communicator, desperately needs solitude just to breathe. Solitude is essential to us!

“THE NOISE IS THE MESSAGE”

To sum up: The noise the message itself!

When I began my doctoral studies in the 1960s, communication guru Marshall McLuhan declared: “The medium is the message.”

What mattered was not what you said, but where you said it from. Today, we are forced to say:
“The noise is the message.” The real message is this ceaseless noise—this interference.
What you say doesn’t matter—because the noise will drown it out, blending all voices together into an indistinguishable roar.

So, then, who are we? We, the communicators—the so-called “content creators”—those of us responsible for training the next generation of content creators? We, whose words cannot be heard, and when heard promptly dismissed as wothless – what are we going to call ourselves?

Are we just clowns in the circus? Are we parasitic noise-makers?
Are we chaos generators? Are we peddlers of nonsense?

Do you see the severity of the identity crisis we face?

Fifty years ago, when I earned my doctorate in communication, we were sure.about what we were supposed to do.

The masses wanted access to the truths that had been hidden from them. Democracy demanded it. We were in this profession to provide it. We were soldiers of the people’s right to know the truth. That mission made life meaningful. And sometimes, it was even more important than life itself.

Which facts? Which truths? Who is lying? Who is telling the truth?

MEDIA EFFECTS

So how effective are we really ?

You’ve probably pondered this question before, my friend. And yet, the answers we’ve given have fluctuated between zero and infinity:

“The media is immensely powerful!”

“Nah, the media is just a balloon—totally ineffective!”

Effectiveness is, of course, important. Every communication effort carries the intent to create an impact, sometimes even to change things.

But what exactly is this goal?

Rhetoricians defined it as persuasion—the ability to influence or change someone’s opinion, to convince them.

Could we also say to deceive? That question lies at the heart of the ethical considerations we’ve been alluding to. I am currently delving into this issue in a recently published philosophical article (“Truth as the Main Axis of Communication Ethics,” Reflektif, 3, 2024).

With the rise of mass society, along with mass newspapers and radio, belief in the power of media grew significantly. Some believed that influencing the masses had become incredibly easy simply because reaching them had become easier. They were now clustered in cities, stripped of their traditional protective shells. Messages could hit their target like a bullet. The rise of fascism was seen as proof of this.

“We were the most powerful!”

But over time, especially after World War II, research showed that things weren’t quite so simple. The metaphorical bullet fired from the media wasn’t hitting its target as directly as assumed—there were still cognitive and social shields in the way. Many advertising and propaganda campaigns flopped for this very reason.

One study after another followed. By the 1960s, particularly in the U.S., faith in media effectiveness had waned significantly. So much so that in 1959, a prominent communication scholar, Bernard Berelson, declared that it was time to “call it quits on this type of research!”

“From all-powerful to barely effective!” It was at this point that the concept of media effects came under scrutiny. A campaign might not be successful in selling a product or swaying votes, but that didn’t mean media messages weren’t shaping something far more fundamental—our worldview. They were teaching us what the world is like, how social roles are distributed, what life goals should be… These long-term ideological effects were the most significant of all. Because people made decisions—about voting, shopping, career choices—based on them. They were being raised by the media.

We wrapped up the 20th century under the dominance of this view. And then… social media arrived. And with it, the information flood, Homo super communicatus, and global confusion.
Now, deception has overtaken persuasion. Orators have been replaced by trolls. “Opinion leaders” have given way to social media influencers.

A glance at the personas and rhetoric of these new influencers is enough to reveal the intellectual decay of the communication realm: fake expertise, ignorance, misinformation, shameless product placements, disregard of ethics, scams, tastelessness…

The goal? To exploit new media opportunities to gain some form of fame and profit from it. To make others aspire to their lifestyle or appearance. To slip in ideological and political messages when needed.

This new group straddles the line between communication and anti-communication. It’s hard to say which side they truly belong to. And, in today’s noise—that suits them just fine!

BEING A COMMUNICATOR IN A CENSORSHIP ZONE

Does the linguistic proximity between the words law (yasa) and prohibition (yasak) in Turkish suggest a deeper cultural link? Are laws, in this context, primarily instruments of restriction?
Conversely, in societies that have undergone the Enlightenment, are laws designed more to limit the state’s power to impose restrictions?

If you ask intellectuals in Turkey about the country’s biggest communications problem, they will most likely point to censorship and press restrictions. And indeed, our historical and cultural backdrop in this regard is not particularly promising.

“We are a military nation”—we take orders, we follow them. A single word can get you branded as a traitor. We live under the illusion that executing two people in a public square for “wrong opinions” will solve the problem.

In Islam, a faith built on submission (teslimiyet), we have an extensive vocabulary for those who think differently: kafir (infidel), münafık (hypocrite), mürted (apostate), fitneci (instigator), müfsit (corruptor). The punishment for some of these? Death.

Somee of our secularists too see every dissenting voice as a foreign conspiracy, espionage, or treason. Intellectual paranoia is one of our national diseases.

As Enlightenment ideas began influencing Turkey in the 19th century, the ideological battle between freedom advocates and believers often manifested in a struggle over the labels of ignorance (cahillik) and heresy (kafirlik).

Columnist Çetin Altan once lamented that Turkey was trapped between military barracks and mosques. Perhaps today we should say between the “ignorant” and the “infidel.”

But in the digital age, the boundaries between these two camps are no longer as clear-cut.

Turkey has long held the shameful title of imprisoning more journalists than any other country.
This is directly tied to its deep-seated suspicion of dissent. Those in power—whether political or religious—instinctively seek to protect society from “harmful ideas.” Ideas aren’t seen as debatable claims but as deadly infections.

When I was a child, a brand of matchboxes was banned because, when viewed upside-down, the image on the box resembled Stalin. Who knew? An uneducated person might catch the Communism virus just by looking at it! And so, by banning that matchbox, the government believed it had protected the country from Communism.

Even today, we see echoes of such archaic obsessions. The real threat in this era, however, is not these laughable bans. It is the noise—the mind-numbing flood of anti-communication, which has drained words like freedom and belief of their meaning.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BLACK BOX?

I’ve gone on at length, perhaps I’ve worn you out. Let me move forward:

One of the biggest obstacles that information encounters in reaching Homo super communicatus in our era is noise. In fact, we might even call it meaningless noise. But that’s not the only problem. There are also issues inside the black box—that is, the brain itself.

Let’s examine this as the journey of Mr. Byte from sender to receiver. And when I say byte, I’m not just referring to the unit of digital information made up of eight bits. Here, I’m using it symbolically, as the smallest unit of communication.

Now, let’s recall the biggest contradiction: Thanks to new communication technologies, the ability of humans to send messages has increased to an unimaginable extent in a very short time. Over the past two centuries, with electronic advancements and, especially in the last 50 years, the massive digital revolution, Homo sapiens has transformed into Homo super communicatus.

However, evolution has lagged behind the revolution. While humans’ signal-sending capacity has increased exponentially, their ability to process messages has remained almost unchanged. As I’ve said before, it’s like having a massive body but a throat the size of a whale’s. At best, it can open as wide as a volleyball!

And not every ball is allowed inside! There are always angels or demons on duty, deciding who gets in and what happens to them.

First, as rhetoricians insist, the identity of the sender is crucial. Is the sender a familiar, trusted, and credible figure? Or are they one of the others—those the receiver does not trust? If the message comes from the others, it gets dumped into the trash. If it comes from our own, it’s placed on a pedestal. This is not a rational choice—it’s an emotional one.

This selection process happens incredibly fast. Everyone is classified, and those who make it inside are sent to specific rooms, grouped with others like them. Some rooms are overflowing, while others remain empty…

I am talking about selective perception, a fundamental topic in social psychology. The processes of noticing, accepting, categorizing, retaining; they are all selective.

The way information is categorized inside the black box determines the meaning it will be given.

This is why Mr. Byte carries different meanings in different black boxes. It’s why one person sees the same byte as white while another sees it as black. It’s why the same news report can be interpreted differently, misunderstood, or even ignored. The reason there are as many different meanings as there are viewers is exactly this.

Prominent communication researchers discovered this—much to their surprise—back in the 1940s. No matter how much effort was put in, certain messages did not change existing opinions as expected. The outcome of messages entering the black box was typically reinforcement, not transformation. It served to further fill existing shelves, to tighten ranks.

This surprised liberal theorists, but for those with Marxist roots, it should not have been so shocking. Marx had clearly stated that in a capitalist system, the media would be owned by capitalists, and this ownership would dictate media content. At the end of the day, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. The ideological outcome of the base-superstructure relationship could not be otherwise.

In other words, both ends of the stick posed problems when it came to change: Not only was mass communication owned by capitalists, but message receivers themselves were storing information in pre-designated boxes. This is why “false consciousness” could not be broken simply by loading new information onto people. Organization, solidarity, and struggle were required. (For more on the relationship between ideology and communication, see my article: [“The Concept of Ideology and Mass Communication Research,” The Journal of Communication Inquiry, 1980, Vol. 6, Issue 1]).

In the 1980s, while in the U.S., we conducted extensive research on how different people interpreted and understood television news. These studies were widely discussed, presented to news professionals, and are still available in books and articles today. Since then, the structure of the media has changed. Television is no longer the primary source of news. But in new media platforms, the perception process remains roughly the same.

What’s more, Mr. Byte no longer comes from reputable, somewhat trustworthy television networks—it now comes from dubious, unidentified social media sources. As a result, people understand even less about what’s happening in the world—and usually misunderstand it entirely!

(For studies related to my research, see: [“From the Boob Tube to the Black Box: Television News Comprehension from an Information Processing Perspective,” Journal of Broadcasting, Vol. 27, 1983, co-authored with Gill Woodall and Dennis K. Davis.])

WE MUST DEFEND THE WORD!

Yes, everyone is either a communicator or wants to be one. I was alone getting a degree in 1974; today, there are 93 Communication Departments, more than 300 full professors, more than 500 academics with doctorates, thousands of university graduates. But the outlook is not bright. We are not satisfied with the world we live in. So, what will we do?

The first answer: First, we will step outside the noise, look at our work from the outside, and think about it honestly. We will ask outright: What is our purpose?

What I am about to say may seem too romantic for an environment dominated by noise and anti-communication:

And as an answer, we will speak the truth directly. We will teach people to speak the truth directly. We will defend the freedom that makes this possible to the very end.

One of the sacred books begins with “In the beginning was the word.” The word, meaning the true word. It does not say “In the beginning was the lie.” We can also argue that at the anthropological root of communication, there is the act of telling the truth—expressing dangers, needs… Because, at that level, whether words are true or false is a matter of life and death.

We must stand by “the Word,” the founding concept of communication.

We will defend the Word. At the very least, we will not join the anti-communication front that stands against speaking the truth. We will say no to deception. We will not write programs for their robots and bots. We will not knowingly lie. We will not serve those who try to twist communication into the opposite of its original purpose—the Word. We will not enable those who polish lies. The opposite of “the Word” here is not “silence”—it is the Lie.

Let me clarify what I mean by “direct truth.” This bold phrase does not imply that there is only one truth in every matter. On the contrary, it refers to our truth—the truth we honestly believe in, the core truth that does not contradict our professional ethics. It refers to our truth—the one that prevails in the debate within our own conscience.

Without distorting, twisting, or beating around the bush, we must be as clear, direct, and effective as possible.

Do not enable lies or liars. Speak the truth!

Parrhesia!

“NEWS FROM THE BEYOND”!

We must not forget that we are not as far removed from the Middle Ages—an era ruled by different kinds of lies—as we might think. That era still knocks on our door from time to time.

Communicators, and humanity as a whole, have faced this point before. They had to choose between the Great Lie and Scientific Truth. They rejected the dominant model of communication and pursued the truth. They dismantled lies, fabrications, delusions, and superstitions and brought truth to the forefront.

At the beginning of my essay, I spoke about how our country is now filled with signals due to the development of democracy and technology. And I mentioned that this is not the first time.

Yes, the air was full of signals before as well. Not just the air—hills, trees, birds, and clouds were filled with signals. People communicated through those mediums. But not with each other. They communicated with the Beyond.

Humanity was in constant communication with the unknown, with gods, angels, saints, demons—day and night. Just like the 21st-century human, who remains connected 24/7 through technology, trying to find out what is happening or what will happen.

I lived through the scarcity period of communication, but I also witnessed the remnants of the era of intense interaction with the Beyond. The women I grew up with in Bursa—who were not highly educated—had their eyes and ears tuned to those signals. If not a single leaf moved, it was a sign of an earthquake. If an owl hooted three times, it meant a funeral would take place in the neighborhood. Messages from the Beyond were elements of this region’s mythology, folk tales, beliefs, and daily life. Those figures were more real than today’s media-produced “heroes.”

From a communication perspective, we can place the phenomenon of sender (the Beyond) and receiver (humans) neatly into the communication models we teach. The message comes from above. The signal carriers—the channels—are diverse: birds, snails, fish. They use specific codes to convey the messages from the Beyond. Sometimes the receiver deciphers these codes directly, but other times they need decoders—intermediaries: oracles, soothsayers, scholars, priests, fortune-tellers, mystics…

They were respected, feared. Sometimes they were labeled heretics or witches and burned.

Thunder, lightning, floods, bird migrations—everything was a sign or an omen. The world gained meaning through these signals, becoming more comprehensible for believers. For some, connection with the Beyond was constant. They spoke of what they saw and heard. Some arranged their lives according to these messages—offering sacrifices, praying, trying to respond to the signs. We could even classify these responses as feedback within the communication model.

For the majority, even if wrong, believing you know something is better than knowing nothing at all. The power of prophecy and mysticism lies here: If just one prediction comes true, it makes all the others seem credible.

Yes, humanity has lived through such an era. And in some ways, it continues to do so. People still visit saints, perform rituals, consult astrologers, and try to predict the future through stars.

So, the confused duck remains: Humankind! We think we have progressed so much, but we are not as far removed from those days as we assume. Even as Homo Super Communicatus, we are not as different as we think.

Even back then, there were those who claimed to receive constant news from the Beyond.

You might say this comparison is wrong because the senders of those past messages did not exist—they were imaginary!

Really? And what about today’s senders? Do they truly exist? Are they real, or are they robots, rented voices, deepfakes, or deceptions? Whose voice are they speaking in? Are they telling the truth or lying? Who can be trusted, and who cannot? Aren’t new superstitions flying through the air just like old ones?

Can’t we see today’s artificial intelligence bots, trolls, secret services, scammers, and lunatics as the new Beyond?

Except now, they are more numerous, and their intentions are even more corrupt.

History has a cyclical nature. What we thought had disappeared forever sometimes returns in a new disguise.

We could even call our era: “The Return of the Beyond.”

BUSY AT THE FARM, BUT…

In 1974—exactly 50 years ago—when I earned my doctorate in Mass Communications in the U.S. and returned to Turkey, I previously mentioned how my grandmother in Bursa asked me, “So, what will you do?” My life has been spent searching for an answer to this question, which at first seemed amusing to me. Looking back, I see that I have done a great deal.

But it’s not enough.

Many things were left unfinished; I couldn’t complete them, or I wasn’t allowed to. For example, I never managed to turn my lecture notes on Theory of Speechlessness, a graduate seminar I taught at the University of Maryland in 1994, into a published article. This theoretical framework, which argued that every communicative act should first be analyzed as a power dynamic, sought not only to reveal the imbalance between those who can and cannot speak on an international level but also to expose the power claims made in interpersonal communication. The moment two people come together, much of what can and cannot be said is already expressed implicitly. Encouraged by my students, I had intended to sit down, expand, and write it all out.

But then Uğur Dündar, with whom I had worked on the Arena program in Turkey, called to “announce the good news” that I was now the News Coordinator at Kanal D! And just like that, I returned to Turkey to chase news stories. My life swung like a pendulum from one end to the other, and I couldn’t break away from either. Who knows? Maybe it was for the best. I could have ended up as an out-of-touch theorist or a superficial journalist.

Many may know the great poet Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…”

Frost then says he took the road less traveled, which “made all the difference.” But he doesn’t speak of where he might have gone had he ventured over the hills between the two paths. My journey was somewhat like that. Was it for the better or the worse? I no longer dwell on it much. I have come to understand that there is no such thing as a perfect life, only the effort to become better. As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado once wrote, “You create your own path by walking it.”

As for the Theory of Speechlessness… That article still stirs within me from time to time, like a severed tongue. Throughout my life, I have witnessed its validity. It is never easy for individuals or cultures to find their voice. One of the greatest barriers to universal communication is not the lack of something to say, but rather the inability to say it—or never getting a turn to speak. Because it is always those who speak continuously who decide who gets to speak and how.

There was once only a narrow field of communication. Now, it is an ocean—vast, endless. It branches out, grows. New disciplines emerge, department names keep changing: Journalism, Radio-Television, Press and Publishing, Communication, Communication Design… and so on.

Yet after traveling between the two hills, I have come to believe that at its core, communication is quite simple. The wise thinkers of Anatolia, the true masters of communication, contemplated these matters long before us.

Isn’t Yunus Emre’s quatrain just as meaningful for contemporary communication theory?

“Yunus weaves his words,
Like blending honey into butter,
He offers his wares to the people,
His load is pure gems, not salt.”

Here, “wares” does not mean cheap goods as it might today—it refers to something truly valuable. And so, I must ask: Have we drowned in salt? Or have we managed to find even a sliver of a true gem?

HOW TO PUBLISH A REFERENCE PAPER

Another unresolved longing within me, as a communicator, is the failure of our efforts to establish a reference newspaper in Turkey. A newspaper that evaluates events purely based on their significance, without giving in to sensationalism or tabloid trends. A newspaper that is considered essential reading for decision-makers of all ideological backgrounds, one that publishes documents and is itself preserved as a document—like Le Monde in France, Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, The New York Times in the U.S., El Pais in Spain…

After İsmail Cem and I were dismissed from TRT, we launched Politika with the intention of creating such a newspaper. Even its logo was black to resemble these publications. But it didn’t gain the expected interest. It changed hands. Its melancholic story can be found in my memoir.

Later, Hürgün, which Erol Simavi’s son, Sedat Simavi, launched to familiarize himself with journalism, was also meant to be such a paper. It lasted only 39 days. I wrote its final article.

Then, the official reason given to me for the failed coup at Cumhuriyet, orchestrated by Hasan Cemal and Emine Uşaklıgil, was their plan to transform it into a reference newspaper. With that hope, I joined them. But they failed. They withdrew. And I was left stranded.

Even at Radikal, where I was a columnist for 15 years, the dream of becoming a reference newspaper was occasionally voiced. Some steps were taken in that direction. But we never got far.

It just doesn’t happen in Turkey. I wish it had. Especially in these chaotic times, when dust and smoke blend together and a thousand voices speak at once—if only we had a proper newspaper to turn to and say, “Wait, let’s check what actually happened.”

Nevermind a reference newspaper—we don’t even have a central media anymore!

AND ALSO…

In 1974, I returned from the United States as a fresh Ph.D. graduate, ready to build an academic career—only to find myself in television studios. Then, as Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Politika newspaper, I opened my eyes to the jungle of journalism. It was my first job in the field. Over the years, I did it all—reporting, page editing, column writing, editorial writing, editorial board membership, news management. I wrote investigative series, directed pages, chased stories both in Turkey and abroad. I received awards, served on award juries. I held positions such as Secretary General of the Press Council, Member of the High Council of the Press Council, Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the Turkish Journalists’ Association, President of the Communication Research Association and the Turkish Foreign Press Association, and member of the IPI Turkey Committee.

After completing my master’s and doctoral studies, which I began at Indiana University in 1968, I became an assistant and later an associate professor at Cleveland State and Maryland universities, earning tenure in just four years. I taught at Istanbul University, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, and Anadolu University in Eskişehir. I became a professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and retired in 2015 with the title of emeritus. I still have an office there and teach one course a year. I have presented papers at the world’s most important academic communication conferences, published articles in prestigious journals, and written numerous books in Turkish and English on communication.

Meanwhile, I never abandoned poetry, which I consider the purest form of communication. I was honored with the Homer Award in Çanakkale (2018) and the Silk Road Award in China (2023). I won various journalism and television news awards, but I won’t even list those…

I must have left something out.

I mention all this because my 50 years post-Ph.D. have been immersed in communication. I never let go—neither in theory nor in practice. I always saw myself as a doctor who both teaches and performs surgery. I both cut and lecture! Instead of observing communication from the outside, I tried to change it from within. The question that was always on my mind was: How can I help my students and colleagues become better communicators (or journalists)? I was not just a critic; I was also a teacher.

I witnessed Turkish journalism transition from letterpress to offset printing, from Cağaloğlu to İkitelli. I was there as Turkish television evolved from black and white to color, from responsible public broadcasting to ratings-driven private TV. The Arena programs I did with Uğur Dündar had ratings that even national football matches today could only dream of. A magazine I directed was shut down by martial law. I was put on trial in criminal courts. I defended press freedom in European forums where some naïvely saw Islamist rule as a good thing. And in 2011, during the process of dismantling Babıali, I was ousted from Radikal by the FETÖ network.

Let me confess something: I always loved magazines the most! It was a childhood passion. Back then, we eagerly awaited Karınca, Arkadaş, Çocuk Haftası, and Doğan Kardeş magazines. They were initially text-heavy, then comic strips took over. But they played a crucial role in fostering a love for reading among our generation. In the 1980s, I served as Editor-in-Chief for Nokta and Tempo magazines. Nokta defined itself as a weekly news magazine, while Tempo struggled to survive as a weekly current affairs and entertainment magazine.

Life only makes sense when it is narrated, turned into a story. Presenting fragmented events in a connected way, like chapters of a novel, was more the job of news magazines than daily newspapers. You couldn’t just be day-to-day; you had to be current. Unfortunately, this kind of journalism is now in crisis—or even dead. Information now floats in the air like sparks from a wildfire. Some of these sparks ignite flames. But nobody turns to news magazines anymore to make sense of them. That is one of the great losses of this new era.

Looking back, I believe my greatest achievement was not in what I did, but in what I did not do:
Through all these years—thousands of articles, hundreds of TV programs, 35 books, countless interviews—not once, not even once, did I knowingly tell a lie. Some facts I reported may have later turned out to be incorrect. Some predictions may have been wrong. But a deliberate lie? Never! My inner censor would never allow it.

When I first entered journalism, fabricated news—or “asparag, as it was called—was seen as acceptable by some. The fact that these fabricated stories sold well was taken as proof of their success. I persistently opposed this.

“What harm is there?” they would say. “Thanks to a few sensational pieces, readers will also come across the real news.” But I argued that one rotten fruit spoils the whole basket.
“How can a reader distinguish what’s fake and what’s real?” I asked. “They’ll end up distrusting everything!”

Looking back, asparagas journalism was perhaps an early rehearsal for today’s post-truth era.

IS THERE LIFE AFTER BABIALI?

It turns out that being thrown out of Babıali by the FETÖ network was perfect timing. Ever since, I’ve been trying to show journalists that there is life beyond Babıali. Those curious about my reflections before death can read my book Final Notes on a Dying Profession (Can Çekişen Bir Meslek İçin Son Notlar).

For 50 years, the Turkish press bravely resisted authoritarian governments, only to be dismantled by the Islamists —sold off in parcels or sabotaged from within. I am determined to write this story. I want the second volume of my memoir to be The Rise and Fall of Babıali.

I worked as both a manager and writer for Babıali newspapers for many years. I know that paper-and-ink journalism has long been surpassed by technology. This transition has brought gains—but also great losses.

One reason why today’s world feels so chaotic is that we no longer have a daily guide—what used to be called the first draft of history. Now, all news is considered equal. And this false equality is the greatest inequality of all.

The collapse of newspapers as a medium was inevitable—but nothing has replaced them. (See my article: “Why Do We Miss Newspapers in the Age of Homo Super Communicatus?” in Reflektif, March 2023, Bilgi University).

I can say that I’ve closed that chapter. But I can’t say the same for TRT. Its deliberate destruction is a wound that still bleeds in my heart.

TRT could have been an exemplary model for democracy and journalism. It could have set a standard for private media and even society itself. In my memoirs, I recall my first conversation with İsmail Cem in May 1974, when we agreed that TRT—especially television—must be Turkey’s cultural locomotive.

And today, when everyone complains about lies, fabrications, and deceit—why couldn’t TRT have been the country’s truth locomotive? What if people frequently said, “If TRT didn’t report it, I don’t believe it!” or “TRT said it, so it must be true.” Wouldn’t Turkey be a more honest, more livable country? We, as young idealists, fought for this vision and laid its foundations. But those who claimed to defend national and moral values pelted this institution with stones and tore it down. They turned it into a disinformation machine. That’s why the so-called institutions they claim to have established to combat disinformation have no credibility.

In this context, I must also express my deep disappointment in RTÜK. I initially supported its establishment to bring order and ethical oversight to broadcasting. Instead, it has become a partisan censorship body.

A neutral, principled, science-respecting regulatory body could have guided Turkey’s creative energy and helped broadcasting become both a cultural locomotive and a bulldozer for truth.
I submitted four reports to the minister responsible for RTÜK’s formation, warning that politicians should be kept away from radio and TV. Instead, the exact opposite happened.

Now, every time a screen goes dark by official order—I feel ashamed.

TURKISH TV SERIES AND THE WORLD

Alongside everything else, there are some developments that still make me proud—and I’d be doing myself an injustice if I didn’t mention my small contribution to them. One of these is the worldwide spread and enthusiastic reception of Turkish television series. We produced Turkey’s first proper television drama. I’m talking about Aşk-ı Memnu, directed by Halit Refiğ. And when I say we, I must first acknowledge İsmail Cem, the Director General of TRT at the time, for whom I served as a television consultant. Despite all the bureaucratic obstacles within TRT, Cem insisted that we tap into Turkey’s rich cinematic tradition.

Yes, at that time, Turkey was producing nearly 300 films a year. Many of them were laughably bad, but among them were some true masterpieces. This country had legendary directors like Lütfi Akad, Atıf Yılmaz, Metin Erksan, and Halit Refiğ. If we aspired to be a cultural locomotive, of course, we had to make use of their talents. We had to embrace all the cultural wealth of Turkey—but not through the narrow lens of Yeşilçam (Turkey’s old film industry), rather through universal standards.

We had to take pride in what we created, in what we produced. But first, we needed to understand our culture accurately and truthfully. Beneath us lay the vibrant, multicolored carpets of Anatolia, and above us, the high domes of Dersaadet (Istanbul’s old name).

And we were open—open to all the winds of the world.

That’s why we were both Eastern and Western—yet also uniquely local!

Whether we personally like them or not, it is this syncretic spirit that has made Turkish TV dramas and docudramas so widely watched, from Patagonia to Yemen, Mexico to Mongolia. No matter where they are, viewers see themselves, their own societies, their aspirations, and their frustrations reflected in these series.

These new-generation Turkish creators have mastered the art of visual storytelling—tricks and all. And why? Because behind them stands a vast archive of thousands of films. They know how to appeal to everyone—because they themselves are a little bit of everyone.

And because they use Istanbul as a backdrop—a melting pot of cultures, a global carnival.
Istanbul is the world itself! You can shoot any kind of moviee there: love movie, spy movie, betrayal movie, heroics movie, palace and riches movie, poverty movie.

SYNTHESIS OR SCHIZOPHRENIA?

As communicators of modern Turkey, we constantly oscillate between synthesis and schizophrenia. This bipolarity is both the reason for our hyper-productivity and our paralysis.

After all, we live right on the fault line between East and West. Caught in between, often drowning in the riverbed. This duality is both a great opportunity and a terrifying danger.

We pray in Arabic, but we musicalize those prayers with Byzantine maqams—yet we think in Turkish. On one hand, some of us are pulled toward the ideals of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). On the other, we are drawn toward the creeds of Islam (Obedience, Sacrifice, Jihad). One moment, we are being dragged toward the West; the next, we are pushed back to the East.

We take a bit from everything—and everything takes a bit from us. If we can melt all of this into a single authentic synthesis, it’s magnificent—there’s no one better than us! But if we fail, as we often do—we are doomed to perish.

Synthesis or schizophrenia—these are our only outcomes. If we cannot master synthesis, the result is catastrophic. The most beautiful country in the world turns into a place where people are packed into overloaded rubber rafts, desperate to escape elsewhere.

And unfortunately, it already has.

NEW MEDIA, GLOBAL CHAOS

Yes, we appreciate the opportunities new communication technologies provide. And yes, we, as media professionals, are among the best at using them—we make our living from them. But truth be told, even we didn’t expect so much to happen in such a short time.

Meanwhile, the world is in complete turmoil. Masses are confused. Racism is rising. Fascists are winning elections one after another. Drug use has become a pandemic. Environmental disasters are reaching apocalyptic levels. And no one cares. Old wars continue. There is talk a new world war. New plagues, new slavery, new crises loom.

We were once so hopeful about libeeration through the internet and social media. But our hopes have been crushed. And it hurts.

More than ever, we need to step back from our professions and analyze what is happening. We must try to understand— What happened? Why did it happen? How can it be better? Who are we really slaving ourselves for? Who owns us? How independent and autonomous are we? What kind of world are we striving to create?

These are the very same fundamental questions thatI mentioned when I made a reference to Critical Theory. Back in our youth, inspired by Albert Camus, we used to talk about being conscious—both on a worldly and a cosmic level. Now, we are passing through a time when such consciousness is desperately needed.

How can the ownership structure, management models, and ethical responsibilities of new media be redefined? We cannot resign ourselves to the idea that our profession is merely a chain of inevitabilities.

We must go beyond commercial, political, ideological, and academic lies. We must have the courage to seek truth. We must develop the skill to speak truthfully.

150 years ago, Marx wrote: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the real point, however, is to change it.”

But today, the situation is different. A handful of powerful people are constantly changing the world—without ever asking us. And they are doing it shamelessly, to serve their own interests.
They are changing it so fast that we cannot grasp what is happening—yet we are forced to live with the consequences.

So today, the most important thing is first to really UNDERSTAND the world so that we change it in the direction we desire.

BEWARE, THE KNIFE WE HOLD CUTS BOTH WAYS

So, how do we want the world to change?

In the post-Enlightenment era, the answer to this question was relatively simple and shared by much of humanity: Toward a world that is freer, more equal, fairer, more prosperous, and more peaceful. The premisses of the Enlightenment heralded a bright future under the guidance of science. The journey into the future was, in essence, a journey toward utopia.

In this optimistic atmosphere, communication was naturally seen as the driving force of progress. Through communication, the knowledge that would transform humanity was expected to spread across the globe. Advancements in communication technologies meant progress for progressives because, as a rational being, humanity would ultimately choose the truth. Within this framework, the role of communicators was inherently progressive. They were, objectively, crew members on the voyage to a bright future.

However, the first half of the 20th century shattered this optimism with the rise of fascism and Stalinist totalitarianism. The notion that this journey could actually be a dystopian nightmare gained traction. No longer was communication seen solely as a force for progress; it was now recognized as a tool for brainwashing, fearmongering, and silencing the masses—a primary instrument of a new kind of reactionary force.

The knife of communication cut both ways.

Yes, this is something we must never forget: The knife we hold have two sharp edges.

For communicators—journalists, newsmakers, and even prophets—this realization meant a shift in their roles. Communication skills could be used not only to shape truth, reality, and authenticity, but also to fabricate, deceive, disinform and manipulate. It was no longer enough to simply be a communicator. One had to ask: What kind of communicator am I?

We already knew about one of these dystopias from George Orwell’s 1984. But Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, depicted a different kind of nightmare—one where control was not through oppression but seduction. One was ruled by force, the other by deception. Yet both had one thing in common: constant surveillance. And this eye of surveillance was made possible by new communication technologies.

All of this was foreseen long before humanity became Homo super communicatus. Now, surveillance is not only easier—it’s voluntary. As Byung-Chul Han describes so well, in the era of neoliberal consumerism, people live to be watched. (Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Techniques of Power, Metis, 2019) And just as this has liberating effects, it also has enslaving ones. Are we not witnessing this? What do we intend to do about it? Artificial Intelligence, when subjected to the same commands, make the problem even more complex and multi-layered.

Questions like these are of direct concern to us as communicators. In the field of futurology, which studies the future, these questions are asked frequently but not in such radical or blunt terms. Instead, they are circumvented. As with any research, who frames the questions and who funds the studies matter immensely. And most of the time, we see the usual suspects.

In the European Union and elsewhere, these questions about the future are making their way onto the political agenda. When we speak of digital dictatorships, we are not talking about a sci-fi movie. We are talking about real-life developments.

As declared in the TRT series based on Attila İlhan’s screenplay, directed by Hüseyin Karakaş:
“Tomorrow is already today!”

You already know the motto of my blog:
“Yesterday isn’t over yet, but tomorrow has already begun—what day is it today?” Yes, yesterday, today, and tomorrow are no longer as distinct as they once were. The future is arriving so fast that time itself is collapsing in on itself. Yesterday’s skills become obsolete overnight, while tomorrow’s skills become an urgent issue. We saw this during the pandemic, when elderly people unfamiliar with digital technology struggled immensely.

But this blurring of time isn’t just about technology—it affects social norms, ideologies, and habits as well. As I wrote in my book On the Good Life and Happiness, we are living in blurred, motley, chaotic times. And just as it’s hard to see what’s around us, it’s hard to see what lies ahead.

A FUTUROLOGIST’S SECRET

Since I’ve been a columnist for many years, I’ve had to engage in amateur futurology from time to time. And like all columnists, let me brag a little—most of my predictions came true! Since we’re colleagues, let me share my brilliant secret: I use a simple model called “Everything Changes”. It assumes that not only the main subject of change but everything along its path will also change. As you move forward, the mountain on your left might erupt as a volcano.
The bridge you planned to cross might be swept away by floods. And worst of all—your destination might not even exist by the time you arrive. And of course, you yourself may have changed along the way!

Another key question I always ask, inspired by Hegelian dialectics, is:

“What are the counterforces to this change?” “Who rises as others fall?”
“What are the chances of these counterforces succeeding?”

This approach has greatly helped me understand the evolution of media and communication.
you, my colleagues in communication, probably have more advanced methods.

But still—keep this in mind.

When I look at our era—dominated by digital technologies and artificial intelligence—I see two possible futures: Digital Totalitarianism and The Age True Freedom

The first scenario involves a world where surveillance and control technologies invade every aspect of life. Where individuals are confined to rigid social roles, and dissent is minimized through biological engineering and psychopolitical coercion.

We already see signs of this from China to beyond.

The second scenario envisions technology as a tool for liberation, rather than control. A world where all human needs—historically met through labor—are produced by machines, eliminating exploitation. A world where surplus value is used to elevate humanity, allowing people to evolve from being beasts of burden to masters of life.

In short, the rise of the New Human who is able to devote more of their time to being human!
It is great that we AI which will take care of mundane chores like decoding an interview that takes would take several hours in a matter of a few minutes. But if you leave the editorial decisions ot the machine it would be aappropriate to pose thes questions to themselves: What am I good for? Ama I only a technician?

THE REAL BIG QUESTIONS:

Science once emerged from philosophy. Now, we must return to philosophy—to ask the big questions and remember the big goals. This is already happening. t has become clear that every communicator must also be a philosopher.

Just as every philosopher must also be a journalist.

Michel Foucault recognized this as early as 1973.

In an interview, he said:

“I consider myself a journalist because I am interested in current events, in what happens around me, in what is happening in the world. Until Nietzsche, philosophy was concerned with eternity. Nietzsche was the first philosopher-journalist. He brought ‘today’ into philosophy. He was deeply concerned about daily events. I think the future is something we construct. The future is our reaction to them, our way of making them a part of our lives. If we want to control our future, we have to ask the most basic questions about today. This is why, in my view, philosophy is a kind of radikal journalism.””

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1973. But this observation is even more valid today. We are now living in a hyper-accelerated future. This future does not just concern the field of communication—it encompasses it. It uses it. We are all in the same ship.

OUR FUTURE

All of us—especially we communicators, journalists foremost—must, in a way, be radical philosophers. If we are not, then what are we but bolts turned whichever way power holders please?

In this wild era of history, we have all come together, trying to describe the invisible elephant. Each of us may be holding onto a different part of it. But from time to time, our hands touch. Sometimes, it slaps us right across the face. That invisible, unseen, hidden elephant is the mentality behind digital reality—it is, in fact, the global system itself.

Radical philosophers and critical theorists—among them Byung-Chul Han, who has focused heavily on this subject—identify it as “neoliberal capitalism.” — a system that is determined to maximize exploitation in every field under the guise of economic growth, that disregards the limits of nature, that sanctifies selfishness, that is greedy, insatiable, and never content. It has discovered that, in today’s economic conditions, deceiving and exploiting individuals one by one is far more efficient than exploiting social classes, as was done in industrial societies. Through various psychological means, it has turned consumption-obsessed people into willing slaves. Here we all are, smartphones in hand, clicking “like… like…” According to Han, this is no different from reciting prayers with prayer beads, chanting “Amen… Amen…”—a modern form of surrender. We scramble to maximize our own self-exploitation, eating strange things, flooding gyms, taking private courses, counting our steps as we walk.

But we do not ask: “Why?”

And, of course: “For whom?”

If we asked these, we would ask even more: Could these scientific marvels—proliferating like wildfire since the invention of the telegraph—not be used differently? Could they not, for instance, help us share with kindness rather than fuel ruthless growth? Could the data collected about us, kept hidden from us, be used not to generate massive profits for a select few but instead to understand and solve societal problems? What new forms of ownership and governance could serve these purposes? In fact, do these very tools not hold the potential to solve the great and existential crises that this mentality has inflicted upon us?

As Foucault said, we must remember—and remind others—that the future is built by “us”. And we must organize accordingly.

For those who are pessimistic about organizing (yes, the neoliberal system does not l,ke people coming together!), there are still things that can be done individually. Those who take up this cause can be seen as a kind of “truth guerrilla.” Sharpshooters taking down balloons of lies, one by one. Sharp-eyed, honest, upright, and courageous intellectuals. “Benders of falsehoods.”

Completely withdrawing from social media, which has become an ideological battleground, is a naïve dream. On the contrary, we must build “fortresses of truth” there. We must defend fundamental values such as freedom, equality, fraternity, justice, respect for humanity, and care for the environment—while also ensuring that the floating balloons of lies do not drift too far before being punctured.

Prof. Dr. Haluk Şahin (Emeritus)
Istanbul Bilgi University

THE CONCEPT OF TRUTH AS THE MAIN AXIS OF THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNICATION ETHICS – A PROLOGOMENON

“In the beginning was the word!” So begins a holy book. (King James Bible, 2017)

That word was “true”. It was the word of God, and since “He” would not lie, it had to be true.

From the religious point of view, for some, this was the beginning of “truth”. (Paulos, 2021)

Similar things can be said anthropologically and historically. In the beginning, the uttered word was most likely in response to a real need, a genuine request, an immeediate warning, as information. For the sake of the survival of the species, it must have been “true”. The date of this beginning, according to different scientists, might have been 70 thousand or 1.5 million years ago. (Paulos, 2021)

The same goes for the much more recent invention of “writing”, which is only 3500 years old by most accounts. (“History of Writing”, 2024) Writing primarily served to record and transport the true “word”. Thanks to it, truth could spread” far and wide. This is partly why the Bible, the holy book of Christians, was called “Good News” by some and why Christian missionaries were happy about the expanding reach of the new communications media.Thus the “true word” would catch up with those who had not been fortunate enough to hear it yet. (Carey, 1989)

In short, the “claim” or “promise” of truth was at the core of communicative acts from the very beginning. Imparting and sharing true information, was the main function of communication.

This article argues that despite big technological, sociological and political changes, this claim or promise must constitute the core of universal communication ethics today. Looking around, we would in fact be justified to declare that telling the truth has never been as important as today – this Age of Post-truth, the era of rampant disinformation.

THE TRUE-FALSE DIALECTIC

The imperative mood here implies the possibility that some messages may not meet the claim or promise of true-ness. As every concept contains its opposite within itself, so must “true”, whether it manifests itself as a lie, an untruth, falsehood, inaccuracy, misinformation or disinformation.

In other words, just like true speech, we can trace its opposite, the lie, to the beginning. The truth signifies the lie. The real signifies the false. As it signifies it as a possibility, it also signifies it as a fact – in time. From possibilities emerge facts. They develop over time and grow when circumstances allow and spread out, acquire commercial, political and institutional structures.

History tells us that people in early history were aware of the importance of truth in communication and were critical of those who did not conform to it. For example, in the period when cuneiform writing was just beginning to be used, it was expressed in a Sumerian proverb that scribes, who had a very respectable place in society, could fall into bad ways and do things they were not supposed to do:

“A disgraced scribe becomes a man of magical spells.” (Brown, 2021)

Apparently the reputation of spell-makers was not very high in those days either!

You could also say liar, disinformationist, sycophant, troll, swindler, “spin doctor”, deceiver instead of “spell-maker”. There is no shortage of words to describe those who engage in the dissemination of untruth and lies and disinformation in our age. They are everywhere.

“TRUTH” IN RHETORIC AND PARRHESIA

The Classical Rhetoric, which is known as the mother of communication studies, focuses on oratory or the ability to be effective in persuasive in speech. Does this mean that the use of untrue or false arguments and facts for the sake of persuasion was condoned?

According to Aristotle, who is considered to be the founder of the art or science of Rhetoric, the “orator” verifies his words and is responsible for basing them on facts. However, ‘The First Teacher” looked for “veracity” in the character of the orator rather than in the message itself and relied on the assumption that an orator who abides by ethical rules will not resort to lying. (Aristotle, & Roberts, W. R., 2004)

At that time, there were also those who went beyond good faith and emphasized the obligation of parrhessia, that is, telling the whole truth frankly no matter what. It is interesting for us Anatolians that the person who made this sort of honesty a way of life was the folk philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. The risks and costs of telling the truth openly and especially to the faces of the powerful could be harsh. But they could not silence Diogenes, who made parrhesia a way of life and is said to have spoken frankly even to the most powerful man of his time, Alexander the Great! (Rubineau & DeBevoise, 2023).

His exclamation in the 4th century that “the greatest happiness in the world is to express the truth freely” is like a distant greeting to today’s warriors of freedom of expression and universal communication ethics based on truth..

The ideal of parrhesia, which faded away during the Dark Ages and especially the Middle Ages, was reignited in modern times under other names and provided the seeds of contemporary freedom of expression arguments from Milton to Mill, Voltaire to Zola. Religious believers like Milton said God gave reason to humans so that they could differentiate between true and false; and secularists of the Enlightenment argued that positive science would be their guide in finding the right answer.

In the 20th century, on the eve of the onslaught of digital communications technology, Michel Foucault reinvigorated parrhesia as a philosophical concept that could be used in the political, social and personal quest of frankness at all levels (Foucault, 1999). At the same period, especially those who considered the media “the fourth branch” of the democratic system of government considered “telling the truth at all costs” essential for both social development and happiness. In the second half of the century this approach was vigorously defended by those who saw investigative journalism as essential for democracy (Şahin, 2012).

“HOMO SUPER COMMUNICATUS”

With the advent of digital media into everyday life at the beginning of this century, it was anticipated that the realm of true information would further expand. The idea that every citizen could become a truth disseminator, akin to an investigative journalist, was quite popular. It was hoped that the constantly connected Homo Super Communicatus, who could access all information at all times from everywhere, would become fool-proof against lies and fabrications! (Şahin, 2023).

However, this optimism was short-lived. As the new communication space fell into the hands of greedy entrepreneurs who were more interested in making money than informing the public, the trend was reversed. Even if truths could be spoken without harassment thanks to democratic traditions, they began to be drowned out in the noise. In an environment of total networking and total communication, truth was hard to find, like a needle in a haystack (Han, 2017).

The same dialectic had produced the predicted outcome. Truth was being challanged in its own territory. After a while, as untruth became more lucrative and organized, there was perhaps as much anti-communication as communication. The new communication technologies were in the service of lies and disinformation as much as truth and information. In many crtical instances and periods, they were dominant.

The unfortunate reality is that Homo Super Communicatus, gluttonous like a shark but equıpped with a whale’s narrow throat, was overpowered by an increasingly relentless and indiscriminate information deluge, unable to deal with huge masses of incoming information, relying on emotions instead of reason and trusting fallacies and conspiracy theories instead of science.

Regardless of the content, “noise” had become the primary message.

Obviously, this marked the end of the progressive optimism of the Enlightenment. Poet John Milton, who advocated the free expression of truths, confident of God given reason, had challanged his contemporaries in1644:

“Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” (Britannica, 2004)

We have! We see it every day. “Truth” is frequently defeated, and worse; we can’t tell who is who on the pitch. They are dressed similarly, and someone pours plenty of oil on them. It’s unclear whose hand is in whose wrestling tights.

This stage is now called the “Post-truth era”!: A bewildering period where the weight and validity of the truth no longer matter.

We could even say that this is worse than being in the Age of Lies. Truth, defeated by lies, does not expire. It can straighten up in the future with the help of reason or science . What about now, when even these presuppositions have been demolished?

The neutralization of truth by noise is a serious source of worry for those who believe in democracy. An informed public is still indipensable for it to work. People must acquire knowledge before they can form opinions. Where will it come from? Who will keep them informed, provide them with true information? “A free and independent news media”, according to the theory. What if no such media exists? What if media itself has turned into the primary source of noise; that it is more like a fog, rather than light?

Can democracy survive?

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

Acknowledging that the primary task of the media is to convey truth (information, knowledge, news), gives rise to the following question: What is “truth”?

This undoubtedly is one of the most debated questions in philosophy. The “Correspondence Theory”, in its various versions has been proposed to provide a satifactory answer. The adequacy, correspondence, congruence, similarity, and representational capacity between what actually happened and what is narrated are seen as the differentiator of truth claims (Rasmussen, 2018).

We are talking about “fidelity” between what actually happened and what is relayed in the report. The claim is that whatever happened must be told exactly as it occurred – as sloganized in the classical maxim “telling it like it is.”

The notion of “truth” is different from the concept of fidelity mentioned in some communication models, including Shannon and Weaver (Shannon & Weaver, 1998). In “fidelity” as used in the model, the content is irrelevant; we are talking about the overlap between the message sent by the sender and the message received by the recipient. In “truth,” we talk about the overlap between what is “real” and what is conveyed. A message can be very faithful to its source, without necessarily reflecting the truth.

Ironically, when approaching the message in terms of the concept of Correspondence, we inherently accept that the perceived, decoded “truth” cannot be identical to the one encoded by the sender. Even when it is totally faithful, it can only be understood as much as the the receiver is capable of understanding.

The statement by the Sufi poet Rumi, “Do not bother; they can only understand you as much as they are able,” indicates that even then, this greatest weakness of communication was known.(Rumi, 2008)

He might have added a counterpart: “Strive a lot, make an extra effort to understand, because those who speak can only explain their intentions as much as they are able.”

Most human communication takes place between those whose capacity to express their true intentions is limited with those whose ability to understand them is insufficient.

As George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” (Whyte, 1950).

Herein lies the communication conundrum.

As communication professionals we are expected and obliged to strive to do our job well in both senses, i.e., to express ourselves well and to try hard to understand what is being said. The cognitive skills, professional mastery, and intention of the communication expert is constantly being put to test. This is where we distinguish the “good communicator” from the “bad communicator.”

CRISIS OF TRUTH

So why is it so important to try to speak the truth?

First and foremost, let’s say it is important in the Aristotelian sense of “good life” and happiness. Lying has been considered a shameful act/ both in terms of morality and religion through the ages. Honesty has been praised as a “virtue”, important for the development and peaceful existence of the human species. Yet, looking back, it is clear that that most religions have fallen far behind the concept of parrhesia which considered the clear, frank expression of truths as a high human quality, regardless of the subject. Monotheistic religions, while strongly criticizing lying, slander, and false testimony in daily life, have imposed harsh penalties, including impaling, tongue cutting and death for speaking certain truths. Even today, there are places where people are killed for this “crime.”

In recent times, as the ideology of independent media has grown, the concept of parrhesia has attracted the attention of important thinkers like Foucault as I said earlier. According to them, it is an element in a person’s growth which is essential for the development of individuality; it is needed for the sense of being oneself, as a test of courage (Foucault, 1999).

Likewise, loyalty to the spirit of telling the truth and parrhessia in all areas of communication practice can be seen as a part of each and every communicator’s progress towards becoming a virtuous professional. Any code of ethics that does not declare allegiance to parrhesia and condone its violation can be said to contribute to the corruption of not only the profession but also the democratic way of life.

Certainly, the dose and style of delivery of the message may differ from branch to branch –news, advertising, public relations, political communication etc.– but the underlying message remains the same: Don’t lie, tell the truth!

The great crisis of democracy is not only political, cultural, social; it is also cognitive. It has to do with the cognitive capabilities and weaknessess of homo sapiens, and its current version, the Homo Super Communicatus. Artificial intelligence can help in certain instances, but it it can make it even worse in others. It can be an agent of true information as well as disinformation.

THE END OF HISTORY?

So what should be done to find a solution that befits the true dimensions of this great crisis?

First of all, it is necessary for every professional in the field of communications to look at their own ethical codes in light of the current crisis and ask the critical question: What else can we do to combat the pandemic of lies?

But this is not enough: In our age, communication structures are not just a part of an illusory super-structure cut off from base of actual production; they are indeed the main means of all production processes, material or intellectual. The indispensibility of true information for democracy and happiness must be emphasized everywhere, at all layers of life, especially in the education system.

The crisis of truth can also be seen as a sign that the basic assumptions of the Enlightenment are no longer taken as valid. The Enlightement revolutions which changed the course of history, were based on the assumption that humans are intelligent beings, and if they can learn the facts freely, they will eventually choose democracy as the best system of government.

It cannot be expected that truth will eventually win or democracy will triumph in a communication order where truth is drowned out, and anti-communication, that is, the forces of disinformation, become dominant or superior.

That, in a sense, would be the end of history!

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REFERENCE

Aristotle, & Roberts, W. R. (2004). Rhetoric. Courier Corporation.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020, March 27). Areopagitica. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Areopagitica

Brown, S. (2021). Where Did Writing Come From? https://www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from/

Han, B.-C. (2017). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. Verso Books.

History of writing. (2024). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_writing&oldid=1220490449

James W., C. (1989). Communication as Culture, Revised Edition: Essays on Media and Society. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Communication-as-Culture-Revised-Edition-Essays-on-Media-and-Society/Carey/p/book/9780415989763

King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/

Paulos, G. (2021). On the Origins of Human Speech and Language. Independently published.

Rasmussen, J. (2018). Truth, correspondence theory of. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-N064-2

Roubineau, J.-M., DeBevoise, M., Mitsis, P., Roubineau, J.-M., DeBevoise, M., & Mitsis, P. (Eds.). (2023). The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic. Oxford University Press.

Şahin, H. (2012). Kim Korkar Soruşturmacı Gazeteciden? Say Kitap. https://www.saykitap.com/urun/kim-korkar-sorusturmaci-gazeteciden/

Şahin, H. (2023). Why Do We Miss Newspapers in the Age of Homo Super Communicatus?. Reflektif, Journal of Social Sciences, 4(1), 123-126.

Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1998). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press.

Whyte, W. H. (1950). Is anybody listening?. Fortune, p. 77. New York

*Reflective, Vol. 4, Number 1, pp. 123-126

Why Do We Miss Newspapers in the Age of Homo Super Communicatus?*

The history of communication technology has had a rather predictable line of progression. It could have been envisioned from the start that it would proceed in the direction of making homo sapiens an increasingly capable communicator. Yet, obviously, nobody had the foresight to see it could come this far:

Today we can communicate with anyone, from anywhere, using any sense organ, at any time.
Better than Superman!

Clearly, the communicative limits of homo sapiens as a species have been surpassed functionally if not biologically, and, in my opinion, we have evolved into a new stage of “development”: Homo Super Communicatus!

In a world full of dangers, humans had to be “homo communicatus” from the beginning, i.e. people who continually process and share information in order to survive. However, the Information Society and the Digital Age have engendered a gigantic leap. A qualitative difference has occurred: We are now capable of doing things that were previously unimaginable, feats that were considered beyond our nature or “making.”

On the long way to this point, the future was the subject of many dreams, fairy tales and science-fiction stories: Mirrors that showed distant places, wells that made far away sounds audible, wrist watches that could do both… Crazy dreams!

But no dream was daring or crazy enough to depict all the things we are now able do as a normal part of our daily lives. Thanks to digital technology, the unimaginable has become a reality.

Now we are discovering the consequences.

The communicative ability and information-sending capacity of the new “improved” species, Homo Super Communicatus, is, as claimed, super. Yet, the Cryponite Metallo, the ever-present foe, is there, as well. As we have found out, Homo Super Communicatus is rather weak when it comes to making sense of all the “bits” and pieces of information reaching him.

Neuroscientists tell us Homo Super Communicatus’ information processing capacity is still badly limited and extremely selective (Marois & Ivanoff, 2005). This is why we may act like a moron, if not helped.

* İstanbul Bilgi University, haluk.sahin@bilgi.edu.tr, ORCID: 0000-0002-4864-445X.124
As philosopher Byung Chul Han, among others, has pointed out, Homo Super Communicatus needs bearings such as context, narrative and ritual in order not to get lost (Byung-Chul Han, 2022).

I would like to add another element: Closure. He/she needs them more now, in the age of constant connectivity, because all four have been eroded or demolished by it.

Why Were Newspapers Important?

As a veteran communications scholar and practitioner, I believe, one factor that deserves particular attention in this process is the rapid passing of newspapers, which served as the most trustworthy and stable source of information for at least two centuries.

Newspapers functioned as a daily routine of life, especially in small communities, giving people a structure for the day. They provided a menu of actual happenings and a package of “true” information. Most people believed their newspapers. “I read it in the paper,” sounded like solid proof.

The world presented by newspapers was an orderly one. If a news story was on the front page, it was considered to be more important than a story on page eight; a story published with a large headline, more urgent than one with a heading bearing smaller typeface. There was consistency; you knew your way around like in your own neighborhood when looking for a certain piece of information.

The newspaper put the chaotic, ever-changing world in order, not only politically, but also geographically: Events nearby were more likely to be given prominent display than events far away. The farther, the smaller.

Newspaper editors made an effort to put isolated events into a context. They did this not only by interlinking them spatially and graphically, but also by explaining them in commentaries and editorials. Bits and pieces of information did not fly in the wind like sparks from a wildfire.
The newspaper presented happenings not as isolated events, but as a part of a big narrative. Most stories were continuous and repetitive; many could be read like installments in a serialized novel, like The Pickwick Papers of Dickens, or the Crime and Punishment of Dostoyevsky. There were heroes and villains, births and deaths, and weddings and divorces.

The Need For Closure

For the “modern man”, newspaper reading was a daily ritual, almost a mandatory one. In some places, subscribing to the local newspaper was one of the first things people did as a part of the “moving in” ceremonial, to be followed by visits from neighbors, housewarming parties, etc., to become a full member of the community.

The findings of the Users and Gratifications tradition of research in communications showed that the newspaper was perceived, first and foremost, as a companion, even as a close friend.1 It was carried around, saved, clipped, written to for advice. It was missed like a buddy when unavailable. People were identified by the papers they regularly read.

Newspapers were like name-cards and flags! They were more than information providers. People who were of addicts to football games may remember the closure function the newspaper played. The paper heralded the event-package, by announcing its time and venue.
It set a frame and generated certain expectations. The story reinforced or dispelled them. The headline, pictures and the narration completed the cycle. The game itself was often ambiguous, incomplete, and incoherent without it. Circulations rose the day after the game because it was read not only by those who had not been to the game, but also the very same people who had seen it. A lot of people needed the report to file it away before moving on.

In my view, the closure function of newspapers, which was not limited to sports events, was overlooked by communication researchers while newspapers were still a part of everyday life. Now that they are largely gone, we are beginning to realize that they were not only agenda setters, but also closure producers. People needed to see the curtains fall at the end of the act for their own cognitive comfort.

I am of course referring to what we knew from social psychology all along: Uncertainty and ambiguity are stress producers. Cognitive dissonance causes discomfort and anxiety.2 The stress resulting from the onslaught of incessant, unverified and often contradictory bits and pieces of out-of-context information can lead to confusion, alienation, irrational denialism, bigotry and polarization – words that have become increasingly familiar to the Homo Super Communicatuses of the world.

That newspapers have been surpassed technologically is not uncertain – they are gone for good! But we are discovering that in an environment dominated by social media, it will be a while before some sort of new cognitive composure comes to prevail.

Looking at what is happening all over the world, this is a defining crisis. Context, ritual, narrative and closure are the qualities we need desperately in the new super abundant information environment.

And, realistically, they are not coming back with newspapers.

1 See for instance Bernard Berelson’s (1949) early study of what people missed most during a newspaper strike.

2 Cognitive dissonance theory stems from psychologist Leon Festinger’s studies on how people try to handle conflicting information. Festinger (1956) is considered to be a classic.

Bibliography
Marois, R., & Ivanoff, J. (2005). Capacity limits of information processing in the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(6), 296-305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.010
Byung-Chul Han (2022, April 21). All that is solid melts into information [Interview]. Noemamag. https://www.noemamag.com/all-that-is-solid-melts-into-information/
Berelson, B. (1949). What “Missing the Newspaper Means”, Communications Research 1948-1949. Harper and Brothers, pp. 111-129.
Riecken, H., Schachter, S. & Festinger, L. (1956). When Prophecy Fails. Harper-Torchbooks

*Reflective, Vol. 5, Number 2, pp. 495-501