Cosmopolitanization and social location: Generational differences within the Turkish audience of the BBC World Service

Abstract

In this article the concept of ‘cosmopolitanization’ (Beck) is used in order to investigate empirically the cosmopolitical transformation of everyday life which itself is embedded in social locations (Mannheim). After a brief discussion of cosmopolitanism, the analysis of embedded cosmopolitanization begins with a succinct account of Turkey’s recent history, against the background of which interviews conducted among the Turkish audience of the BBC World Service are interpreted. Along other aspects of their social location, this audience is divided into two different generations: the senior listeners whose attitude toward media is characterized by a search for objectivity and neutrality, and who esteem the global media for purposes of detachment. By contrast, the juniors, as members of the ‘digital generation’, take multi-perspectivity as self-evident and are used to compare different media news sources. In so doing, they adopt an attitude affine to the main features of cosmopolitanization.