Negotiating visibility and virtue: Religious conservative Turkish diasporic women and the moral politics of celebrity magazine television

Abstract

This article examines how religiously conservative Turkish diasporic women interpret Turkish celebrity magazine television, a widely circulating yet morally ambivalent genre that remains underexplored in diaspora research. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 27 women in Germany, Belgium and Austria, the study explores how audiences engage with culturally familiar media within diasporic contexts shaped by migration histories and gendered expectations of propriety. The analysis identifies three recurring interpretive tendencies conceptualised as normative repertoires: patriotic tolerance, strategic moral distancing and gendered misrecognition. These repertoires capture how participants negotiate moral discomfort, familiarity and questions of audience address in relation to celebrity culture. The findings show how media interpretation is shaped not only by moral evaluation but also by concerns about diasporic visibility and national representation, contributing to feminist reception and diaspora media scholarship.