Session 8: Media, Representation and the Narrative Construction of Violence
Chair: Jill Gillespie

Television Constructions of Violence in Turkey
Haluk Üçel
Department of Television, Reporting and Programming, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey

This paper explores the construction of violence in television news programmes of  five commercial television channels in Turkey.  Discourse and content analyses show that there is a strong evidence of violent content in television news mostly takes place  as form of entertainment on tabloid television through reconstruction of reality.  Normalization, taken for granted reality, common sense is constructed through visual, verbal and acoustic codes. 
Television is the main information and entertainment source in Turkey. The average  viewing time per person is over five hours a day.  The prime-time television news programmes draw high ratings, therefore the competition  is very strong between television stations.  Violent news content is spared for the main evening news  bulletin for higher ratings as dinner time violence.  Turkish television audience accustomed to violence  since the state monopoly  ended in early 1990’s.  Commercial  television experience started with pirate broadcasting from abroad as the legal system did not allow any commercial broadcasting operation in Turkey.   Following the breaking of state monopoly with the new broadcasting law, commercial televisions extended their activities without a broadcasting regulation system for a long period of time.  Without any regulation system commercial televisions tried anything for higher ratings.  Rating wars between big media groups allowed a great extent of sensationalism and ethical violations.
Construction of violence in tabloid television news programmes is not informative.  Television narrative reconstruct the reality with an entertainment value.  In this context, television reflects only violence without any journalistic values, without any answers to questions such as who, what, where, when, how and why.  Tabloid television news submits an edited, but distorted visual, verbal and acoustic version of thruth with repetition of violent images and sound. 
This paper investigates the culture of violence and the spread of fear.  Gang culture has been promoted in television serials with the raising crime rate in Turkey, and role models are being built. The fear is not only limited with common crime, there is also a long time  fear of losing national unity and the sovereignty with the raising nationalism. The fear reinforced through banal and positive nationalism.  The fear created justification for violence.  Through construction of enemies and victimization; alienation, fear and xenophobia are reinforced with the neutralization of violence.

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Digital Worlds and the Sound of Violence
Monika Schwarzler
Art with an Emphasis in Visual Culture Department, Webster University Vienna Research Faculty, Vienna, Austria

The presentation will focus on two digitally animated films by the Swedish artist Magnus Wallin. Both film sequences are of stunning visual intensity and emit a spirit of violence. In “Exit” (3.40 min.), digital hybrids run for their lives, chased by an ominous fire wall. The scene takes place in a location reminiscent of a stadium. Invisible spectators who are only acoustically present, preside over this deadly struggle. They exercise the power of the gaze over those in the arena and by doing so, deprive them of any empowerment long before the fire can do so. The violence depicted in both film sequences is a type of structural violence inherent in any exclusive system or order. In “Skyline” (2.50 min.), a formation of muscular male beings, standing inside a protective glass cube, watch their vulnerable peers outside the safe setting, jumping into an undefineable void and subsequently killing themselves. This spectacle seems to be staged and performed  for those who reside inside the cube.

In a second part about the constituents of violence in digitally generated scenarios, the questions posed will be: What are the methods of representing violence in these digital worlds? Which signifiers of “violence” are used as death and extinction seem to be a clean and mechanical things - bodies disintegrate in a clear cut manner; pain does not show. The thesis is that it is mainly the sound which creates a psychic or bodily dimension of violence and enables the viewer to maintain perceptual ties with these worlds. Secondly, violence seems to be induced by the spatial settings prevailing in these alternative worlds, which in Magnus Wallin´s case, strangely violate and contradict our common models of space.

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Violence, Crime and Fear in Contemporary South-African Literature
Lucskay Zsuzsanna
Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, P. J.Safarik University, Kosice, Slovakia

Violence is part of everyday life in South Africa. As the country is striving to reconcile with its past it also faces many challenges of the present. One of the most urgent problems is the high crime-rate. News of violent crime are so frequent in South Africa that one becomes inured to them. Although the intensity of immediate reactions to violence mitigates, fear increases. Reactions to brutality and fear are various but they all have one thing in common, they distort reality or even overtake it, they become a reality.
In this article I am studying various forms of violence as they are represented and/or explored in contemporary South African fiction (and non-fiction), particularly in the writings of David Medalie, J.M.Coetzee and Mmatshilo Motsei. Through the works of these writers different perspectives on violence are examined, which leads to a better understanding of these complicated issues and raises further questions for consideration. 
Violence has been part of African societies and during the many years of colonial history it has often been used as a political tool. South Africa is a country with a past where violence was justified by the struggle for liberation. The fight against domination started with a non-violent, passive resistance and turned into hostilities, which left the country with much to reconcile with. It is a past, which “follows as a shadow”  - as the title of a contemporary novel suggests - and effects contemporary life in various unwanted ways.
Nevertheless, whereas the motives and goals of violence where clear before – fight against apartheid, for liberation, equality - now they are ambiguous.
According to Lloyed Vogelman (founder and former director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation) “the violence which characterizes South Africa today is rooted in history”. Studying the phenomena of violence through literature illuminates valuable perspectives and contributes to understanding. Debates about violence, crime and fear help answer the questions: To what degree is today’s crime situation in South Africa a result of the apartheid? What is the nature of crime in South Africa?  And most importantly: How long will the shadow follow?