Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I analyse how business logic of news making intersect with digital sovereignty wars in the example of journalists who can no longer take part in news making practices in Turkey but need to continue doing their job at a distance from Germany.

Paper long abstract:

In the digital age of information, journalists search for new ways to get their stories read, to be paid for their labour, and to influence public policy and political change. In the context of exiled media, the political economy of new media worlds helps to reveal and assess the correlations between complex forms of media ownership and emerging new media regulations. Neither public broadcasting services nor non-profit organisations that benefit from fund raising and third-party funding to support journalism-in-exile are immune from the business logic of journalism which makes life difficult for migrant journalists. This profit-oriented business logic also drives national governments to enforce laws to regulate the tech companies that increasingly have monopoly over news and information in the context of sovereignty battles in the digital space. Exiled journalists navigate the conflict between national laws and international standards while making news to ensure the freedom of masses to access information. However, national governments intervene to transnational communication, as in the example of the Internet Law in Turkey, and jeopardises the freedom of speech enabled by free online tools offered by social media platforms. In this paper, I analyse these intermingled power relations in the example of journalists who can no longer take part in news making practices in Turkey but continue doing their job at a distance from Germany. I will use data from my research on new modalities and transnational repercussions of making news exceeding national borders that I have been conducting since 2018.