Abstract:

This study focuses on the establishment of relations between communication technologies and humans in doctoral dissertations conducted in the last fifty years, when media and communication studies have become prominent as an independent field in Turkey. In this sense, it seeks to reveal the way in which technology in general and the relations between communication technologies and humans in particular have been tackled in doctoral dissertations. The dissertations have been identified through a keyword search in the YÖK database including "communication technologies,” “new communication technologies,” and “media and communication". This article provides a general evaluation of media and communication studies conducted in Turkey by focusing on the way in which twenty-two doctoral dissertations, completed in different universities and departments in different time intervals, have approached the relationship between communication technologies and humans on the basis of subject, purpose, scope and method. The data obtained through qualitative-quantitative content analysis method reveals that they have each handled the question in different ways. At the same time, this article has concluded that only a few studies have focused on the existential status of humans, while there has been more focus on change and impact in various areas of new communication technologies such as different concepts, institutions, sectors and processes.

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