Dr Ozge Ozduzen (she/her)

School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations

Lecturer in Digital Media and Society

o.ozduzen@sheffield.ac.uk

The Wave

Full contact details

Dr Ozge Ozduzen
School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH

Profile

Ozge joined the University of Sheffield as a lecturer in digital media and society in 2021. Ozge’s research is on digital communities, identities and intimacies, particularly examining users’ experience and practices of online harms, grievances and resistances. Her interdisciplinary research on digital media cultures is informed by theoretical and methodological approaches from cultural, sociological, media, political and urban studies. She is passionate about multi-methods research that brings together ethnographic, critical discourse, visual and digital methods to develop academic, policy and social impact through her research.

Before joining the University of Sheffield, Ozge was a lecturer in sociology and communications at Brunel University London (2019-2021), British Academy Newton International Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for diplomacy and international governance at Loughborough University London (2017-2019) and a Swedish Institute post-doc at the centre for Middle Eastern studies at Lund University (2016-2017). She taught in media departments of Istanbul Bilgi University and Izmir University of Economics. She obtained her PhD in media at Edge Hill University (2012-2016) and attended university at the prestigious Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

Research interests

• Digital communities
• Digital intimacies
• Digital activism
• Online racism and misogyny
• Online conspiracy theories
• Visual digital cultures

Ozge’s research has been funded by the British Academy: the European Commission; Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC); Swedish Institute; and Political Studies Association (PSA). Ozge’s research is in three interrelated areas.

1. Online harms, intimacies and well-being

Ozge studies online dating harms such as digital misogyny and sexism within dating-app ecologies and self-help content on platforms. An example of this is Ozge’s current British Academy funded talent development project on dating app users’ collective practices and experiences of online dating harms, focusing on artificial intelligence (e.g., image-based abuse).

2. Online extremism, racism and polarisation

She embraces intersectional approaches and focuses on everyday politics to examine the expression and performance of digital racism and polarisation in authoritarian contexts and/or crisis periods on social media platforms such as YouTube, X and TikTok. Within this strand of research, Ozge was a co-investigator for a €3M Horizon 2020 project entitled "D.Rad: De-Radicalisation in Europe and Beyond: Detect, Resolve, Re-integrate" (2020-2024) in a large international consortium. She led a work package on the mainstreaming of radicalisation on social media platforms, particularly online far-right cultures. She examined anti-refugee/immigrant media ecology in the “refugee crisis” era, examining both “ordinary” content and outright racist texts and images in platform ecosystems. Examples of outputs are visual and interactive maps and exhibitions.

3. Online communities, storytelling, contested images and texts

Ozge investigates audience engagement with political images, videos and spaces for social justice claims and well-being concerns in social movements. Within this strand of research, Ozge led an international British Academy Covid Recovery and Political Studies Association funded project (2021-2022) on anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine political expression and identities in online and physical spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic. As an output of this project, she co-authored a policy report with translated versions in several languages, and provided written evidence for the UK Parliament’s DCMS Committee on misinformation and trusted voices.

Publications

Journal articles

Aslan Ozgul B, Ozduzen O & Ianosev B (2025) “Media is absolutely disgusting”: Emotions and affect towards political elites, information sources and conspiracy theories in anti-lockdown protests. Emotion, Space and Society, 56, 101097-101097.
Yetis E & Ozduzen O (2024) Anti-genderism in Turkey: masculinist entrenchment through cultural intimacies. Women's Studies International Forum, 107. View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O, Ferenczi N & Holmes I (2024) ‘Let us teach our children’: online racism and everyday far-right ideologies on TikTok. Visual Studies, 38(5), 834-850. View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O, Aslan Ozgul B & Ianosev B (2023) ‘Institutions of governance are all corrupted’: anti-political collective identity of anti-lockdown protesters in digital and physical spaces. Social Movement Studies.
Ozduzen O, Korkut U & Ozduzen C (2021) ‘Refugees are not welcome’: Digital racism, online place-making and the evolving categorization of Syrians in Turkey. New Media & Society, 23(11), 3349-3369.
Ozduzen O (2021) From streets to courthouses: digital and post-digital forms of image activism in the post-occupy Turkey. Turkish Studies, 22(2), 267-289.
Ozduzen O (2020) ‘We are not Arabs and Taksim is ours’: YouTubed political agency, place-making and social exclusion of Syrians. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 24(5-6), 741-758.
Ozduzen O & Korkut U (2020) Enmeshing the mundane and the political: Twitter, LGBTI+ outing and macro-political polarisation in Turkey. Contemporary Politics, 26(5), 493-511.
Ozduzen O (2020) ‘Cinema as a common activity’ : Film audiences, social inclusion, and heterogeneity in Istanbul during the Occupy Gezi. Journal of Language and Politics, 19(3), 436-456.
Ozduzen O & McGarry A (2020) Digital traces of “Twitter Revolutions”: resistance, polarization, and surveillance via contested images and texts of occupy Gezi. International Journal of Communication, 14, 2543-2563. View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O (2020) The Paradox of Creative Constraints-7. MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION, 13(1), 120-122.
Ozduzen O (2019) Spaces of hope in authoritarian Turkey: Istanbul's interconnected geographies of post-Occupy activism. Political Geography, 70, 34-43.
Ozduzen O (2018) Cinema-going during the Gezi protests: claiming the right to the Emek movie theatre and Gezi Park. Social & Cultural Geography, 19(8), 1028-1052.
Ozduzen O (2015) The politicisation and ‘occupy’sation of the Istanbul Film Festival audience. Participations, 12(1), 679-702. View this article in WRRO
Ianosev B, Ozduzen O & Aslan Ozgul B () ‘They don’t care about you, me or anyone else’: populist storytelling in anti-lockdown protests. European Politics and Society, 1-17.
Dinc P & Ozduzen O () From resolution to resecuritization: populist communication of the AKP’s Kurdish peace process in Turkey. New Perspectives on Turkey. View this article in WRRO

Book chapters

Ianosev B & Özdüzen Ö (2022) The Cognitions Underpinning Online Discrimination, Derogatory Sarcasm, and Anti-cosmopolitanism towards Syrians at Europe’s Periphery, Contesting Cosmopolitan Europe Amsterdam University Press
Özdüzen Ö (2022) DIY Media and Urban Citizenship: Intersectional Post-Occupy Media Activism in Turkey, Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Resistance in Turkey (pp. 191-210). Springer Singapore
Özdüzen Ö (2019) Bearing witness to authoritarianism and commoning through video activism and political film-making after the Gezi protests In McGarry A, Erhart I, Eslen-Ziya H, Jenzen O & Korkut U (Ed.), The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication (pp. 191-210). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. View this article in WRRO

Book reviews

Özdüzen Ö (2021) State, media, and political messaging in contemporary Turkey. The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, 41(Spring 2021). View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O (2020) The Paradox of Creative Constraints—7 September 2019—The Mosaic Rooms, London. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 13(1), 120-122. View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O (2019) Media Representations of the Cultural Other in Turkey, by Alparslan Nas. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2(12), 256-258. View this article in WRRO

Reports

Staples H, Ozduzen O, Rolon V & Ferenzci N (2023) Spatial aspects of de-radicalisation processes in London
Holmes I, Ozduzen O, Ferenczi N, Liu K & Rosun N (2021) Trends of radicalisation in the UK View this article in WRRO
Ferenczi N, Ozduzen O, Holmes I & Liu K (2021) Cultural drivers of radicalisation in the UK View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O, Ferenczi N, Holmes I, Rosun N, Liu K & Alsayednoor S (2021) Stakeholders of (De)-Radicalisation in the UK View this article in WRRO
Korkut U, Foley J & Ozduzen O (2020) The Digital Publics of #Schengen and #Eurozone During the Coronavirus Crisis View this article in WRRO

Digital content

Ozduzen O & Korkut U (2020) Post-‘refugee crisis’ social media : the unbearable lightness of sharing racist posts. Retrieved from https://archive.discoversociety.org/2020/09/02/post-refugee-crisis-social-media-the-unbearable-lightness-of-sharing-racist-posts/ View this article in WRRO
Korkut U & Ozduzen O (2019) Digital mundane : political expression and polarisation on Twitter in the post-'refugee crisis’. Retrieved from https://www.psa.ac.uk/psa/news/digital-mundane-political-expression-and-polarisation-twitter-post-refugee-crisis View this article in WRRO
Ozduzen O Post-‘Refugee Crisis’ Social Media: The unbearable lightness of sharing racist posts.
Ozduzen O Robots, kittens and Netflix : Turkish curbs on the media reach ludicrous levels. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/robots-kittens-and-netflix-turkish-curbs-on-the-media-reach-ludicrous-levels-91430 View this article in WRRO

Research group

Ozge currently leads the social inequalities and social order research cluster and is a proud member of the science and technology in medicine research cluster in the School.
She has been a member of these international associations and learned societies:

• MeCCSA (Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association)
• PSA (Political Studies Association)
• AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers)
• ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association)

Ozge is a reviewer for the British Academy, the European Research Council (ERC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Government of Canada. She is also a frequent peer reviewer for Q1 journals in the fields of visual sociology, digital media and social movements.

Grants

British Academy Talent Development Award, “AI Intimacies: Advancing Sociological Methods for Studying Everyday Life and Technologies”, Principal Investigator (March 2026-March 2027), £9,997 (with Dr Alicia Denby).

British Academy, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Science & Innovation Network in the USA (SIN USA), Mapping and visualising intersections of social inequalities, community mistrust, and vaccine hesitancy in online and physical spaces in the UK and US, Principal Investigator (October 2021 – April 2022), £111,230, (with Dr Billur Aslan Ozgul, Dr Nelli Ferenzci, Dr Bogdan Ianosev, Dr Alireza Karduni and Dr Wenwen Dou).

Horizon 2020 - De-Radicalisation in Europe and Beyond: Detect, Resolve, Re-integrate, (D.Rad), Co-Investigator (December 2020 – April 2024), €3,099,535 (with Prof Umut Korkut).

Political Studies Association (PSA) Research and Innovation Fund 2021 - £1150 (with Dr Billur Aslan Ozgul and Dr Bogdan Ianosev).

AHRC - 5GXR - Exploring the potential for 5G for the games and performing arts sectors, Co-Investigator (May 2020 - January 2021), £37,615 (with Prof Olu Jenzen).

British Academy Training and Dissemination Grant (2019), £5024.

British Academy Newton International Fellowship NF170302 (2017-2019), £81,577.

Swedish Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship 02496/2017 (2017) SEK 216,000.

Teaching activities

Ozge integrates her research into her teaching to help her students obtain an interdisciplinary understanding and a multi-methods perspective of digital cultures and politics. She embraces an inclusive and international teaching pedagogy. She uses student-led teaching methodologies, harnesses new technologies for learning and brings global examples and case studies.

Ozge designed and is currently the module leader for:

• Platforms, Identities, Algorithms (SPR 433)
• Digital Cultures and Visual Methods (SPR 423)

She co-taught and/or contributed to:

• Digital Marketing and Consumer Culture (SPR 322)
• Digital Identities (SPR 347)
• Researching Society
• Hate, Hope and Digital Misinformation

Her Platforms, Identities, Algorithms (SPR 433) module explores various aspects of identity formation and performance in the context of digital media platforms, algorithms and AI. It examines digital identities in global contexts, at the intersections between different identity markers such as race and gender and in relation to emerging technologies.

Her Digital Cultures and Visual Methods (SPR 423) module covers qualitative visual methods of data collection and analysis and focuses on ethical considerations in visual communication. It helps students to locate and utilise a range of visual data, especially on online platforms, such as photos, videos, digital and AI-generated images.

Ozge is an experienced supervisor for students at BA and MA levels. She supervised many undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations on digital cultures and politics at the University of Sheffield, Brunel University London and Loughborough University, including Brexit memes and humour, #MeToo cultures, celebrity diplomacy and self-censorship on platforms in China.

Postgraduate supervision

Ozge supervises PhD dissertations in the areas of digital activism, online racism and nationalism, trust, agency and new technologies. She is currently supervising six PhD researchers:

Arif Lukman Hakim - Insider activism: Social media engagement in civil servant protests in Indonesia (co-supervised with Dr Warren Pearce)

Meng Wu - Taiwan is trending: How platform affordances shape banal nationalism on Weibo (co-supervised with Prof Mike Thelwall)

Nabila Cruz de Carvalho - Exploring Trust in digital news media among young underserved audiences in an age of artificial intelligence (co-supervised with Prof Helen Kennedy)

Hestutomo Kuncoro - Glitched: social media and democratic discourse in flawed democracies (co-supervised with Prof Kate Dommett)

Ryan Hartfield - Zones of promise: Carbon capture, fossil fuel futures and exceptional governance (co-supervised with Dr Warren Pearce)

Victoria Knowles - English football, race and social justice in the digital age: exploring Twitter framing and discourse in the wake of ‘taking a knee’ (co-supervised with Prof Stefania Vicari and Dr Jo Britton)

Ozge acted as an external examiner for two PhD dissertations at the University of Southampton and Nottingham Trent University and an internal examiner for four PhD dissertations at the University of Sheffield.