ALL ABOUT ERKAN

“Erkan’s Field Diary” evolved from a dissertation project on Turkish journalism and the European Union (EU). In addition to the original topic, the blog monitors socio-cultural happenings and cybercultural emergences in Turkey.

Erkan Saka is a professor of media and journalism studies at the School of Communication at Istanbul Bilgi University. He is currently the Ph.D. program director at Communication Sciences. He recently directed an AI Literacy project funded by Google Türkiye. He was a research scholar at Anthropology, UC Irvine (Fall 2018), Science and Technology Studies, MIT (Spring 2019), and a Fellow at CAS at LMU Munich (January 2025). His recent and current research topics include the social life of disinformation, critical algorithm and AI studies, citizen journalism and social movements, digital web archiving, and internet histories. He is a longtime political blogger (erkansaka.net) and a coordinator of a local TV show on social media (sosyalkafa.net). He is the author of Social Media and Politics in Turkey. A Journey through Citizen Journalism, Political Trolling, and Fake News (Lexington Books, 2019) and “Big data and gender-biased algorithms” In The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. (Wiley Blackwell) and editor of Understanding Generative AI in a Cultural Context: Artificial Myths and Human Realities (IGI Global, 2024).

Erkan is a Metalhead and a Beşiktaş JK supporter. (updated: 05/12/2025)

Check out Erkan’s CV in detail and for media appearences: Erkan in Media