Dr Taner Dogan is a Guest Teacher in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at Queen Margaret University.
Dr Dogan earned his PhD degree in Journalism at City, University of London. His thesis examines the political communication strategies of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). Drawing on approaches to political communication and social movement theories, it analyses the transformations that have taken place within the AKP. The research, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, identifies two distinct policy periods. The first, from 2002 to 2009, characterized by a liberal political ideology, where AKP embraced human rights, freedom of speech, and the rule of law. Then, the post-2010 era, where a shift towards a populist discourse has emerged which, in retrospect, has problematized the objectives of Turkey’s democratization process. It also highlights the implications of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's one-man rule and the consequent deinstitutionalization of the state.
He pursued his postgraduate education at SOAS, University of London, where he received his MA in Global Media and Postnational Communication. For his dissertation, entitled “The Mobilisation of Tahrir Square as an Arab Street and Al Jazeera’s role”, he researched in Doha and Cairo, and conducted in-depth interviews with Egyptian journalists, activists and politician.
Before becoming an assistant professor of media and communications in Istanbul, Dr Dogan worked in broadcast journalism in the UK and Turkey. His first monograph, “Communication Strategies in Turkey: Erdoğan, the AKP and Political Messaging” was published by I.B.Tauris/Bloomsbury in 2021. He researches strategic and political communication, mediated culture, identity politics, art, religion and populism in the Middle East. He is a former visiting fellow at SOAS.
Currently, he advises non-governmental organizations in Germany, Turkey, and the UK.