The Center for Media and Religion Studies
Erciyes University, The
Center for Media and Religion Studies, was established on April 21, 2017 and
started its academic activities immediately. In June 2018, the center initiated
the publication process of an international peer-reviewed journal, the Journal
of Media and Religion Studies (MEDİAD), which accepts academic studies in
Turkish, English, and Arabic languages on a biannual basis.
The journal has a
mission to concretize the initiatives related to the relationship between media
and religion in our country, to clarify these initiatives as a questioning
area, to prepare the ground for new methodological designs in the field, to
open up the international academic knowledge accumulation in the field to
national academic interest, and to reflect original local, regional and global
perspectives on the field. Currently, the journal is indexed by ULAKBIM TR
DİZİN, DOAJ, and Index Copernicus, which is also accepted as an international
index by our university.
In line with the vision
of our center, which is stated as "to contribute to the efforts to develop
awareness on the educational value of the relationship between media and
religion in our country," the "Media and Religion" course has
been included in the curriculum of the Faculty of Communication at Erciyes
University since 2018. Additionally, our center played a role in the
organization of the "International Media and Islamophobia Symposium,"
which was organized by RTÜK, the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Erciyes
University, TRT, and SETA on May 25-26, 2021. The symposium was continued on
March 15, 2022, under the name "II. International Media and Islamophobia
Forum." In 2023, within the framework of a collaboration protocol between
the Ministry of National Education's General Directorate of Religious Education
and our university, a film festival related to the center's area of interest is
planned to be held.