Despite the accessibility of online news and availability of sophisticated methods for analyzing news content, no previous study has focused on the simultaneous examination of news coverage on human trafficking and audiences' interpretations of this coverage. In my research, I have examined both journalists' and commenters' topic choices in coverage and discussion of human trafficking from the online platforms of three British newspapers covering the period 2009–2015. I used latent semantic analysis (LSA) to identify emergent topics in my corpus of newspaper articles and readers' comments, and I then quantitatively investigated topic preferences to identify convergence and divergence on the topics discussed by journalists and their readers. I addressed my research questions in two distinctive studies. The first case study implemented topic modelling techniques and further quantitative analyses on article and comment paragraphs from The Guardian. The second extensive study included article and comment paragraphs from the online platforms of three British newspapers: The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Mail. The findings indicate that the theories of "agenda setting" and of "active audience" are not mutually exclusive, and the scope of explanation of each depends partly on the specific topic or subtopic that is analyzed. Taking into account further theoretical concepts related to agenda setting, four more additional research questions were addressed. Topic convergence and divergence was further identified when taking into account the newspapers' political orientation and the articles' and comments' year of publication.

Trafficking in persons is a phenomenon that threatens not only basic human rights but also source, passage and destination countries / therefore, it rightfully draws international attention. Being a global threat, it necessitates cooperation and intervention. The aim of the thesis is to analyze anti-trafficking efforts in Turkey by focusing on a particular international initiative. To this end, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is selected as a case and its activities in Turkey are mentioned with the ultimate goal of questioning its effectiveness in the process of fighting against trafficking in persons. The thesis examines the phenomenon of trafficking in persons with a conceptual analysis by dwelling upon the objectives, function and perspective of the IOM. It concentrates on the IOM, which actively assists the Turkish government in every aspect of migration and in combating human trafficking with a particular focus on trafficking in women through the counter-trafficking program implemented in 2004. The thesis also aims at evaluating whether international and local actors take effective actions that cover both the prevention and punishment of trafficking in women, and the protection of victims&rsquo / rights. The binding international legal instrument on the subject matter, the UN Trafficking Protocol of 2000, will be referred to and different approaches to the evaluation of the problem will be mentioned so as to present the focal points of the varying goals.

FRAME ALIGNMENT STRATEGIES IN THE RIGHT TO SHELTERING MOVEMENT: THE CASE OF DIKMEN VALLEY, ANKARA Aykan, Beg&uuml / m M.S., Department of Sociology Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Helga Rittersberger Tili&ccedil / July 2011, 146 pages By the increasing hegemony of neoliberalism following the 1980s, urban transformation projects are becoming increasingly widespread. The present market oriented and rent seeking formulations of the urban transformation projects, leave the gecekondu dwellers who live in the areas to be transformed, outside the redistribution process of the produced rent and lead to the eviction of lower-income gecekondu population from the city to the periphery. Dislocations of this sort as they impose additional burdens to the already disadvantageous populations enhance the urban unevenness. Nevertheless there is an expanding gecekondu resistance against those projects. And Dikmen Valley Right to Sheltering Movement (DVRtSM) is a successful social movement that has been emerged by the organization of this gecekondu resistance which has developed against the implementation of the 4th and 5th Phases of Dikmen Valley Urban Transformation Project. DVRtSM has a strong influence over similar cases of grievances sourced by the neoliberal urbanization: as to this it can be regarded as a model of Right to Sheltering Movements. v The thesis aims to make an analysis of the strategic framing processes of the organization of the DVRtSM, by exploration of the frame alignment strategies which are regarded as decisive factors of movement

Information and communication technologies and their innovative apparatuses have extensive social consequences. The basic interest of this thesis is to argue whether the information technologies and their technological apparatuses have the power to breach in the current capitalist system and therefore to lead us into a transformation towards an alternative world. In fact, this study more specifically attempts to argue and make sense out of this argument on the basis of an analysis of the Free Software Movement (FSM), since it is a product of the information technologies and has some suggestions for such a transformation towards a new society. Simultaneously, the study also argues the novel parts of the FSM as a new social movement and change agent of today&#039 / s contemporary world with reference to the literature on social movements.

This study examines critically how women in poverty use their labor in the production and reproduction processes against poverty and the effects of these processes on women becoming poor referring to women&amp / #8217 / s knowledge. The material foundation of women&amp / #8217 / s poverty is conceptualized as a two-way devaluation of women&amp / #8217 / s labor used in social reproduction. Patriarchal, cultural and ideological structures and relationships are studied as other determinants of women&amp / #8217 / s poverty. In this framework, women&amp / #8217 / s poverty studied based on a field research conducted on 120 women in EskiSehir province, consisting of regular and irregular workers, housewives, married and single mothers. Household is the basic unit of analysis of women&amp / #8217 / s poverty. The scope that women&amp / #8217 / s poverty experiences are questioned are the following: women&amp / #8217 / s labor in production process, women&amp / #8217 / s domestic labor, women participating in social life, violence against women, their perception of poverty and their place in power relations.