Biography
Özen Baş (PhD, Indiana University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Design at Bilkent University. Her research lies at the intersection of media and democracy, examining how media messages and patterns of media use shape political attitudes, information access, and civic engagement across different sociodemographic groups.
Her work brings together the study of media content, media use, and media effects, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to understand the mechanisms by which media environments shape political attitudes, emotions, and political engagement, and to focus on how citizens encounter, process, and act on political information. She places particular emphasis on contextualizing these processes across different sociopolitical settings.
She has published in international journals such as Communication Research, Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, and Social Media + Society. She is the principal investigator of a TÜBİTAK-funded project on social media, citizen interaction, and active citizenship in Türkiye, and is also involved in collaborative research on digital media use and audiences. She is a recipient of the Science Academy Young Scientists Award (BAGEP).
Research Interests: Political Communication, Digital Media and Democracy, Media Use and Effects, Political Participation and Civic Engagement, Information Exposure and News Use, Inequalities in Media Access and Engagement, Quantitative Content Analysis, Mixed-Methods Research
Courses Taught
- COMD 302 Political Communication
- COMD 358 Professional Communication
- COMD 422 Advanced Issues in Communication Research
- COMD 517 Topics in Media Studies
- COMD 523 Media and Everyday Life
Selected Publications & Works
- Bas, O., Kim, M., & Grabe, M. E. (2025). Understanding the Impact of Anger-Evoking and Efficacy-Eliciting Tweets in White Support for the BLM Movement. Mass Communication and Society.
- Ozdora, E., Bas, O., & Ogan, C. (2025). Public Attitudes and Politicians’ Discourses Regarding the Syrian Diaspora in Türkiye: Implications for the C4D Model. Journal of Global Diaspora & Media.
- Kim, M., & Bas, O. (2023). Seeing the Black Lives Matter Movement Through Computer Vision? An Automated Visual Analysis of News Media Images on Facebook. Social Media + Society.
- Bas, O., Ogan, C. L., & Varol, O. (2022). The Role of Legacy Media and Social Media in Increasing Public Engagement About Violence Against Women in Turkey. Social Media + Society.
- Arda, B., & BasO. (2024). Multimodal online dissident culture in Instagram: A critique of the Turkish economy. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 27(3), 323-348.
- Kharroub, T., & Bas, O. (2016). Social Media and Protests: An Examination of Twitter Images of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. New Media & Society.
- Bas, O., & Grabe, M. E. (2015). Emotion-Provoking Personalization of News: Informing Citizens and Closing the Knowledge Gap? Communication Research.
Ongoing Projects
- “Rethinking Active Citizenship in the 100th Anniversary of the Republic: Political Participation and Citizen Interaction on Social Media,” TÜBİTAK 1001, Principal investigator: Özen Baş (Ongoing).
- “Who are the Audiences of Digital Platforms in Turkiye? What and How Do They Watch?,” TÜBİTAK 3005, Principal investigator: İrem İnceoğlu (Ongoing).
- “The Singlehood Phenomenon: Investigating Singlehood Types and Experiences of Adults in Türkiye,” TÜBİTAK 3501, Researcher, Principal investigator: Gözde Cöbek (Ongoing).
CV
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