Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ECREA DMMIIC2025: Beyond Borders: Creative Methods and Reflexive Approaches to Migration, Media, and Intercultural Dialogue, Tallinn, Estonya, 15 - 17 Eylül 2025, ss.42, (Özet Bildiri)
In an era where migration is increasingly criminalized and borders serve as sites of exclusion and surveillance, creative methodologies offer a means to amplify migrant voices and disrupt dominant narratives. This paper examines the potential of digital storytelling as a reflexive and participatory method in migration research, drawing on insights from the Suppliants of Syria project. Inspired by Aeschylus' The Suppliants, this project reimagines ancient narratives of displacement through the lived experiences of Syrian refugee women in Turkey, using participatory methods and digital media to foster intercultural dialogue and transhistorical solidarity.
Through participatory media practices, Suppliants of Syria provides a platform for migrants to craft their own narratives, challenging mainstream representations that often frame them as passive subjects of crisis. The project integrates interactive storytelling, audiovisual media, and digital performance to explore questions of identity, belonging, and exile. By engaging migrants as co-creators rather than research subjects, it emphasizes agency, self-representation, and epistemic justice in migration studies.
This paper reflects on the methodological and ethical challenges of employing digital storytelling in migration research. It interrogates how digital infrastructures shape the visibility and vulnerability of migrants, the role of platform affordances in transnational storytelling, and the ways in which digital multilingualism fosters or inhibits social cohesion. Additionally, it considers the reflexive dimensions of the researcher’s role, questioning how knowledge production can be co-created rather than extracted. By situating Suppliants of Syria within broader discussions of digital counter-publics, diasporic activism, and participatory media, this paper highlights the transformative potential of creative methodologies in migration research. It argues that by integrating artistic and digital practices, researchers can move beyond borders—both literal and epistemological—to cultivate ethical, inclusive, and agentic forms of storytelling in migration studies. Keywords: digital storytelling, participatory media, migration narratives, intercultural dialogue, digital transnationalism, reflexive methodologies.