Curse and/or blessing? Turkish soap operas and their impact on contemporary Algerian women: audience reception and audio-visual analysis of the historical TV drama Harim al-Sultan (The Magnificent Century)

Turkey is now the second biggest TV market exporter after the US finding huge audiences among Arab women. This study examines how Algerian women perceive the Dizi genres, what makes them captivating and influential, and determines the dominant positive and negative themes tackled in these TV dramas. Based on literature review on globalized media, media effect theories, and gender studies, an online focus group discussion, online questionnaires, and interpretative phenomenological analysis techniques this study aims to understand the reception and perception of Turkish TV series by Algerian female viewers. The thesis implements the audio-visual content analysis method on the most-watched Dizi TV drama titled Harim al-Sultan as a case study to identify the prominent features of those soap operas. The findings show that the lack of Algerian local cinematic production, cultural proximity between Turkey and Algeria, Syrian dialect, creative scenarios, and modern lifestyles broadcasted in the Dizi TV dramas has rapidly increased its popularity among Algerian female viewers.

The results also indicate that Turkish TV dramas depict women who appear to be modern and independent and who challenge imposed traditional patriarchal values. At the same time, they also promote gender stereotypes, romanticizing rape stories, and spreading Western ideologies under the umbrella of modernity that could threaten or weaken Algerian females’ traditional values. Audio-visual content analysis shows that Harim al-Sultan contains controversial topics, that generated many critiques in terms of history, power, religion, identity, and representation of women. Nonetheless, this study examines how participants incorporate some Dizi TV series’ features in a relevant way to Algerian female traditional values and lifestyles, thus, arguing for the creation of an ambiguous identity which sits at the cusp of traditional principles and modern hybrid identities.