Miriam Berg

About

Miriam Berg is Associate Professor in Residence in the Journalism and Strategic Communication Program at Northwestern University in Qatar. Her research spans audience studies, transnational media, migration, and digital inequality. She studies how people interpret media that travel across borders and how access to information, and increasingly digital services, is shaped by social, cultural, and institutional circumstances.

She is the author of Turkish Drama Serials: The Importance and Influence of a Globally Popular Television Phenomenon, published by the University of Exeter Press. Her research on Turkish television and popular culture has examined audiences across the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, and Türkiye. Her forthcoming book turns to women viewers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, exploring how cultural familiarity and Mediterranean proximity take shape through everyday encounters with Turkish dramas.

Berg also researches migration and digital inequality, examining how migrant, refugee, and diasporic communities navigate information, institutions, and increasingly digital services, and how these environments can create new forms of exclusion.

Before entering academia, Berg worked at Al Jazeera English in Doha and Bloomberg News in London. She holds a PhD from the School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster.

Teaching

JOUR 324 Video Journalism – Video Producing: Broadcast/Web

JOUR 326 Documentary for Journalists

JOUR 303 Audience Insight

MIT 355 Audience Analysis

MIT 190 Media Construction

Research

Berg’s research is grounded primarily in qualitative work with audiences and communities. Rather than treating media circulation or digital access as abstract processes, she looks at how they are experienced and negotiated in everyday life.

Her work on Turkish television drama asks why programmes that travel widely do not mean the same thing everywhere. Her first book, Turkish Drama Serials: The Importance and Influence of a Globally Popular Television Phenomenon, examined the international appeal of Turkish drama through comparative audience research. Later studies have explored viewers in the Gulf, rural Türkiye, Italy, and Turkish diasporic communities in Europe. Across this work, she examines how audiences negotiate cultural proximity, authenticity, gender, morality, identity, affect, and belonging, as well as how streaming and celebrity culture are changing encounters with Turkish popular media.

Her forthcoming book brings these questions to Southern Europe. Drawing on interviews with women viewers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, it explores why Turkish dramas resonate there and how viewers make sense of familiarity and difference through representations of Türkiye, family life, gender relations, romance, and social change.

Berg’s research on migration starts from a different problem. What happens when access to information, institutions, and services increasingly depends on digital systems? Her research with refugee, migrant, and diasporic communities in Germany and Hungary examines how people find, evaluate, and use information, and how language, gender, social relationships, and institutional structures shape access. More recent work considers digital othering and the ways digital systems can reproduce existing inequalities. Her research with first generation migrant women from Türkiye in Germany brings these questions into healthcare, examining how digital systems and institutional practices can contribute to unequal access.

Her current research extends her longstanding interest in women as media audiences to women working within cultural and media industries. In collaboration with scholars based in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, she is conducting a comparative study of women’s professional experiences in news, television production, and film across Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Supported by a Buffett Global Collaboration Grant, the project examines women’s participation, opportunities, and career experiences across the three Gulf countries.

Across these projects, Berg is interested in how communication is lived rather than simply transmitted. She examines how people interpret what they encounter, how institutions shape access and participation, and how gender and social circumstances influence those experiences.

Publications

Book

Berg, M. (2023). Turkish Drama Serials: The Importance and Influence of a Globally Popular Television Phenomenon. University of Exeter Press.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

Berg, M. (Forthcoming). Digital Othering in Healthcare: First-Generation Migrant Women from Türkiye and Unequal Access in Germany. Journal of International Migration and Integration.

Berg, M. (2026). Negotiating visibility and virtue: Religious conservative Turkish diasporic women and the moral politics of celebrity magazine television. International Communication Gazette, 0(0).

Berg, M., Alardawi, M., and Al Obeidli, N. (2025). Cultural skimming, authenticity and streaming preferences: Turkish serials (dizi) among young audiences in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 0(0).

Berg, M. (2025). Digital Literacy, Information Precarity, and Gendered Exclusion Among Ukrainian Refugee Women in Hungary. International Journal of Communication, 19, 22.

Berg, M. (2025) Refugee Integration in Germany: The Interplay of Othering, Digital Exclusion, and Identity Negotiation. Journal of International Migration and Integration.

Berg, M., & Sansalone, A. (2024). Cultural proximity and gender representation: Why Italian women are drawn to Turkish TV serials. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13678779241267968.

Berg, M (2023). Negotiating Authenticity and Social Identity: Rural Women's Engagement with Müge Anlı ile Tatlı Sert. Journal of Communication Inquire.

Berg, M. (2023). Turkish Television Serials’ Reception among Women Viewers in Rural Türkiye: Gendered and Generational Readings between Younger and Older Women. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 19(1)

Berg, M. (2022). Information-precarity for refugee women in Hamburg, Germany, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Information, Communication & Society, 1-17.

Berg, M. (2022). The interplay between authenticity, realism and cultural proximity in the reception of Turkish drama serials among Qatari audiences. The Journal of Popular Television, 10(1), 21-40.

Berg, M. (2022). Women Refugees’ Media Usage: Overcoming Information Precarity in Germany. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 20(1), 125-139.

Berg, M. (2020). Turkish drama serials and Arab audiences: Why Turkish serials are successful in the Arab world. In Television in Turkey (pp. 223-244). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Berg, M. (2020). Cultural Proximity or Cultural Distance? Selecting Media Content among Turkish Diasporic Audiences in Germany. Diaspora, 20(3), 354-371.

Berg, M. (2017). The importance of cultural proximity in the success of Turkish dramas in Qatar. International Journal of Communication, 11, 16.

Berg, M. (2017). Turkish drama serials as a tool for Soft Power. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 14(2), 32-52.

Awards & Grants

 “Women in Creative Media Industries in the Gulf: A Comparative Study of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.” Buffett Global Collaboration Grant, Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Northwestern University.

‘Best Paper’ award for ‘The selection of television programs by Qatari audiences: An interplay between cultural capital, cultural proximity, and the Gulf Crisis’.  UTAS International Conference at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Salalah, Oman, 2021.