Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Milli Folklor, cilt.149, ss.110-126, 2026 (AHCI, Scopus, TRDizin)
Digital platforms are new mediums for the reinterpretation and circulation of cultural heritage. Collective meanings produced on digital platforms permeate cultural boundaries through sustained circulation, connecting local and global currents, and making cultural affinities visible. The transnational reach of YouTube and similar platforms not only archives traditional Turkish-Kazakh musical elements, but also grants them living heritage status by transmitting cultural heritage to new generations and enabling its reinterpretation. Through algorithm-mediated global circulation, ethno-folk music performances constitute alternative forms of cultural expression against hegemonic cultural flows. The digital circulation of ethno-folk music emerges as a counter-hegemonic practice that questions the unidirectionality of global cultural flows and enriches the resistance repertoire of local cultural forms by rediscovering local/ethnic music against the uniformizing influence of the Western-based mainstream music industry. On digital platforms, videos reach large audiences, are repeatedly accessed on demand, provide an online digital cultural experience, and thus become a regular part of everyday life and popular culture. Platform algorithms foreground highly interactive content, thereby reaching large audiences, accelerating the daily circulation of popular digital nationalism by mediating repeated viewing, sharing and commenting. This study examines the intercultural reception processes of Turkish-Kazakh ethno-folk music performances circulated on YouTube through a digital ethnographic approach and analyzes how they create counter-hegemonic spaces against Western, Russian and Arab cultural hegemonic influences. The study focuses on a total of twelve videos (three videos each by HasSak, TURAN, Baba Zula and Akdeniz Erbaş) and their comments, selected through purposive sampling; the cultural authenticity and symbolic elements of the contents are analyzed in detail in relation to the study’s theoretical framework. Two separate focus group interviews were conducted with seven Turkish and seven Kazakh participants to understand the audience's emotional con-nections to ethno-folk performances, cultural signification practices and identity negotiations. Data from YouTube video analysis, thematic analysis of comments and focus group interviews reveal the role of ethno-folk music in identity construction processes in the post-liberal era. The collective cultural consciousness revi-talized through music becomes the carrier of national identity construction with ethno-folk performances circulating on digital platforms, strengthening the claim that cultural continuity is unbroken. The common interests that the audience develops through comments create collective meanings and make remembering the traces of the past more emotional. Such interactions open up space for cultural negotiation and reshape intercultural understanding by directly reaching Generation Z audiences that traditional diplomatic channels cannot reach to-day. This study examines the circulation practices of Turkish-Kazakh ethno-folk music on digital platforms and critically discusses the formation of the digital habitus as a counter-hegemonic space on the basis of cultural interactions and identity negotiations. The findings show that ethno-folk performances circulating on digital platforms create transnational cultural convergence through nostalgic imagery and banal nationalism, and con-struct alternative modernities by rediscovering traditional cultural values.