Berna Görgülü is a PhD candidate and Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is grounded in feminist media studies, digital activism and social movement scholarship, platform studies, and political communication. She examines how political visibility is produced, organized, and experienced on digital platforms, with particular attention to feminist activism, platform power, digital repression, and disinformation.
Across her research, Görgülü asks how digital platforms reshape the possibilities and limits of collective action: Who performs the labor required to make political causes visible and sustain that visibility over time? How do platform infrastructures shape which actors and political meanings become prominent? When does affective participation develop into structural interpretation or collective political identification? And how do these processes change under conditions of political repression and unequal platform power?
Her dissertation, The Effectiveness of Digital Feminist Activism: The #PınarGültekin Movement in Türkiye, examines these questions through a feminist campaign that sustained public visibility for nearly three years following the femicide of Pınar Gültekin. Combining computational and qualitative methods, the project investigates how different actors produce, amplify, and maintain feminist visibility; how structural and postfeminist interpretations circulate through movement discourse; and how participation acquires political meaning over time. Her dissertation research is generating publications on platformed visibility, digital feminist activism, postfeminism, and digital repression, including a forthcoming solo-authored article in Feminist Media Studies.
A second strand of Görgülü’s research examines disinformation and public response. Through the University of Pittsburgh’s Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL), she collaborates with Samuel C. Woolley on research examining how journalists, fact-checkers, activists, academics, and civil-society professionals identify and respond to disinformation in Türkiye.
Before entering academia, Görgülü worked in advertising, public relations, journalism, graphic design, branding, and media production. She was also a co-founder and the first president of the We Will Stop Femicide Platform Association in Türkiye. These experiences continue to inform her research on the relationship between mediated visibility and material political change.
Courses Taught
Public Speaking — Instructor of Record
Fall 2024; Spring 2025; Spring 2026
Mass Communication and Society — Instructor of Record
Summer 2025; Fall 2025
Communication and Society — Instructor of Record
Summer 2024
Communication and Society — Recitation Instructor
Spring 2024
Communication and Culture — Recitation Instructor
Fall 2023
- PhD in Communication, University of Pittsburgh, expected 2027 Dissertation: The Effectiveness of Digital Feminist Activism: The #PınarGültekin Movement in Türkiye Advisor: Paul E. Johnson
- MA in Communication, University of Hartford, 2021 Thesis: Does Femvertising Empower Women? A Critical Analysis of Nike Ads in the United States and Turkey Advisor: Kristin Comeforo
- BA in Advertising and Public Relations, Anadolu University, Türkiye, 2015
Education & Training
Görgülü, B. (Forthcoming). “Disinformation and Misogyny: Digital Repression of the #PınarGültekin Movement in Turkey.” Feminist Media Studies.
Görgülü, B., & Comeforo, K. (2022). “Negotiating the Challenge of #ChallengeAccepted: Transnational Digital Flows, Networked Feminism, and the Case of Femicide in Turkey.” The Review of Communication.
Görgülü, B., & Comeforo, K. (2022). “Democratic Possibilities of Digital Feminism: The Case of #IstanbulConventionSavesLives and #IstanbulSozlesmesi.” In M. Filimowicz (Ed.), Algorithms and Society: Digital Frontiers. Routledge Focus.
Çınar, N., & Görgülü, B. (2023). “Digital Activism and Hashtag Feminism.” In International Academic Research and Reviews in Social, Human and Administrative Sciences.
Recent and Upcoming Presentations
2026
“Platform Logics and Feminist Visibility: How Digital Infrastructure Shapes Which Feminist Discourses Get Heard.” 112th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, New Orleans, Louisiana.
2025
“Misinformation and Misogyny: Digital Repression of the #PınarGültekin Movement in Turkey.” National Communication Association Annual Convention.
“Misinformation and Misogyny: Digital Repression of the #PınarGültekin Movement in Turkey.” Graduate Expo, University of Pittsburgh.
2026–2027 — Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh — $24,392
2026 — Graduate Writing Scholars Summer Program, University of Pittsburgh — $1,000
2025 — Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Organization Summer Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh — $500
2023 — Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Summer Research Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh — $5,000
2022–2027 — Provost Humanities Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh