Understanding Informal Communication Environment Effect on Social Inclusion

Abstract

The Syrian Civil War forced the citizen population to flee to neighboring countries. Turkey host one of the most densely populated Syrian asylum seekers since 2011. Therefore, social adaption, social cohesion and social integration became the most discussed topics of social studies. Most studies conducted to understand the advantages and disadvantages between two societies in social adaptation. Language is the dominant barrier to social and cultural integration. But some of the newest studies on understanding Syrian population issues shown that communication is the second challenge for the Syrian asylum seekers living in Turkey. Authorities, civic initiatives planned strategic communication facilities to access the Syrian asylum - seekers' adaptation process. So many of these implied by the formal communication sources or channels. This paper aims to direct researchers consider to the importance of informal communication for understanding a close society's communication tendencies and offers to integrate informal communication layer for providing more success. In this perspective, the paper refer the informal communication preferences of Syrian asylum-seekers in Turkey and observe the role of these preferences. So, a qualitative study applied with asylum-seekers in Turkey. As a result, the findings show that key opinion leaders, multi-lingual neighbors and social media are among the effective informal communication channels. This paper aims to start a discussion about the gap of informal communication and it may be useful for policy makers to think about this aspect of communication.