140journos produces original documentaries that include in-depth interviews on various political, social, economic issues by merging cinematographic storytelling with journalistic content.
Önder tells that his intention was to find an innovative approach to circumventing media blackout and censorship by serving the Turkish public with crowdsourced and verified news as Turkey is ranked 157th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, published by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
140journos is derived from a combination of two references to popular culture, 140 used to be the character limit on a Twitter post and journos means journalist.
The Twitter account was created on January 19, 2012 during a memorial held in honor of Hrant Dink, a prominent journalist who was assassinated in 2007.
Gezi Park protests increased peoples' reliance on social media publishers as their source of information and the number of 140journos followers went up from 8.000 to 30.000 over 3 months.
After Gezi Park protests 140journos became a grassroots organization that regularly pulled content from more than 250 volunteers across Turkey.
The workshops attracted a lot of interest and 140journos educated hundreds of college students on the intricacies of citizen journalism such as how to verify content.
His photograph “The Boy with the Blue Pacifier” which he shot during the Lebanese Israeli war in 2006 gathered interest from the journalism community.
He currently resides in Berlin and shoots documentaries about the intermingled relations of the Turkish diaspora living in different parts of Germany.