Possible Social Movements Related to the Crackdown on Mass Media

• In Event: Social Movements & Mass Media

Abstract

After the military coup attempt in Turkey on July 15th, 2016, the government shut down 180 media outlets, purged hundreds of journalists and 120 of them have been jailed. Social media became the only platform for the Turkish people to express their ideas. The tweets, posted from Turkey in Turkish language with the hashtag coup (#darbe), retrieved between August 16 and 31, 2016 to pursue content, sentiment and future prediction analysis. The re-tweets as an indicator of agreement of idea and that of referring to the future circumstances have been derived form the dataset for further analysis. It is also criticized that whether the reflections of the social media users able to start a social movement against the unjust state actions or not. The research results also discuss the cracdown on media and effects of possible social movements.

Authors

• Fatih Demir, Northern Illinois University

• Mehmet Fatih Bastug, University of Cincinnati