Why the Turks took to Twitter

The Gezi Park protests and political participation 

With over 11 million active users – or 31.1% of the population – Turkey has one of the highest rates of Twitter usage in the world. During the height of the Gezi Park protests in spring 2013, more tweets were sent from Turkey than from any other country. Just what drove Turks to express themselves politically in such great numbers through social media is explained in the current issue of Information, Communication & Society.

Previous research on Twitter has focused on people’s actions as individuals. But Kaan Varnali and Vehbi Gorgulu of the Istanbul Bilgi University take a different approach. They view Turkish Twitter users’ online political behaviour as ‘a community-level participation rather than an individual-level participation’.

They write: ‘By construing the individual engaging in online political expressive participation in a social networking site as a community member, performing actions within and together with a social group, we propose that social influence theory [how and why people change their attitudes or behaviour in response to others] may provide a viable theoretical framework to help us better understand the underlying mechanism of citizens’ political participation in Twitter.’

Varnali and Gorgulu analysed hundreds of individual tweets from the time of the Gezi Park protests. They also issued questionnaires, interviewed heavy Twitter users and noted what types of activities were carried out most often: retweeting posts with political content, sharing stories and contributing to hashtag campaigns.

As the pair observed their Twitter users increasingly gravitating to the pro or anti-government side and defining events in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, they noted that ‘during major public political conflicts, Twitter users may perceive themselves as members of online communities organized around conflicting ideologies.’ This sense of belonging – especially in a country where personal or political freedoms may otherwise be limited – can ‘inspire a sense of commitment to a cause and foster a sense of empowerment, thus may increase political expressive participation.’ The authors conclude that a large part of the allure of using Twitter during the protests came from this collectivity, ‘the positive experience of congregating and communicating in the mediated environment, together, as a group’. 

Social-influence theory also suggested to the authors which types of user might be most active on Twitter. Those who feel a ‘higher level of congruence between his or her values or goals with those of other members of the online community (consisting of other Twitter users in their network) and have a heightened self awareness as a member of this group are more active in terms of expressive political participation in Twitter,’ they observed.

This article provides an interesting and original perspective on an important aspect of social media. Where many of us see tweets as self-indulgent, isolated nattering, in countries with a heavily censored media like Turkey, those 140 characters can be a vital source of information as well as a powerful unifying force for its citizens – whichever side they’re on.

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