Socıal Medıa as the New Publıc Sphere: An Example of Turkey

Muhammet Erbay

, Suleyman Hakan Yilmaz

Selcuk University, Turkey

Keywords:

Social media, Public sphere, Communication, networking.

Abstract:

Social media, whose individual and social usage is increasing day by day, is also increasing its presence in

our lives as the most important communication medium. Social media is a communication network in which

the user publishes and circulates the content he / she produces. Today, many individuals and institutions are

actively using social media. This makes immediate access easier to any website; contents, articles, news,

thoughts, daily events, photos can be seen through social media, and anyone can reﬂect their views within

a social network. The word that best describes social media, which is frequently spoken by today’s people,

is ”sharing”. The main issue that will be discussed in this study is whether social media is the new public

space or not. The public sphere is also a common area where ideas and opinions are shared on an individual

and social scale. In this sense, the study includes a theoretical analysis and discussion while focusing on the

concepts of social media and public sphere.

1 INTRODUCTION

When we start to mention the concept of social me-

dia, we actually talk about social networks shaped

through internet technologies. These social networks

tell us the ways in which different users can enter the

internet network from different places and in differ-

ent time periods by means of a computer or a com-

puter equipped tool. Thus, social networks develop

as communication platforms, expanding on a global

scale and causing new network societies to develop

and spread. These network connections growing over

the internet are formed through ‘protocols’, that is,

agreements between mutual users and consequently

they turn into networks (Ryan, 2010).

These communication platforms, which we can

deﬁne and name as social media or social networking

sites, allow users connecting to these networks to cre-

ate proﬁles and personal web pages and to develop an

online social network and to provide individual infor-

mation about themselves. These platforms also me-

diate the formation of ‘virtual friendships” and thus

the emergence of new forms of socialization. While

social network is given to these web sites, these web

sites have the characteristics of web sites where daily

relationships and communication forms are shaped

and are called social networks (Tiryaki, 2015).

Social media or social networking sites, blogs,

sharing platforms, forums or chat sites allow partici-

pants to reach different requests and achieve satisfac-

tion. Users can share their opinions in these areas as

well as reaching different opinions and making com-

ments. They can share and distribute photos, videos,

audio ﬁles or text ﬁles (Vural and Bat, 2010).

2 REVIEW

Social networks, which started to enter our lives es-

pecially in the 2000s, are increasing their importance

with both the number of users and the capacity to ad-

dress different areas. Today, when social network is

mentioned, the following social networks, especially

Facebook, come to mind.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin,

Google+(Plus), Pinterest, Reddit, Digg, Github,

Stumble Upon, Snapchat, Tumblr ve Siledeshare

When we look at the number of users, we can see

which social media site is widely used on a global

scale. According to 2019 ﬁgures, the number of In-

ternet users in the world is 2.5 billion. This ﬁgure

also shows us the number of active internet users on a

global scale. Another point this ﬁgure tells us is that

on the global scale, one out of every three people is

an internet user.

While the number of internet users above in-

creases each day, the power and importance of the in-

ternet increase and cause many different areas to be

Erbay, M. and Yilmaz, S.

Socıal Medıa as the New Publıc Sphere: An Example of Turkey.

DOI: 10.5220/0009881802330235

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Science, Engineering and Social Sciences (ICASESS 2019), pages 233-235

ISBN: 978-989-758-452-7

233

transferred to the internet. The Internet is beginning

to play an important role in the destiny of humanity

from today to tomorrow. Social media users, which

naturally form a subgroup of Internet users, constitute

a large group of 1.8 billion people on a global scale.

The remaining mass of internet users has the potential

to become a new social network user for tomorrow.

Thus, the number of internet users increasing day by

day shows us the potential level of new social media

users, which is also increasing.

According to 2019 ﬁgures, the distribution of so-

cial media users to different social media platforms is

as follows;

Facebook: 1,35 billion

QQ (Tencent): 829 million

Qzone: 645 million

Whatsapp: 600 million

Wechat: 436 million

LinkedIn: 332 million

Google+: 300 million

Twitter: 284 million

Tumblr (230 million)

Weibo: 156 million

The numbers given in the above lines show us the

size of social media use on a global scale.

The development of internet technology, espe-

cially in the last 10 years, lies primarily behind this

development level of social media platforms. Espe-

cially in the development process of web 3 technol-

ogy from web 2 technology, internet users have turned

from being passive users into active, producing and

sharing users.

In another perspective, web 2 internet technology

is like a continuation of a revolution in 1984 when

Apple released Macintosh computers. (-: 1995: 143-

145) Both developments have enabled personalization

in terms of information and communication technolo-

gies, while paving the way for personal use, they have

also created the infrastructure for increasing personal

creativity and sharing all the outputs of this process in

the public sphere thanks to these technologies.

According to 2019 data, the Internet access rate

by population in Turkey is 45%. This shows us that

35 million people have access to the internet and that

they are in a relationship with the internet. It is also

possible to say that social, economic and daily rela-

tions are now shifted to the internet and in many areas

the Internet is turned into a sharing platform. Just as

the fact that 35 million people interact with the inter-

net is an important indicator, the presence of 36 mil-

lion Facebook accounts in our country is also an im-

portant sign of the process. Of course, this number of

36 million contains some unhealthiness, such as fake

accounts, multiple accounts, corporate accounts, and

the accounts that are inactive even though they exist

(Ismet, 2019).

The ﬁgures of Internet and social media usage for

Turkey indicate a similarity with the ones in South

America and especially in Brazil. According to pop-

ulation and number of Facebook users, the ranking of

countries is as follows;

1 United States 313,847,465 166,029,240

2 India 1,205,073,612 62,713,680

3 Brazil 193,946,886 58,565,700

4 Indonesia 248,645,008 51,096,860

5 Mexico 114,975,406 38,463,860

6 United Kingdom 63,047,162 32,950,400

7 Turkey 79,749,461 32,131,260

8 Philippines 103,775,002 29,890,900

9 France 65,630,692 25,624,760

10 Germany 81,305,856 25,332,440

(https://webtiryaki.com/index.php?topic=121.0)

When we look at the time the users spend on social

media, we see the following ﬁgures;

The users in Turkey spend an average of 2 hours

32 minutes on Social networks where a user in the

United States spends an average of 40 minutes. There

has been a signiﬁcant increase in the use of mobile

lines in recent years among the Turkish users who

spend about 5 hours a day on the internet, and internet

provider companies have been implementing special

applications for our country in this process. In so-

cial media usage, Facebook ranks ﬁrst with 93% and

Twitter ranks second with 72%. Google and Linkedin

social media platforms rank third and fourth (Erkek,

2016).

While Social networks are used by more people

every day in the world and Turkey, they have been

transformed into a common sharing area where indi-

vidual or corporate users communicate, establish po-

litical, economic and cultural relations. Naturally, this

“communication process” raises the following ques-

tion. ”Is social media and therefore the internet a

public domain of our age?” “Is the new public sphere

social media now?”

The concept of public sphere has emerged and de-

veloped as a result of the bourgeoisie and hence the

capitalist market relations. Public sphere primarily

deﬁnes a part of society. Society communicates in-

dividually or in groups in this area, exchanging opin-

ions and ideas. The most important feature of the pub-

lic sphere mentioned here is that it is open to all cit-

izens and everyone can participate equally as a ‘cit-

izen’ here. (Habermas and Jurgen, 1995) Habermas

underlines that there is absolute equality among those

who share the public sphere, emphasizing that those

who come together in the public sphere are equal par-

ties ‘while talking’. In this context, the public sphere

ICASESS 2019 - International Conference on Applied Science, Engineering and Social Science

234

and the public community formed thereon are general

and everyone can participate in this debate. (Haber-

mas, 2003) For example, coffeehouses have played

a historically important function in the formation of

public sphere and ‘community’ in the development

process. (Habermas, 2003) The public sphere is the

center of public debate. It also serves as a garden

where modern democracies bloom.

Based on the concept of Habermas’ Public Sphere,

Howard Rheingold is the ﬁrst name to say that the new

public sphere is the Internet. The concept of “The Vir-

tual Community” is the conceptualization of the vir-

tual society. The conceptualization of virtual society

implies that virtual spaces are public spaces. Thus,

Habermas’ concept of ‘public sphere’ is adapted to

the internet and ‘virtual spaces’. Conversations and

interviews that people perform together as a face-to-

face and interpersonal communication take place in

electronic environment or virtual world today. The

point that is similar in both is that it is independent

from economic or political power. (Sayımer, 2008)

The equality of the parties in the public sphere men-

tioned by Habermas takes place at this point.

While social media is turning into a multilateral

discussion and sharing environment, it is inevitable

that it will become a center where political communi-

cation takes place. The public sphere is also an area

where the politicians and society meet in a social di-

mension. In this study, we examined the social me-

dia usage of AKP candidate Binali Yıldırım and CHP

candidate Ekrem

Imamo

glu in terms of June 23 local

elections in Istanbul.

3 DISCUSSION

Table 1: Twitter Information of Istanbul Metropolitan Mu-

nicipality Mayor Candidates Binali Yıldırım and Ekrem

Imamo

glu.

Table 2: Twitter Information of Istanbul Metropolitan Mu-

nicipality Mayor Candidates Binali Yıldırım and Ekrem

Imamo

glu.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Both candidates actively used social media before

the June 23rd Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Elec-

tions. While both candidates used social me-

dia to communicate with voters, they presented

their elective messages to the masses through these

channels. In this process, AKP candidate Binali

Yildirim received 17,872 comments, while CHP

candidate Ekrem Imamoglu received 21,361 com-

ments. Binali Yıldırım received 63,676 retweets

while Ekrem

Imamo

glu received 131,800 retweets.

Binali Yıldırım’s shares received 437,700 likes and

Imamo

glu’s shares received 1,196,200 likes.

The ﬁgures here show us that political communi-

cation process through social media is not only lim-

ited to sharing, but also a mutual communication pro-

cess. Politician’s shares have been responded by fol-

lowers with likes and comments. Social media has

mediated the emergence of a public debate, feedback

and social thought.

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