Cyberactivism 2.0: Determining Social Media Usage in New Social Movements

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— Twitter and Gezi Resistance in Turkey

By

Melis Nilgün

Masters of Arts in Media Studies:

Television and Cross-Media Culture

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

June 2015 

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Abstract

Social media play a significant role in influencing social movements and have become a crucial tool for political activism. Recently, information technologies and social networking platforms have changed the effects and occurrence of contemporary social movements, and have broadened the sphere of their influence. This dissertation aims to examine the functions of social media, particularly Twitter, from the activists’ perspective through a case study of a recent social movement that erupted in Istanbul, May 2013 — the Gezi Park movement. By examining this historically important case, I clarified the process by which social media transformed social movements and how it was utilized to significantly influence on the course of the movement. My hypothesis is that the use of social media can be categorized and conceptualized in three main functions: (1) Organization: social media can help to mobilize protest movements with a significant speed, efficiency, and cost effectiveness; (2) Framing: social media can play an important role in forming a political identity for the movement and recruit and encourage potential participants; (3) Microcasting news: social media can spread information further and increase the awareness to gain insight about of occurrences. This research is based on the data that has been collected from a self-administered web-based questionnaire to have insights about the usage of social media from the standpoint of the activists. Upon reflection of the quantitative data in practice, a content analysis of respective tweets was conducted to show how exactly tweets fulfilled the three functions of social media. The suggested hypothesis, that is to argue the instrumental functions of social media in contemporary movements under the categorizations of organizing, framing, and newscasting, was supported by the findings derived from the questionnaire and Twitter samples. Even though the study was limited to a particular country and a specific time that covers a very recent democratic discourse, I believe that the results obtained from this study can be applied to other developing Muslim countries around the globe.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

“If you want to free a society, just give them Internet access.”

These were the words of Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim in a CNN interview on February 9, 2011. He characterizes their revolution by the instrumental use of social media sites and smartphones, even calling it the Internet Revolution 2.0, which, he believes, brings democratic transformation and political change (Watson). The Egyptian Revolution was part of a great awakening in the Middle East. It was referred to as the Arab Spring and broadly seen as a turning point in the history of the Muslim world (Ryan; Ghannam). There is no doubt that citizens can undertake various forms of social actions to change or transform their societies. All of these political incidents have been happening for years in different countries under different circumstances. However, today, social movements take place in an age in which digital communication tools create many opportunities to facilitate activism. The advancing communication technology enables activists to communicate and organize themselves before, during or after the social actions. What is important is that social movements, which tend to evoke political changes, can now make use of social media. They help not only to raise the awareness of occurring social movements around the world, but also to bear witness to them at different locations. In other words, online and offline protests perhaps indicate a different organization of social movements to maintain their efficiency in the digital world.

This thesis investigates the ways in which social media has influenced social movements. The developments of the Internet and social media sites reinvented the relationship between social movements and activists, as well as social networking sites and their functions. The goal is to find out how social networking tools were used by the participants of public outcries by looking at a very special and recent case of the Gezi Park movement in Turkey, 2013.

1.1. Web 2.0 & Social Media

In the last decade, the increase in the number of people who have Internet access has been enormous. The website Internet World Stats, which is an international website featuring world Internet usage, population statistics, and Internet market research data for more than 230 countries and world regions, estimates that the number of people with access to the Internet grew 741 percent

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between 2000 and 2014. This represents 42.3 percent of the world population, numerically a growth from 360,985,492 internet users to 3,035,749,340 (InternetWorldStats). Knowing that almost 45 percent of the world’s population is connected is stunningly impressive. Internet Live Stats, a website that is a part of the Real Time Statistics Project, reports that Turkey is ranked 18th in the world, estimating that there are more than 35 million Internet users in that country. This corresponds to 46.62 percent of the country since the population of Turkey is approximately 77 million people (InternetLiveStats). In other words, almost half of the Turkish population uses the Internet.

The enormous increase in people with internet access results in a transformation of the Internet’s functionality itself. This period of the Internet has been replaced by what is often referred to as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 or the participatory web describes the second generation of the World Wide Web that gives the ability to people to share information and collaborate. It is an infrastructure that induces users to work together on a common enterprise of creating, commenting, organizing, sharing and linking contents. It is a networked environment that includes a collection of technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, microblogs, mashups and many more (Chun et al. 2). However, social media, specifically, is very often referred to as Web 2.0, and many times the terms are used “interchangeably” (Kaplan and Haenlein 60). Within a wider context, social media appears as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein 61). In other words, Web 2.0 is the digital environment in which social media applications allow for the digital circulation of user-generated content. This digital environment of Web 2.0 provides easy-to-use platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr for social connectedness, collaboration, media and information sharing, encouraged production, and action.

What exactly are social media, then? The term media refers to many things in a traditional sense, such as newspapers, television, photographs, audio/video samples. These are significant mediums that work to engage the audience by sharing valuable information or telling noteworthy stories. The term medium etymologically comes from the Latin medius, which means in the middle, the middle one or the intermediate agency. Via a medium, a relationship between systems or entities can be organized. “Media have to do with mediation, social media mediate the social relationships of human beings” (Kamalipour and Artz 189). Social media refers to “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information knowledge and

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opinions using conversational media” (Safko and Brake 6). Social media is a very popular activity on the Web that became a fast-growing, global trend. There are now millions of people interacting every day through social media. As of January 2014, the gradual increase in each age group of internet users shows that 74 percent of them use social networking sites (Pew Research Center). Qualman explains this phenomenon by mentioning that social media enables users to stay connected with people who are geographically separated, and this global connectivity extends the reach of messages where they remain intact in a digital form (3).

“Today this layer of platforms influences human interaction on an individual and community level as well as on the larger societal level while the worlds of online and offline are increasing the interpenetrating” (Dijck 4). Among those platforms, Facebook and Twitter are two of the most influential social media sites that are widely used all around the world. Less than a decade ago, it was not possible to anticipate the impact of social media sites. Twitter is now the most popular microblogging platform (Safko and Brake 265) and a younger social media website compared with Facebook. In Turkey, there are an estimated 10 million Twitter users across the country (Cellan-Jones), which reflects its popularity and extensive usage among the citizens. Twitter is often described as a microblogging website; however, I believe this term misrepresents the impact of Twitter. For the purpose of this research, it will be more accurate to describe it as a “real-time social networking,” which highlights the feature of Twitter as a “rolling news platform” instead of a static screen, news blogging (Deller 217).

The very first share on Twitter was on March 21, 2006, by co-founder Jack Dorsey (Shiels). It is a website that enables users to send messages, videos, audios, and attached files 140 characters or fewer, known as tweets. Themed hashtags (beginning with the character #) for each topic allows like-minded users to gather under a single roof. Users can easily categorize their discussion points and mark the community by creating hashtags like #OccupyGezi. Since the launch of Twitter in 2006, the social media platform has amassed 288 million monthly active users with an aim “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers” (Horner 59). It is currently the fastest growing social networking site with a statistically significant increase to 23% of adult internet users compared with the 18% in 2013 (Duggan et al. 6). Every second, approximately 6,000 tweets are sent, which represents 500 million tweets per day (Krikorian).

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Tweets have become an important part of the media landscape and a powerful networking tool. People are connected globally as a community of friends and strangers who answered a simple question until 2009 — “What are you doing?” Then, the question was changed to “what is happening?” to reformulate the bird’s-eye view of Twitter and its fundamental open model as an information network (Stone). This brings diversity to Twitter usage via the networked audience. The highly advanced technology allows users to contextualize tweets according to their individual needs. For instance, some users can consider Twitter as a broadcast medium to share and discover what is happening right now around the globe, while others see it as a news source or a marketing channel. The social media platforms are not limited to spreading information; they can also change the perceptions of events. The blogger Zerlina Maxwell mentions “I think that social media allowed me, someone who is sitting in New Jersey with a computer, to experience that moment [in Egypt] as if I were there” (Bortot).

The remarkable growth of social media has set the tone for modern movements, and is therefore important to this study. For years, social movements have occurred for a variety of reasons all around the world. However, contemporary social movements have had much greater repercussions. There was and still is a strong expression of public disapproval against governments’ unjust treatments of their nations. Now, however, social movements are tweeted, photographed, recorded, printed, and reported with all the resources found through an internet connection. The things that had not been witnessed before have come to light through the help of social media and started to influence the faith of social movements.

1.2. Research Aim and Research Question(s) 

This research project seeks to investigate and understand the relation between social media and contemporary social movements, specifically the role of Twitter during the Gezi Park movement. Over the past few years, there has been a rise in the social movements all over the world. People lift their voices up against how they view their society and in some cases being treated unjustly by their governments. The contemporary social movements utilize new media forms as an alternative platform. It is now not only easier, but also much faster to disseminate information. Alongside the fast exchange of information, contemporary forms of social communication using Internet-enabled, high-tech devices facilitate the connection between persons and places, and heightens awareness of events that occur in real time.

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This is a study inspired by the curiosity of how social media channels were used and what kind of strategies were followed by the activists of political actions. The purpose of this mixed methods study is to examine the ways and purposes of using social media by the activists during the Gezi Park Resistance in Istanbul, Turkey in 2013. Reaching this objective means answering the central proposed research question: How and for what purposes did the protesters in the Occupy Gezi movement use social media? The specific sub-questions of the research are subsequently addressed. (1) What did social media mean for protesters to lead and mobilize the political action? (2) How and in which ways were social media used to shape and frame the movement? (3) Did those who supported and were involved in the protests use social media as a source of news rather than the traditional media outlets?

Researching the experiences of protesters who contributed by being both physically on the streets and virtually on the Internet, this dissertation will describe and analyze the uses of social media as a tool for participants in the Gezi Movement. My hypothesis is that the use of social media can be categorized and conceptualized in three main functions: (1) Organization: social media can help to mobilize protest movements with a significant quickness, easiness, and cheapness; (2) Framing: social media can play an important role to form a political identity for the movement and recruit and encourage potential participants; (3) Microcasting news: social media can spread information and increase the awareness to gain insight about occurrences.

It is crucial to understand and scrutinize the important role of social media as an alternative route of communication in authoritarian societies where the interest of the power elites is an important factor that shapes media. Through this research, I contributed to further understanding of how social media platforms, specifically Twitter, affected the experience of a particular social movement, and provided insight into the perspectives of those who directly participated in the protests. The legitimacy of the reasons that triggered the occupation movement and the political landscape affected by the protests are not the subjects of this research. Similarly, this research neither analyzed whether the protesters accomplished their objective, nor judge to what extent the success or failure of the movement can be attributed to the use of social media. Even though the study was limited to a particular country and a specific time that covers a very recent democratic discourse, I believe that the results obtained from this can be applied to other developing countries around the globe.

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1.2.1. Outline of the Dissertation

This dissertation is divided into four chapters, an illustration, and an appendix section. Later in this first chapter, the research methodology including how each method was selected and in which forms the data was collected will be clarified. The next chapter will introduce the case study of the research, as well as presenting comprehensive concepts of the literature, namely new social movements and cyberactivism, to constitute a sound infrastructure for the analysis. The third and core chapter is dedicated to the three functions of social media during Gezi Resistance. Each of the subsections in chapter three will begin with conceptual framing of the three different but complementary dimensions of social media. Then, the chapter will continue with what respondents said in a questionnaire and the analyzed selected individual tweets along with the themes of organizing and mobilizing, framing of movements, and alternative news coverage. The final chapter of the dissertation includes the conclusion, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research, as well as the references used in all the chapters of this dissertation. There is also an illustration section that displays the analyzed Twitter entries and an appendix section that presents the copies of the questionnaire and its results.

1.3. Methodology

In order to examine the aspect of social network related issues in the Gezi Resistance, I chose to construct a two-phased research. This study uses a mixed methods plan (Tashakkori and Teddlie), which is a technique of collecting, analyzing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in the context of a particular case, Occupy Gezi, to constitute a comprehensive understanding of the research problem. Creswell assumes that a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is better to have a more complete analysis than either method by itself (535). By choosing this approach, I was able to not only disclose several functions of the popular social media site, Twitter, as organizing, framing, and newscasting during Gezi resistance, but also showed how exactly tweeted status updates fulfilled these functions.

During quantitative analysis, I collected numeric data using a administered using a self-administered web-based questionnaire to support the assumption that social media content was used as a tool for information, organization, and framing, and influence of the tone of the movement. This approach gave insights about the usage of social media from the perspective of the protesters.

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The qualitative analysis of the study, alternatively, assessed various tweets and reinforced the statistical results by exploring users’ tweets to the extent of functions derived from the previous phase. From this, an interpretation of the data related to the existing research can be made. In other words, “an understanding of the problem based on multiple contextual factors” is provided through the qualitative examination of the study (Miller 14). Both quantitative and qualitative examinations are complimentary rather than two separate stages, and they interpenetrated each other throughout the analysis.

1.3.1. Quantitative Analysis (Data Collection - The Questionnaire)

The quantitative part of this study focused on identifying the purposes of using social media during Gezi Park protests based upon the participants’ answers. Thus, I developed a self-administered questionnaire as the technique for collecting the quantitative data. The questionnaire contains different question formats: multiple choice with single or multiple answer options, self-assessment items, Yes-No questions, measured on x-point liker-type, rank order and open ended questions. The questionnaire was developed in a way to make it possible to fill in no more than 15 minutes; in fact the mean of survey duration was 14 minutes. This study used Qualtrics Software to collect online data and to perform a statistical analysis in order to fulfill the objective of the research. The survey was available through a URL, which was posted on various social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The link of the questionnaire was shared on Twitter over two weeks by using the trending topic hashtags of that moment to reach a diverse test group, regardless of their political view or ethnicity. The aim was to contact people and then use these contacts to reach other people like a snowball effect. It was an appropriate technique to get a diverse sample regarding the context of the study.

The participation in the questionnaire was completely voluntary, and the participants were able to leave the questionnaire at any time. However, some participants could not complete the questionnaire because they felt suspicious about the questionnaire. They had a feeling that the questions were prepared by the government to keep a record of them, and perhaps they were too afraid to be taken into custody. One participant wrote: “Güzel bir anket ama zaman zaman şüphelendim sorulardan (MİT yapıyor olmasın bu anketi) VPN ile bağlanıp hepsini doğru cevapladım:) Başarılar... #DirenÖğrenci [Nice survey but I often suspect the questions (maybe it is conducted by the national intelligence service, MIT) I connected via virtual private network (VPN)

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then answered all the questions. Success…#ResistStudent]”. Therefore, I had to exclude the incomplete surveys to have 100% total response as the completion mean.

The study examined 201 responses from the web-based questionnaire that assessed the purposes of political activists’ social media usage for the Gezi movement. The ratio of gender was equally distributed; 49 percent male and 51 percent female. More than half of the respondents fall into the age range between 20-29 (66%), whereas only 12 percent and 13 percent were between 30-39 and 40-49 respectively. There was no one under age 16, and only 5 percent was at the age of 50 or above. Consistently, 57 percent were students when the Gezi events erupted, which is the majority of the participants, while 36 percent were employed. This question had six missing answers as they chose the option other that was not included in the evaluation. 8 percent indicated that they were high school graduates, while 71 percent held a university degree. However, only 19 percent had a higher education; 17 percent were master graduates and 2 percent held a PhD (see Appendix pg. 82-4, 86).

Moreover, the participants were asked to indicate form which source they first heard about the Gezi events. 66 percent of respondents stated that social media was their first source regarding the events, followed by friends and acquaintances with 18 percent. This 66 percent of participants also stated that Twitter was the first source that informed them about Gezi events (63%), and Facebook ranked as the second (37%). 81 percent of the survey participants stated that they participated in protests and 73 percent of them considered themselves activists for different reasons. Among these reasons, being physically in the streets to protest and using social media actively comes first with 57 percent; only being physically on the streets was next (28%) and only being active on social media was third (7%). The majority of the participants admitted that they posted messages, photographs, and information related to Gezi (84%), while only 2 percent stated they were not on any social networking sites (see Appendix pg.87-9, 92, 94).

Furthermore, the survey takers were asked with which source they followed the news on the Gezi protests. Social media had the most frequent usage rate for this specific reason (M=12.95, SD=0.24), while the rate of people who followed Gezi news through their friends and acquaintances remained very close to social media (M=12.83, SD=0.40). Subsequently, the participants were asked to state which social networking site they used to follow the news about

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Gezi protests. Twitter (M=30.31, SD=0.98) and Facebook (M=30.29, SD=0.84) came head to head as they were used all the time to stay informed about Gezi events. When the participants were asked their frequency of social media usage for this specific reason, Twitter was preferred more than Facebook. 59 percent indicated that they always used Twitter, while this ratio was relatively low for Facebook usage at 48 percent (see Appendix pg. 96, 99).

Overall, the questionnaire represents at least 2.5 million people, which is the estimated number of Gezi protesters by the US House Subcommittee (4), with a 95% confidence level and a ±7% margin of error. 1

1.3.2. Qualitative Analysis (Content Interpretations - Tweets)

In addition to the data obtained from the questionnaire, an additional method was necessary to gain a full understanding of social media usage by the individuals who were engaged with the Gezi movement. Therefore, the intended study proceeded with the qualitative analysis.

The primary technique used was an in-depth content analysis of the Twitter users and some popular organizational accounts that were used during the social movement by the protesters. This analysis focused on explaining the three main functions of social media for the activists by evaluating respective Twitter entries. Tweets that explicitly mentioned Gezi protests or the Park itself were chosen. All entries from random accounts were examined intensely at the time of the research. The entries that mentioned the social movement with the following hashtags #OccupyGezi #DirenGezi #DirenGeziParkı, either as a retweet from another account or as an original post were selected. These entries were posted in the time gap of May 31 and June 10, 2013 — the first ten days of the outcry. In this case, the illustration of the functions of social media as organization, framing, and a news source were provided in order to show the reflection of the quantitative data in practice. These three categories present an important formula in understanding the use of social media from the activist perspective.

Sample Size = [z² . p(1-p)] / e² . According to the Qualtrics Software sample-size determination equation, 1

confidence level corresponds to a Z-score, which is the constant value needed for equations. For 95% reliance, Z Score equals to 1.96. The margin of error in decimal form represented by (e), which is 0.07 for this study. The standard deviation (p) was determined as 0.5, which is the most forgiving number to have a safe decision and ensure that the sample is large enough (Smith).

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CHAPTER 2 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN TRANSFORMATION

"There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Letsch).

These words belong to the current President of Turkey, who stated this sentence when he was a Prime Minister in 2013. Twitter and other social networking sites were something he loved to hate and to blame for showing all the corrupted images, audio recordings, and accusations against the government. He also threatened the citizens to “wipe out” all of this “Twitter, schmitter” that are the “main menace to society” (Zileli). Ironically, he and his government as well as his supporters were and still are so tech-savvy that they use social media tools very actively. However, his threats definitely show that he has clearly acknowledged the power of social media that was at the heart of the massive demonstrations which began in May 2013, Turkey. Within a year, his threat became a reality and the access to Twitter was blocked by the authorities, which was also not sufficient to constrain people from using Twitter (Taylor). Some newspapers reported that 25 people were arrested due to their active Twitter usage to spread information about Gezi protests (Pearson and Tuysuz). “Social media has been coordinating tools for nearly all of the world's political movements, just as most of the world's authoritarian governments (and, alarmingly, an increasing number of democratic ones) are trying to limit access to it” says Clay Shirky (30). It can be true that contemporary social activists appeal to social media very often to affect the domestic politics (O’Donnell). However, the question why social media bothered the government of Turkey that much during the Gezi protests becomes more of an issue at this point.

1.2. The Case Study: Occupy Gezi Movement

The struggle in Taksim, Istanbul, began as a small group of environmentalists who resisted the implementation of the —so called— urban development and pedestrianization plan that intends to demolish the Taksim Gezi Park for the construction of a shopping mall in the shape of the historic Taksim Military Barracks demolished 70 years ago. This was happening right after the demolition of Emek, which was a historical movie theater in the area of Taksim, to be changed by another shopping mall as a consequence of an urbanization project. The location of the urban park is one of

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the most lively, modern, and attractive open areas of the city where citizens with different backgrounds inhabit, entertain, and work together peacefully. The reasons people resisted the government’s attempt to turn this public space to an instrument for private sector were beyond being against the uprooting of the trees. On one hand, it is true that the park was one of the last remaining green areas in that district, but on the other hand, people did not want another shopping mall that was about to be built without public consent (Purtul Ucar).

On 27 May 2013, the construction vehicles entered the park. This information was rapidly spread via social media, and people started to gather in the park to stop the operation. In consequence, the people who were in the park standing in front of the bulldozers were exposed to police intervention. Later on, a larger group of people began camping in the park to guard the area. The turning point was a brutal police attack and harsh interference against the demonstrators who were sleeping in their tents in the park around 5 a.m. on the morning of May 30. Their tents were burned, their personal belongings and musical instruments were ripped up and destroyed. The intervention created strong, public discord throughout the city. All of a sudden, large masses began to band together in Gezi Park, Taksim via Facebook and Twitter messages. The first forum of the Gezi Resistance was held that day and the organization of concerts began. However, May 31 started with heavy clashes between the demonstrators and police. The day was also known as the longest day of the Gezi movement because the clashes continued until the day after. The police attacks and brutal interventions continued against the citizens, but the crowd continued to grow. June 1, the protest turned into an occupation of the park. People built barricades against the police and created new living spaces in the Park like a free library, areas for tents, medical help centers, a free-of-charge kitchen, and discussion areas. It was a rebel zone for the occupiers. It is known that “the public spaces of the city” are the locations that are the grounds of “communicative and political interaction” to represent the shared values of the citizens (Yildirim 181). People who have the awareness of their rights and their potential can shape the “appearance, functioning, and meaning of the urban space at any time” (Plyushteva 93). In other words, people did occupy the public space of Gezi Park peacefully by using their right.

However, the police interventions became more violent, including human rights infractions. On June 1, thousands of protestors from Kadıköy (Asian side) crossed the Bosphorus bridge at 6 in the morning to join the resistance in Taksim (European side). Protests also leaped to other cities in Turkey. However, the intervention of riot police was relentless and the videos of police firing tear

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gas into civilian homes started to flow on various websites (Istanbulfreepress). Water cannons and tear gas became a part of daily life of Istanbulites. June 8th, the Prime Minister R.T.Erdoğan labeled the activists as “çapulcu” (looters) and occasionally called them terrorists (Sherlock). This raised anger, but also brought solidarity and unity. The movement developed a unification nationwide regardless of social class, religion, and race with an absence of a political party leadership. In other words, socialists, capitalists, anarchists, nationalists, revolutionary Muslims, members of the LGBT community, anti-capitalist Muslims, atheists, social democrats, liberals, secularists, Armenians, Turks and Kurds were shoulder to shoulder representing the country together (Kotsev). Der Spiegel mentions “demonstrations have been reported in more than 40 cities, and they are drawing more than students and intellectuals. Families with children, women in headscarves, men in suits, hipsters in sneakers, pharmacists, tea-house proprietors -- all are taking to the streets to register their displeasure” (Gezer, Popp, and Trenkamp). It was the movement for citizens to amplify their voices against corruption, authoritarianism, violation of democratic rights, media censorship and disinformation, and lack of public consultation. What was going on all across the country was “not about secularists versus Islamists, but about pluralism versus authoritarianism” (The Economist 20).

What happened was that the small environmentalists group who were standing against the willful destruction of the park transformed unexpectedly into a nationwide resistance and a democratic rebellion. Protests took form of anti-governmental expressions after the continued police brutality. As the attendance of ordinary people grew, it made the movement more powerful. The demonstrations got stronger in line with the increased disproportional police violence and the prime minister’s persistent manner to demolish the park. It was a movement that began very spontaneously and progressed unpredictably. The reported number of protesters who were involved in the Gezi Resistance was at least 2.5 million over the three weeks from the first day of the movement (US House 4). However, five protesters died during the protests and more than eight thousand people were injured, including eye losses and head traumas (Amnesty 15). Also, journalists and reporters faced physical attacks while they were on duty, as well as being arrested without any official investigation (Freedom House).

The movement was historically very important. It is because Gezi was different from any protests that had happened before in the country. It was a breakthrough to see people from different ideologies and backgrounds who barely talked to each other in the Turkish history uniting under the Gezi Park resistance with the desire of nature conservation and to have a nation-state country. By

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landslide, Occupy Gezi was “was an extra-ordinary event in Turkish social struggles” (Yildirim 184) and “the largest public upheaval that has ever been witnessed in the country’s history” (Yuksek n.p.). However, there was something else which is new about the resistance that was never seen before in other sociopolitical demonstrations in Turkish history. In spite of being multi-segmented and of its environmentalist emergence, what made the resistance new and variant was related to its different form of organization and communication.

The extensive use of social media was stigmatized as the center of the demonstrations. According to the Social Media and Political Participation Lab (SMaPP) Data Report, the social media activity related to the protests was

constant, even at nights, and at least 2 million tweets were tweeted with specific hashtags in the first 18 hours of the protests; #direngeziparkı (950,000 tweets), #occupygezi (170,000 tweets) or #geziparkı (50,000 tweets) (2, see Chart 1). In the subsequent days,

people were attached to their smartphones and computers that enabled them to connect the Internet and followed the occurrences via social media. Over the weekend, the hashtag #direngeziparkı was tweeted more than 1.8 million times, which is more than the major hashtag #jan25 used during the entire Egyptian revolution (SMaPP 3).

SMaPP’s data collected during the protests shows that more than 22 million tweets associated with the demonstrations were mentioned between June 1 and 11 (1). Turkey took place in this growing trend of social media usage for political movements and furthermore started to add new dimensions to understand how social media can be instrumental in protesting. “What this trend suggests is that Turkish protesters are replacing the traditional reporting with crowd-sourced accounts of the protest expressed through social media” (SMaPP 3). All these new forms of communication, information exchange, promoting and documenting the events; the impressive utilization of social media and even sometimes taking place of traditional media; and the usage of multiple sources to overcome the barriers of authoritarian regimes that prevent citizens to reach the accurate portrait of the events

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drag the studies of contemporary social movements in this new digitized world to a different approach. Thus, this alteration became something crucial that is to be reread and understood within the framework of the new social movements and cyberactivism.

2.1. New Social Movements in Context

Throughout the history, social movements have changed a lot. Since the 1960s, social movements gained strength and became multifaceted (West). It was the post-war era that social movements started to be more attached to social and cultural concerns, rather than political and economical ones, and were given the characteristic of being new social movements. Steven M. Buechler argues that there is no single new social movement theory. “There are many variations on a very general approach to something called new social movements,” thus it is difficult to define what a new social movement is (442). Nevertheless, he defines the term as “a diverse array of collective actions that have presumably displaced the old social movement of proletarian revolution” (442). Although it is difficult to assign a single definition to new social movements, it is important to identify what social movements consist of and what make new social movements new in order to approach the Gezi protests. Some of the key historical developments in the discipline of group action studies assist to clarify the role of social media communication in Gezi Park.

To begin with, it is crucial to elucidate the key terms that are very often confused. Castells broadly differentiates political movements from social movements in his work Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. He mentions that social movements are collective actions that aim a transformation in the values of the society. They tend to change people’s thoughts on certain issues, as well as institutions (Castells 2012 17). Social movements can include environmental movements, religious movements, women’s rights movements and those concerned with gender relationships and so on. However, political movements are the movements that aim the state, not the structure of the state. Political movements try to intervene in the political sphere mostly to change the government and do not intend “to work through the institutional system” (Castells 2012 137). Besides, sometimes movements can start as a political movement, then turn into a social one and vice versa. In this sense, Occupy Gezi movement begun as a social movement and later on transformed into a political outcry.

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The concept of social movement was first introduced by The German Sociologist Lorenz von Stein into academic discourse in the 1950s (Tilly 2004, 5). The definition of a social movement refers to “group actions” that people or organizations join to achieve a common goal as a collective action (Hirschman; Jenkins; Tilly 1990; Tarrow). It was a definition that is too broad to describe social movements per se. A more specific definition implying the kind of motivations was needed to refer group actions in the sense of politics. However, the notions of group actions in the literature waver between conflicting positions. The traditional view, suggests that social movements as group actions are aberrant, lacking any definite plan or order, and also implies that they are not consistent (Blumer; Imig and Tarrow). On the other hand, the rational view considers each person as a rational actor who analyzes the pros and cons of joining a movement (Olson; Tilly and Wood). There may be various reasons for individuals to participate in a collective action like rationality, self-interest or the size of the group, but it seems that the common interest is sufficient for masses to take an action as a group (Olson). It is this force that pushes individuals to organize and participate in movements without any need to evaluate pros/cons or cost/benefit of the situation. Therefore, a third option can be interpreted in between these two positions: social movements are to a certain extent organizing that their functioning goes beyond the individual intentions. They are decentralized, self-organizing collectives that gather their political power precisely from that resistance to conventional modes of organization; top-down, centralized, and representational organizations.

Subsequently, Herbert Blumer, one of the earliest scholars who identified the life cycle of social movements, describes them as “collective enterprises to establish a new order of life. They have their inception in the condition of unrest, and derive their motive power on the one hand from dissatisfaction with the current form of life, and on the other hand, from wishes and hopes for a new scheme or system of living” (199). Although the definition does not show much change, social movements have lately emerged more frequently in various countries in similar forms; from Arab Spring which began in 2010, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, which was inspired by the anti-austerity movement in Spain 2011, to civil disobedience protests in Hong Kong 2014. In other words, social movements started to show indications that they are now more transnational and can be contagious across national borders. For instance, Brazil experienced a very similar situation immediately after the Gezi resistance in Turkey. The Gezi movement perhaps inspired the Brazilians or at least encouraged them to take action. The demonstrations in Brazil started as a protest against the increases in public transportation ticket prices and then turning into an anti-governmental outcry due to police intervention and the government’s manner. Via social media, they gained international

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awareness with ease and expedition, as in Turkey, and used social media as a pivotal mediator to organize, inform, and connect Brazilian people with each other (Terra).

Thus, the contemporary movements had something different from their old counterparts. What was valued in these movements was not the class issues, professional foundations or interests. The main impulse of these actions was mostly on the universal values that emphasize a good society, good citizens, and honorable life. This represents the paradigm shift of social movements. It was the new era of social movements, which were started to be known as New Social Movements. The scholar David West explains this new era:

The term “new social movements” refers to a group of contemporary (or recent) social movements that have played a significant and, for most commentators, largely progressive role in Western societies from the late 1960s. The identification of these waves of activism as “new” typically refers to their concern with issues other than class. The category normally includes peace and anti-nuclear movements, environmental, ecological or green movements, lesbian and gay liberation, second-wave feminism, antiracist and alternative lifestyle movements (West 265).

As mentioned above, the new movements and developments have begun to appear in societies regardless of regions as of the end of the 1960s. This brought new theories to follow the new movements. As it was mentioned before, however, there is no single new social movement theory, but mostly a set of theories that correspond to a general approach (Buechler 442). According to this general understanding, new social movements are the group actions that do not address only class struggles or make material demands, but also touch the issues of sexuality, nature, and security. In other words, these new social movements are more fluid, participatory, and “new” because of their style of emergence and organization, their aims, their symbols, and their arguments (Simsek 111).

To comprehend better, Claus Offe’s comparison between traditional social movements and the new social movements in “New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics” was chosen for this study. According to Offe, the actors, issues, values, and modes of action are the four distinctive features that make new social movements distinguishable from old counterparts. In terms of the actors, the socio-economic group of people who fight mainly for their material interest have been the actors of the classical movements, whereas the role-players of new social movements are individuals who band together for diverse ideas as representatives of various segments of the society. As Offe mentions “the most striking aspect [of the actors of the new social movements] is

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that they do not rely for their self-identification either the established political codes (left/right, liberal/conservative etc,) nor on the partly corresponding socioeconomic codes (such as working class/middle class, poor/wealthy, rural/urban population, etc)” (831). The issues in traditional movements were typically about economic developments, income distribution, military and social security. However, the agenda of the new social movements have the care and support on issues like health, the physical environment, sexual identity, human rights, peace, survival of humankind in general, and cultural, ethnic, national heritage (Offe 829). Concerning the element of value, traditional social movements very often attached importance to the security of gradual improvement of materials and consumption, while new social actions prioritize individual independence and identity against the power. “Most prominent among these values are autonomy and identity (with their organizational correlates such as decentralization, self-government, and self-help) and opposition to manipulation, control, dependence, bureaucratization, regulation, etc.” (Offe 829). Lastly, the modes of action of old movements used to practice formal organizations and representative political units which serves the interest of corporations and competitive party politics. On the contrary, new social movements get pleasure from informality, free from political leaders, and having the least possible differentiation on protest policies based on demands. In other words, “while there are at best rudimentary membership roles, programs, platforms, representatives, officials, staffs, and membership dues, the new social movements consist of participants, campaigns, spokespeople, networks, voluntary helpers, and donations” (Offe 829).

A comprehensive glance at Gezi events revealed that the role players of Gezi were people who joined the resistance voluntarily for protecting their park rather than pursuing an economic goal. Environmental concerns were the triggering factor of the mass picketing that demanded human rights and equal recognition by the government. Furthermore, the events aimed at the recognition of the people who were not content with their lives and emphasized the individual independence against the tyrannizer. Lastly, it was a movement organized by the collective action of individuals through social media use rather than being guided by political groups or leaders (Tufekci 2013). The pluralist character of the movement and its tolerance within differences also did not disrupt the common requests of the activists. All these features elucidated by Offe helped to get through to the concept of new social movements, as well as contributing the examination of the Gezi movement as a new social movement. Therefore, it is time to move to another change in new social movements that is noteworthy. It is a change not about the characteristics of new social movements but a

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facilitator that gives the ability to voice the group actions; the concept of cyberactivism that articulates how citizens can now act and create changes within their own social media networks.

2.2. Cyberactivism 2.0

Ever since the World Wide Web entered our lives, the ways in which people reach the information has changed. One of the important transformations is that the information technologies currently play a vital role in modern social movements. Social movements have experienced a qualitative change due to interaction-based horizontal communication networks of wireless connection technology (Castells 2009). Particularly, the tools of Web 2.0 technology and social media applications increasingly influence the relation between citizens, governments, and other social actors. Even though there is still a debate on whether social media technologies potentially strengthen the social movements or not, they unarguably influence the occurrences of social movements and the transformation of the society. Nevertheless, the impact of these communication tools is not something new. Activists always took advantage of information technologies for different reasons as long as the circumstances allowed them (Tusa 1-2). For instance, 2009 Moldova civil unrest, 2009 Iranian election protests also known as Facebook revolution, and 2010 Arab Spring; all of them used social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to plan the protests, mobilize the activists, and update people about the news concerning the occurrences.

Cyberactivism can be performed through different ways, such as hacking, disclosing online documents, and gathering masses via online organizations. Historically, cyberactivism has shown an evolution that alters the dynamics of social movements. Jeffrey M. Ayres was one of the first scholars who observed the influence of social media and showed the Internet as a channel to organize protests and disseminate information. The book Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice by McCaughey and Ayers can be considered as a milestone in this research field. The authors proposed new notions related to activism by referring the community sense in online groups and the identity perception via technology. Later on, Donk, Loader, and Nixon; Chamberlain; Carty and Onyett; and Earl followed the stream and analyzed social movements through the lens of online communication technology. In this context, the study of Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia defines this developing communication technology and clarifies the transition between cyberactivism 1.0 and 2.0. According to their study, cyberactivism 1.0 includes the use of traditional technological tools like the use of e-mail, website hackings, organizational websites, and mailing lists to assemble

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physical reactions. To have a better grasp, it is better to have a comparison between cyberactivism 1.0 and 2.0. The former reaches people with traditional media, e-mails, and websites, where the flow of information is restricted and limited to organizers, to impart knowledge about the future protests in a medium speed, whereas cyberactivism 2.0 not only informs the activists but participates in the movement via the Internet and social networking platforms with instant, permanent, online flow of data as well (367-8). Besides, this development of cyberactivism enables activists to not only reach each other but also keep in communication regardless of the physical distance by creating a virtual meeting point accessible via the Internet (Stacey). Cyberactivism 2.0 renders possible the participation without the restrictions of space and time, which means the interaction and engagement can continue after the physical meeting on streets. This also allows people to participate in the movements globally and support the events with a single link.

The recent movements like Arab Spring and Gezi Park resistance “have in common the use of social media tools to manage information, distribute functions, and enable users, or protesters, with online tools and information to organize protests and become activists” (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia 366). Although this paper touches on the impact of social media tools and the changing features of social protests, it is important to disclose the common ground between technology, activism, and social behaviors.

It is now easy to access information via smartphones and it is very ordinary to stay connected to the world via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and all the other social networking sites. A great number of people in the social bubbles of the Internet are now aware of the occurrences in their world more than ever, simply by sharing and watching videos, instantly messaging, circulating the information, and communicating. These sites create different layers of interaction and organization on the Internet, which is an opportunity for protesters. In other words, the technology of social media tools enables “low cost and high dissemination possibilities for their [activist] causes” by cutting down the information price, and by making the information exchange and interaction faster, which may lead to the mobilization of the society (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia 375). The movements that are ruled by cyberactivism 2.0 use the effective tools of Web 2.0 to “create viral reaction by presenting facts, expand their activity across country, organize street protests, make claims, post political positions, recruit new members, enable social protests, create awareness of the use of technology, engage younger generation in activism, and to pressure the traditional media for open information and unbiassed content” (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia 375).

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These are the movements that are not coordinated by any hierarchical organization or central authority anymore; rather they rely on the collective mechanism that rises from “self-organized networks of communication” (González-Bailón 9). These modern movements are mediated through technology and this brings along the flexible kinds of collective action. In other words, cyberactivism 2.0 introduces the feeling of the connectivity among the people in the network, the fast dispersion of information, the social influence and conceivably the mobilization of the mass — with less spatio-temporal limitation.

To sum up, the new kind of movements utilize fully the communication technologies and create a horizontal, non-hierarchical, participatory, and democratic organizational scheme. The society has now an independent ability to build communication and self-organization (Castells 2012 15). Within the context of this study, Gezi movement instantiates that movements in Turkish borders become much closer to the new type of social movements. Gezi resistance stood on “ordinary people and specific demands on daily life. It was not related with removing the government and has not a class-based consciousness. And also it is not related with an organization or institution” (Yildirim 178). Also, the SMaPP Lab reported that social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr appeared to play an outstanding role in the emergence, diffusion, and the coordination of Gezi protests (3-5). This raises the question how social media specifically transform social movements. In the following chapter, social media’s certain functions are discussed.

CHAPTER 3 FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THE GEZI

Drawing on existing research, I propose the following three functions of social media in new social movements; organization and resource mobilization, framing of the movements, and alternative news coverage. These three different functions of social media, particularly Twitter, will be elaborated respectively in this chapter and constituted a comprehensive analysis of Twitter during the Gezi Park movement.

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3.1. Organization & Resource Mobilization

One of the defining features of the Gezi resistance is the unexpectedly sudden occurrence of it. Cyberactivism during the Gezi Park movement was the triggering cause for this central acceleration of the events. The movement was modeled through the networks on the web. Social media networks were used as a form of organizational structure and this virtual connection between users rapidly turned into an offline network. In other words, social media’s role was shaped by how the Gezi protesters were well organized in a nontraditional way. They successfully recognized the power of social networking and capability of the communication speed. They very often used online communication tools for mobilization purposes, which reflects solidarity and community building (Kavada 107).

The increased technology usage and the Internet can be the key components of collective actions, which makes it simpler for many ordinary citizens who want to collaborate, interact, and create a change. Today’s technology, which is instant, anonymous, nonlinear, unrestricted and collective (Baglow 2), paves the way for it. One of the intentions of this dissertation is to reveal how Turkish activists used social media to organize and mobilize the movement. For the purpose of this paper, organization refers to the logistical formation of mobilizing protestors and resources.

The concept of organization in a social movement was addressed in Charles Tilly’s book From Mobilization to Revolution referring to a transformation of like-minded individuals from mobilization to revolution. This follows the theory of resource mobilization that is about converting rational action of individuals to collective actions (Jenkins 1983; McCharty and Edwards 2004; Olson 1965). In other words, resource mobilization theory argues “resources — such as time, money, organizational skills, and certain social or political opportunities -– are critical to the formation and success of social movements” (Lopes 6). However, the new social movements began to show signs of an apparent lack of resources. For instance, the traditional resources of money and labor seem to be replaced by the access to the Internet and electronic devices with an Internet connection. When the cost of organizing a protest is nothing more than an Internet connection, then money can lose its necessity. The low cost of organization seems to make protesting easier and less expensive for Gezi activists. In other words, “social media has altered the resource mobilization in organizing a movement” (Tusa 16).

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What social networking sites like Twitter were doing created the first step of collaboration, coordination, and mobilization — shared awareness. Clay Shirky mentioned this concept in his influential work “The Political Power of Social Media” and defined it as “the ability of each member of a group to not only understand the situation at hand but also understand that everyone else does, too. Social media increase shared awareness by propagating messages through social networks” (35-6). Furthermore, “opinions are first transmitted by the media, and then they get echoed by friends, family members, and colleagues. It is in this second, social step that political opinions are formed. This is the step in which the Internet in general, and social media in particular, can make a difference” (34).

Therefore, shared awareness can be considered as a form of coordination for political movements. For instance, the anti-governmental protests in Turkey accelerated very rapidly because millions of Internet users shared information and spread messages via social networks. This practice of social networking increased the shared awareness among the citizens and escalated the course of events. It is important to mention that social media as a new type of organizer for social movements is not something that can be controlled easily (Tufekci 2014 16). In this regard, Shirky uses the condition of shared awareness to illustrate the possible discontent in a population, namely conservative dilemma. The dilemma arises when citizens have an access to speech or assembly through new media tools like social media and as a consequence “a state accustomed to having a monopoly on public speech finds itself called to account for anomalies between its view of events and the public’s” (36). Before the Gezi uprising, for example, the corruption in Turkish government was more or less an open secret. Since then, people have begun documenting unjust practices of the government through social media. As a result, the corruption was made visible and the feeling of being a part of a like-minded community was established. At this point, the struggle between Gezi protesters and the government sets a precedent to the conservative dilemma. Also, Twitter is one of the powerful factors in establishing the shared awareness by letting angry and dissatisfied people raise their voice, as well as making them realize the existence of other dissatisfied people. This gives people the courage to organize, mobilize, and act in the ways that they would not be able to do otherwise. With the shared awareness, “young people armed with little more than laptops and mobile phones can help amplify popular voices for freedom and justice” (Harsch 22).

Moreover, the mobilization of the movement is not only about the protesters themselves or the resources. “The simple availability of resources is not sufficient: coordination and strategic effort is

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typically required in order to convert available pools of individually held resources into collective resources in order that they can help enable collective action” (McCarthy and Edwards 116). The messages of activists, their intention to get coverage via traditional media, and the locations of an occupation or a march can be categorized under the mobilization of protests. In fact, Twitter’s largest impact was in the mobilization of Gezi events. By instant tweets, for example, Gezi activists learned where and when to meet to protest, where the police was or where the medical help was needed. When protestors were on the ground, they used Twitter to “announce new initiatives, like marching to the parliament building, and to boost their collective morale with reports of other developments around the country” (Idle and Nunns 20). In short, by using social media networks as an organizational tool, protestors can guide the resources, individuals, and protests; can survey police locations, clashes, and the opposing power; and can mobilize group actions.

How do these more general observations apply to the particular case of the Gezi protests?

As the first assumption of this dissertation, the question of how social media, especially Twitter, was used with different degrees under the concept of organization and mobilization by the Gezi activists begs an explanation. Table 3.1 displays the practice of active utilization of social media instruments, which was drawn with 8 separate, differently measured purposes. One of the strongest reasons for using social media that can be categorized under organization and mobilization of the movement was gathering and disseminating information (M=4.12 SD=1.17). Finding guidance followed with a slight difference (M=3.73 SD=1.41). What these results gave was that people with Table 3.1: People’s distribution by social media uses Question 24

Statistic To gather and disseminate information To spread and/or know the activists' claims To find guidance (where and when are the protests, medical help etc.) To reach a larger group of potential supporters To find true News about what was happening To entertain To expose police brutality To announce what was happenin g to the foreign press/ countries Min Value 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Max Value 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 Mean 4.12 3.88 3.73 3.32 4.40 1.77 3.83 2.95 Variance 1.37 1.46 1.98 1.98 0.89 1.00 1.77 2.16 Standard Deviation 1.17 1.21 1.41 1.41 0.94 1.00 1.33 1.47 Total Responses 189 188 188 190 192 182 187 186

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the intention to find guiding information about the protest time and location, police surveillance and other factors, used social media more often than not. However, their intention to gain knowledge about the happenings concerning the protests, clashes, marches, and more surpassed the motivation of finding guidance. Therefore, people utilize social networking tools often for gathering and disseminating information. Supportively, when the participants were asked to rank the purposes of following the Gezi protests on social media in order of priorities, gathering and disseminating was ranked second (M=4.05, SD=2.48) and finding guidance was ranked fifth out of ten (M=5.05, SD=2.66) (see Appendix pg.105-6).

The participants were also asked to specify their social media usage frequency when they were on the streets and/or at the park and/or at home following the occurrences on social media. As seen in Chart 2, the measurement varied for each purpose. For the organization and mobilization purposes, 49 percent people announced that they very often used social networking tools to gather and disseminate information; followed by people who stated often as their social media utilization frequency (29%), sometimes (10%), and rarely (2%). On the other hand, people who preferred to exploit social media to fulfill their curiosity on spatial movements of police, protestors, and other role players in the movement corresponded to 40 percent. This ratio decreased respectively to represent people who used social media many times (25%), sometimes (14%), and hardly ever (4%) for this specific reason. Besides, the number of people who never used social networking sites to organize themselves by finding counseling (14%), and to collect and spread information (7%) was Chart 2: Participants’ social media usage frequency Question 24

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noteworthy. All these data show that people preferred social media tools not only to collect and circulate information but also find a guidance for themselves. Next to purposes like entertainment, which is an important factor in media use but ranked very low in the survey, social media were instrumental in organizing Gezi protests. In other words, these numbers support the first point of the hypothesis that social media were used for organization and mobilization purposes.

A look at various tweets during the Gezi resistance showed that Twitter was used for a few different purposes as a way to mobilize and organize the occupy movement. Under these items, the tweets that were scanned and chosen to be analyzed showed that one of the main purposes of using Twitter by the activists was drawn from the need for surveillance. It included monitoring activities of police intervention and the opposing power, as well as keeping up with the main issues or events of the day, and communicating and helping other activists draw attention to certain information. As Castells describes how political actions are “exposed to the decentralized surveillance of millions of eyes: we are all now potential paparazzi” (2009 413).

Cyberactivism 2.0: Determining Social Media Usage in New Social Movements — Twitter and Gezi Resistance in Turkey