Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The spread of social movements across the globe is due, in no small part, to the connective affordances of social media. After the Arab spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria sustained large scaled movements emerged using social media in many ways from sending messages to mobilisation. This trend is increasing quickly and becoming effective in several countries. For instance, Turkey experienced a coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Millions of Turkish citizens gathered in the streets of Turkey to protest and resist the coup attempt during. In the following days, social media, especially Twitter, have played crucial role to protect Turkish democracy against the threat of coup attempt. The average number of daily tweets was approximately 5,643,210 before the coup attempt, which increased to 6,804,329 on the 15th. This number rapidly increased to 18,666,642 on the 16th. Turks were mobilised to protest through the use of the hashtags such as #DarbeyeHayır (NoCoup) and #AtaturkHavalimani (Ataturk Airport) as well as tweeting about them. This paper focuses on the networked mobilisation of Turkish citizens during the coup attempt and clarifies features of networked protests in Turkey. It presents the role of social media during the coup attempt based on the discussion about the roles of tweets and hashtags during the coup attempt by applying content analysis.