Social media use and political participation: the Turkish case

ABSTRACT

The freedom of media is an essential component for democratic settings; however, in some contexts, citizens experience several barriers to enjoy this right in full. Replacing conventional media channels, social media is becoming an indispensable medium to express and discuss politics in such environments. Yet, there is little consensus in the literature about how social media relates to offline political participation, especially in settings where citizens do not experience media freedom in full. By using survey data that has been collected after the Turkish general election of 2018, this article aims to display the relationship between social media use and offline political participation. The analysis reveals offline political participation is related to sharing political views online and exposure to alternative political ideas.

KEYWORDS:

• Political participation
• online political expression
• social media
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor of Turkish Studies and the two referees for their valuable comments and useful suggestions that helped to improve the paper. We would also like to thank 2019 ESPA participants, Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Simge Andı, and KA Analytica for their valuable assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The original wording in Turkish can be seen in the appendix (available in the on-line version)

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy [Grant Number AF160050].

Notes on contributors

Seçil Toros

Seçil Toros is an Assistant Professor at Atılım University in Ankara. Her research interest covers political communication, deceptive advertising and communication ethics, and her work appeared in journals including İktisat ve Toplum and Mediterranean Communication Journal.

Emre Toros

Emre Toros is a Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at Hacettepe University in Ankara. His research interests include Turkish politics, political parties, elections, electoral behaviour and electoral integrity. His articles have appeared in Democratization, International Journal of Forecasting, Turkish Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Social Indicators Research and Asia Europe Journal. He has held research positions at Stanford and Malmo Universities, and currently he is a research fellow at King’s College, London.