Struggling for Reality: A Sociological Analysis of Turkey's Internet Regulations

Date

2023-12-11

Author

Saguş, Almina

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Internet has become an important part of most people’s lives especially for the last 20 years in Turkey, which has opened a new and unknown world to ordinary citizens.With the emergence of social media platforms, ‘ordinary’ people have found a voice enabling them to reach out thousands of individuals.Authorities didn’t realize the Internet’s importance at first but later on, itbecame a critical matter on their agenda, which resulted in a need for exercising control over it. The thesis aims to examinehowsociopolitical reality has been established as a field of struggle in the state’s practices of regulating Internet and social media in Turkey. In this context, the relationship between media and power dynamics has been investigated. Firstly, various Internet and social media regulations around the world were discussed to clarify the Turkey’s stance. Secondly, it was focused on Durkheim’s social facts and collective consciousness and Gramsci’s cultural hegemony theories to create theoretical basis of the further argument. Thirdly, the focus was turned to Turkey. While the political and historical background of Turkey regarding media was examined to understand its transformation over the years, the legal aspect of the issue was also discussedto comprehend the legal changes parallel to the historical process. Afterwards,the practices of these legal regulations were presented to underline the impact of it. Finally, a content analysis of the news articles regarding Disinformation Law was made to investigate the construction of sociopolitical reality and the struggle over it in Turkey.

Subject Keywords

Internet and Social Media, Legal Regulations, Sociopolitical Reality, Social Facts, Cultural Hegemony

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/106424

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis