Nowadays, due to the popularity of different social network sites, many companies and institutions try to reach members of these sites for various reasons. Social network sites, provide social capital to its followers by utilizing the flow of information provided by the connection of its members. Social capital consists of information and facilities that are obtained from individuals within these social networks. In this study, we will evaluate the final episodes of five distinct television series that utilizes Twitter’s hashtag function in order to create social capital.

Social media provides a large-scale data that have substantial prospective to define collective actions such as social trends, political participation and complex phenomena in real world. When people use these channels, they leave a huge amount of digital trace that can be easily reached by researchers. This digital trace bestows us a unique possibility to observe and reveal collective actions at unpreceded measures. In this research, we have aimed to test if the daily Twitter activities (tweet, retweet, mention) can serve as a significant indicator regarding Turkish election results, an argument already engaged in previous studies. To test it, we have applied a method that was developed by Eom et al. (2015) based on daily tweet volume to predict the ranks of variables. We have used the fluctuations of daily tweet volumes in order to find the optimal time frame for predicted ranking of parties and candidates. We have concluded that some of our results overlap with previous studies. The correlation between the daily attention volume on acquired in this study and the election results -even though it does not directly impact the election results-shows Turkish Twitter data can be used as a proxy tool.

The impact of new communication technologies—especially social networks such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—on democracy and mass movements has been a core subject in the area of social and political research ever since these technologies have started to play a crucial role in dissemination of ideas that go beyond the limits of mass media and foster symmetrical communication on an unprecedented scale. One of the important features of these technologies is the image sharing ability with network members. It is a propulsive force to turn a crowd into a mass with creating a collective subjectivity (the we) of mass through image, which turns into an iconography. This iconography is per se an aesthetic medium of ideology that is against the political totalizations in new digital public sphere. Thus, in this chapter, the authors focus on the formation of new social movements in network societies, then the aesthetic dimension of iconographic images in these movements.

With the expanding digital public sphere, social media have worked as tools that construct and maintain the boundaries and descriptors of social identity among members, by portraying and reinforcing content shared by communities and cultures. Religious leaders and groups have used social media to make themselves more visible and to communicate their faith’s mission. The scope of this study is to use Henri Tajfel’s social identity theory to examine the viewers’ comments on the content created by a religious individual/group for the production, shaping, and reproduction of the Muslim identity through YouTube. We have used Corpus Linguistics (CL) methods to examine relative frequencies and emerging statistical significance of lexical patterns in viewers’ comments. This analysis shows that a strong “we” versus “you” dichotomization exists between the in-group, Muslims, and the out-group, persons who are systematically degraded as being low-informed religious, or non-religious, in street interviews.

Öz Kolektif eylem; iki veya daha fazla bireyin bir amaca ulaşmak için, ortak hareket etme ihtiyacının bulunduğu anlarda ortaya çıkar. Toplumsal yapıdaki değişimler, küreselleşme ve dijital ağların günlük yaşamın unsurlarını her geçen gün bünyesine katması, kolektif eylem yapısını değiştirmiştir. Kolektif eylem, üzerinde gerçekleştiği ağın yapısal özellikleri ile ölçülebilir hale gelmiştir. Bireyler; kolektif eyleme katılma kararını, eylemin farklı zamanlarında almaktadır. Bireye göre değişen bu psikolojik sınır "eşik değer" olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Bu çalışmada; bireylerin kolektif eyleme katılma eşik değerlerinin, ağ yapısı özellikleri kullanılarak belirlenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Çalışma sonucunda; bireylerin hukuki ve toplumsal yaptırımlar ile karşılaşma olasılıklarının olduğu politik konularda daha yüksek eşik değere sahip iken çevre ve temel haklar konularında daha düşük eşik değere sahip oldukları gözlemlenmiştir.