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This article analyzes political trolling in Turkey through the lens of mediated populism.Twitter trolling in Turkey has diverged from its original uses (i.e., poking fun, flaming, etc.) toward government-led polarization and right-wing populism. Failing to develop an effective strategy to mobilize online masses, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP/AKP) relied on the polarizing performances of a large progovernment troll army. Trolls deploy three features of JDP's populism: serving the people, fetish of the will of the people, and demonization. Whereas trolls traditionally target and mock institutions, Turkey's political trolls act on behalf of the establishment. They produce a digital culture of lynching and censorship. Trolls' language also impacts pro-JDP journalists who act like trolls and attack journalists, academics, and artists critical of the government. Keywords: trolls, mediated populism, Turkey, political polarization, TwitterTurkish media has undergone a transformation during the uninterrupted tenure of the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) since 2002. Not supported by the mainstream media when it first came to power, JDP created its own media army and transformed the mainstream media's ideological composition. What has, however, destabilized the entire media environment was the Gezi Park protests of summer 2013.1 Activists' use of social media not only facilitated political organizing, but also turned the news environment upside down. Having recognized that the mainstream media was not trustworthy, oppositional groups migrated to social media for organizing and producing content. 1 Gezi refers to the nationwide antigovernment protests that spanned the period between June and September 2013, which were sparked by a municipal decision to replace a small park in central Istanbul with a shopping mall (Yörük, 2014). Ergin Bulut and Erdem YörükInternational Journal of Communication 11 (2017) Since the Gezi protests, researchers have examined various dimensions of social media:alternative journalism (Ataman & Çoban, 2015), satirical linguistic production (Yeşilyurt, 2016), statesocial media corporation negotiations (Bulut, 2016), and political organizing (Baruh & Watson, 2016 Coskuntuncel (2016, pp. 12-13) argued that the Turkish government's censorship policies should be understood within the framework of privatization of governance, in which government censorship itself is outsourced to private intermediaries. Drawing on linguistic anthropology, Koçer (2015) examined the performances of the elite in constructing social media as a criminal realm using a divisive discourse.Despite the insights, this literature overlooks how trolls in social media-specifically Twitter-are strategic tools for the state to energize citizens. Examining Twitter trolls' language within the context of populism enables us to understand power networks and discourses through which trolls not only disrupt political conversations, but also consolidate government's power by networking scattered masses. addi...
This article analyzes political trolling in Turkey through the lens of mediated populism.Twitter trolling in Turkey has diverged from its original uses (i.e., poking fun, flaming, etc.) toward government-led polarization and right-wing populism. Failing to develop an effective strategy to mobilize online masses, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP/AKP) relied on the polarizing performances of a large progovernment troll army. Trolls deploy three features of JDP's populism: serving the people, fetish of the will of the people, and demonization. Whereas trolls traditionally target and mock institutions, Turkey's political trolls act on behalf of the establishment. They produce a digital culture of lynching and censorship. Trolls' language also impacts pro-JDP journalists who act like trolls and attack journalists, academics, and artists critical of the government. Keywords: trolls, mediated populism, Turkey, political polarization, TwitterTurkish media has undergone a transformation during the uninterrupted tenure of the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) since 2002. Not supported by the mainstream media when it first came to power, JDP created its own media army and transformed the mainstream media's ideological composition. What has, however, destabilized the entire media environment was the Gezi Park protests of summer 2013.1 Activists' use of social media not only facilitated political organizing, but also turned the news environment upside down. Having recognized that the mainstream media was not trustworthy, oppositional groups migrated to social media for organizing and producing content. 1 Gezi refers to the nationwide antigovernment protests that spanned the period between June and September 2013, which were sparked by a municipal decision to replace a small park in central Istanbul with a shopping mall (Yörük, 2014). Ergin Bulut and Erdem YörükInternational Journal of Communication 11 (2017) Since the Gezi protests, researchers have examined various dimensions of social media:alternative journalism (Ataman & Çoban, 2015), satirical linguistic production (Yeşilyurt, 2016), statesocial media corporation negotiations (Bulut, 2016), and political organizing (Baruh & Watson, 2016 Coskuntuncel (2016, pp. 12-13) argued that the Turkish government's censorship policies should be understood within the framework of privatization of governance, in which government censorship itself is outsourced to private intermediaries. Drawing on linguistic anthropology, Koçer (2015) examined the performances of the elite in constructing social media as a criminal realm using a divisive discourse.Despite the insights, this literature overlooks how trolls in social media-specifically Twitter-are strategic tools for the state to energize citizens. Examining Twitter trolls' language within the context of populism enables us to understand power networks and discourses through which trolls not only disrupt political conversations, but also consolidate government's power by networking scattered masses. addi...
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