Social Media as The New Venue of “Political Activity” of The Changed Publicity – (The Case of Twitter in The Context of The Relations Between Political Identities and Public Rights)

The aim of this study deals with ‘doing politics’ as a part of the presentation of political identities on social media which has been used widely and recognized as a new public sphere as a result of advanced communication Technologies. Social media is not only a space where political identities are presented but also a public sphere in which civil rights are demanded. When the impact of these demands and their chance of success are considered, it can be said that social media is more functional than a classical public sphere. Thus, the way these political identities presented on social media handle public rights and demands arouses interest. That is the reason why this article pursue this very interest on Twitter, one of the widely used spaces for doing politics on social media. Content analysis method is chosen as the main method of this study. The words/terms which are widely accepted as common political ideas in Turkey such as “Islamism”, “Muslimism”, “leftism”, “socialist”, “Turkism” and “nationalism” was cross matched with public demands such as “democracy”, “rights”, “freedom”, “faith”, “private life”, “ownership”, “security”, “law”, “Constitution” and searched on Twitter module. As a result of this search screenshots of some tweets which could contribute to this study were captured and by classifying the discourses stated through these tweets, how the chosen political identities are used within some certain context on social media as a public sphere is figured out