I find that the protestors’ success in controlling the discourses on their movement was quite limited in Turkey. Due to the high levels of internet tribalism and selective exposure on social media, two diametrically opposed discourses emerged on the protests and many people remained largely unaware of the viewpoint of “the other side.” Rather than facilitating information flow between opposing groups, social media only served to amplify existing political discourses on traditional media, and somewhat paradoxically rendered many people unaware of the other side’s perspective and “facts.”
To explore how the protestors and the anti-protest groups viewed the whole movement, I conducted interviews with five groups of protestors at Gezi Parki, as well as a group of conservative and religious people who were opposed to the protests. I also surveyed two religiously conservative newspapers and two dissident, secular-left newspapers. Finally, I examined all tweets with Gezi protest-related hashtags during the most intense phase of the protests (May 27-June 30).
