An analysis of the Gezi Park social movement tweets
| Date | 17 July 2017 |
| Published date | 17 July 2017 |
| Pages | 426-440 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2017-0064 |
| Author | Selcen Ozturkcan,Nihat Kasap,Muge Cevik,Tauhid Zaman |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
An analysis of the Gezi Park
social movement tweets
Selcen Ozturkcan
Faculty of Communication, Bahçeşehir Üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey
Nihat Kasap and Muge Cevik
School of Management, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, and
Tauhid Zaman
School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Twitter usage during Gezi Park Protests, a significant large-scale connective action, is analyzed to
reveal meaningful findings on individual and group tweeting characteristics. Subsequent to the Arab Spring
in terms of its timing, the Gezi Park Protests began by the spread of news on construction plans to build a
shopping mall at a public park in Taksim Square in Istanbul on May 26, 2013. Though started as a small-scale
local protest, it emerged into a series of multi-regional social protests, also known as the Gezi Park
demonstrations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors sought answers to three important research questions:
whether Twitter usage is reflective of real life events, what Twitter is actually used for, and is Twitter usage
contagious? The authors have collected streamed data from Twitter. As a research methodology, the authors
followed social media analytics framework proposed by Fan and Gordon (2014), which included three
consecutive processes; capturing, understanding, and presenting. An analysis of 54 million publicly available
tweets and 3.5 million foursquare check-ins, which account to randomly selected 1 percent of all tweets and
check-ins posted from Istanbul, Turkey between March and September 2013 are presented.
Findings –A perceived lack of sufficient media coverage on events taking place on the streets is believed to
result in Turkish protestors’use of Twitter as a medium to share and get information on ongoing and planned
demonstrations, to learn the recent news, to participate in the debate, and to create local and global
awareness.
Research limitations/implications –Data collection via streamed tweets comes with certain limitations.
Twitter restricts data collection on publicly available tweets and only allows randomly selected 1 percent of
all tweets posted from a specific region. Therefore, the authors’data include only tweets of publicly available
Twitter profiles. The generalizability of the findings should be regarded with concerning this limitation.
Practical implications –The authors conclude that Twitter was used mainly as a platform to exchange
information to organize street demonstrations.
Originality/value –The authors conclude that Twitter usage reflected Street movements on a chronological
level. Finally, the authors present that Twitter usage is contagious whereas tweeting is not necessarily.
Keywords Turkey, Social media, Social protest, Contagious, Gezi Park Protests, Twitter use
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Hearing sirens every 5 minutes coming from the ambulances, fire trucks, and police vehicles
passing by, she became terrified and curious to learn what was going in the street. She switched
on the TV and checked the global and national news channels for information. There wasn’t
much info available. She grabbed her tablet and checked the newspapers’websites; there were no
news either. As a last resort, she opened a social networking site. She scrolled down the “wall”
and started reading t he status updates of those she foll owed. She was finally able to get a pictu re
of what was going on.
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 69 No. 4, 2017
pp. 426-440
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-03-2017-0064
Received 9 March 2017
Revised 22 May 2017
6June2017
Accepted 20 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
The authors thank Turgay Kadiroğlu (Software Consultant, Bilge Adam IT Services); Ozan Uysal
(PhD Student, Dogus University), and Eda Aylin Genç (PhD Student, Istanbul Bilgi University) for
their invaluable support.
426
AJIM
69,4
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