Studio Session 1 Reflection - Amanda Eller

In the first Studio Session we researched the topic to further understand the Gezi Park’s protests’ origins, goals, and methods. We examined the political issues the protesters were originally disputing and the broadened scope of social and human rights issues this grew to include. The backlash by the government was also examined, especially the gross media censorship that the government relied on. Major Turkish news outlets, especially the Turkish CNN and BBC branches, refused to cover the protests, or covered them in a biased and limited manner. In order to combat this, and further protest the lack of human rights and expression this behavior was demonstrating, the protesters turned to social media as an open platform outlet to disseminate their message and give an accurate portrayal of what was occurring. I was particularly interested in the group’s use of twitter in order to disseminate their message, emphasizing the platform design of short, impactful messages and hashtags in order to reach a vast amount of people in a direct and easy manner. The fact that these tweets could easily be re-tweeted in order to spread the message was also interesting, as it encited a very negative response from the government whom attempted to ban the use of twitter. I look forward to doing more research on these types of social media bans and the increased censorship by the government as the protests progressed, and also the current situation regarding social media use in Turkey.