Studio session 2

Our group had a relatively easy time organizing our findings into categories and then creating the visual representation because everything is very interconnected.

Social media played a huge role in all of the events of the Gezi Park protests on all sides. A dimension that came to light in our work on Thursday was the similarity between the physical space and the media space of the protests. For media, the penguin symbol was claimed by the protesters to fight back against the government. In real life, a backhoe intended for park destruction was seized by protesters and used to attack President Erdogans offices.

These symbols were crucial for the movement. Where Occupy had many factions that did not have one focus, Gezi Park had people from diverse backgrounds and belief systems but they were all united first against destruction of the park and hen against the police and government's brutality and new laws that hampered citizen's freedoms. I look forward to the next step in the process and hope to further investigate these symbols from both media and reality more in depth.