Going into this assignment, I really had no knowledge of the Turkish Gezi Park protests, so I was excited to learn more about their impact related to the Internet. In our research yesterday, our group started out tagging articles that summarized the protests, and then moved deeper into understanding the impact that social media, especially Twitter, was used to amplify the protests.
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.