THE EFFECTS OF HASHTAGS USED IN MAIN NEW BULLETIN IN THE FORMATION OF PUBLIC SPHERE ON TWITTER
ÜSTÜNBAŞ, Birgül;DEMİR, Sema BULAT;
the turkish online journal of design, art and communication2021Vol. 11pp. 813-828
54
ustunba2021thethe
Abstract
The public sphere refers to the public domain, which enables all citizens to express their thoughts that concern society where discussions are held to agreed upon. The public sphere has transformed depending on the period in which it is in the historical process. Today, with the digital transformation in information and communication technologies, the public sphere discussions have started in new media. In this study, it is investigated whether the hashtag words on the social media platform Twitter create a public sphere. Hashtags are significant from the point of enabling users to express their idea about a specific topic and indirect interaction between users. In this context, in the “Fatih Portakal and Fox Ana Haber” broadcasted live on weekday primetime, Twitter hashtags determined about the agenda between April 13th-17th 2020 was analyzed by the content analysis method. An semistructured interview was conducted to support the data obtained. As a result of the research, it revealed that the hashtags used only as a means of announcing the users' voices, among the user's interactions are insufficient, discussions in comments cannot reach the result, and users' reactions are instantly and reactively in social media. It is concluded that the hashtags used the main news bulletin can not create a public sphere on Twitter.