SOSYAL MEDYANIN TÜRKİYE’DE YENİ ÖZGÜRLÜK ALANLARINI BELİRLEMEDEKİ ETKİSİ ve YEREL SEÇİMLERDE SİYASAL İLETİŞİMLE KOLEKTİF KİMLİK OLUŞUMUNDAKİ ROLÜ

The subject of this research is the role of the social media in the political communication and its effects on the formation of the collective identity and the main purpose is to determine the social media's effect as a place of building a collective identity, political rituals and identification on Turkish people. This study is based on the theoretical frame related to Marshall McLuhan's the global village concept. The coverage of the study is limited to the dates between 17th of December 2013 and 30th of March 2014. While searching for an answer to the question about what kind of effects could the social media have on a political area that is dynamic, fast-moving, unstable, unregulated and constantly updated; the main hypothesis of the research is that Turkish politics and cultural identity have important roles in the process of rebuilding. It is indicated that the broadness of the social media's borders contributes to the evolvement of the political and cultural freedoms however it is also indicated that its perception as a threat is evenly evolved. As a result Turkey as a government and Turkish people as individuals have started to evolve rapidly with social media and they are surrounded by a new information system witho ut privacy. The research has shown that AK Party's perception and its reaction to the social media based crisis indicates that it is not ready to cope with this kind of crises. AK Party is ignoring social media's new relationship with politics, restricting this relationship to only introducing the party's activities and running its defence mechanism. What the Party can do about this situation is to re-plan a powerful media strategy.