Construction of Public Justice through Big Data: A Twitter Analysis of the Sule Cet Case

This study focuses on the opportunities provided by social networks based on Big Data, specifically Twitter, for social movements and rights struggles. Discussing to what extent social media environments like Twitter act as a public sphere, this study tried to shed light on the potential of these channels to provide civil/public justice. Tweets from the Sule cet Icin Adalet Platform created by the username @suleicinadalet in order to follow the trial of the Sule cet murder on May 29, 2018 were subjected to analysis. The tweet, retweet and favourite counts of the account between February 1st, 2019 and December 31st, 2019 were examined and visualised. In the second stage of the study, 783 tweets from this account between September 1st and December 31st, 2019 were subjected to quantitative content analysis under various categories. Social networks like Twitter create crucial opportunities as a public sphere, and public communities within this public sphere can communicate/interact and organise via social networks. In the study, it is seen that public communities organised on social networks can lead to secure legal justice through civil/public conscience/justice. At the same time, the study revealed that social networks can be the voice of disadvantaged people/groups, and that they can fight for rights and succeed in the face of injustice. In this study, social networks were approached as an opportunity in general terms, although their problematic aspects were scrutinised.