Social Media in Political Communication and the Use of Twitter in the 2011 General Elections in Turkey

Social media environments, which are basically new media applications, have many users both in Turkey and in the world. These applications, which make direct interaction via the Internet possible, are used frequently by the candidates and/or the members of political parties during the election periods. This study focuses on the relationship between the candidates or members of political parties and the voters along with the social media using practices in the sample of Twitter as a social media environment, where the candidates and/or the members of political parties are users themselves, unlike the personal or institutional web sites where they have a broader ability to moderate. For this purpose, Twitter accounts belonging to the members of political parties and party leaders during Turkey's General Elections in 2011 have been examined, and the findings based on quantitative content analysis about their Twitter accounts and tweets have been evaluated.