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On October 17th 2014, a man named Mehmet Pişkin uploaded his suicide note to the Vimeo in a video format. This video was automatically shared with his Facebook friends after he commited suicide. This occasion that effected new media literate audiences became one of the most important topics in Turkey’s new media sphere. Pişkin’s suicide had caused generation of enormous content in Ekşi Sözlük which is one of the most popular digital platforms in Turkish Internet sphere. Between 17.10.2014 and 20.11.2014, 2323 entries had been posted to Ekşi Sözlük under 14 different topics created by authors. In this article, the entries recorded between 17.10.2014 and 19.10.2014 have been observed and evaluated due to a discourse analysis based on effect of interactions between different opinions on compromises. The academic benefit of the article can be summarized as revealing factors that impact emergence of an opinion and avoiding factors that disable opinion changes. New media created important opportunities in terms of recording, processing and sharing information. Thinking of Castells (1996) defining network society due to deep social changes in last decades; development of network society effected both interpersonal and massive communication practices and these changes are still being felt. Video uploaded by Mehmet Pişkin was deleted after the recognition of sensitive content but it had already been uploaded and reproduced by other new media users in various platforms such as Youtube, Dailymotion and Vimeo. Video became one of the new instances of how new media technologies transformed and determined feelings and expressions in network society.
We’ll be observing this suicidal case and its reflections in new media sphere in 5 different steps. First of all, we’ll observe Ekşi Sözlük as a collaborative media model and choice of Ekşi Sözlük as media to be observed in this case will be tried to be legitimized. First approach towards ekşi Sözlük is about whether Ekşi Sözlük is an appropriate media to observe a suicidal attempt or not. Second approach is towards the the Ekşi Sözlük as a partly idealized public sphere. In the third chapter, Ekşi Sözlük will be tried to be redefined as a collaborative media, where groups and individuals interact and produce/consume together. Collaborative and competitive media will be observed with reference to public sphere. Benefiting from the ideas of Jürgen Habermas and Christian Fuchs, problems and trends regarding opinions emerged within Ekşi Sözlük with reference to socialist and bourgeoise definitions of public sphere. Fourth chapter of the article is focused on user generated content aiming manipulation of information. Benefiting from the term Wikipedia Vandalism, taking similarities between Ekşi Sözlük and Wikipedia into the consideration, the content production processes will be observed. In the fifth chapter of the article will be about methodology and focus content of the research. In sixth and the last chapter, using group polarization as a key concept, formation of the group polarization emerged in Ekşi Sözlük will be defined.
Most of the suicides that have been related to web environment are commited in Japan due to official records 1. Looking at the countries similar incidents have happened, the countries listed are China, South Korea, Germany, Australia, Norway, United Kingdom, USA and Sweden. While those countries have differences in terms of demographical profiles and new media literacy levels, observing Pişkin and authors of Ekşi Sözlük – a collaborative hyper text dictionary (Gürel and Yakın 2006, 266) - as a smaller demography with urbanized lifestyles and developed media literacy skills, we can observe some similarities. Due to the data about internet use and its increasing rates in Turkey, we can state that there are both economical and technological similarities among the audiences that prosume content in those web sites. Here we need to focus on productive communication as an important key term proposed by Henning and Hebblewhite (2013, 214). Because from Ekşi Sözlük to Twitter, communication processes in these new social networks do not only consist consumption processes but also the production of content. Relatively, many cognitive outputs are produced in these social networks. Because of this cognitive output, Ekşi Sözlük is the media project that is chosen as a field for the observation of group polarization after this postmodern suicide regarding its representation in new media. However, before using Wiki terminology, we need to cover some differences and similarities between two new media projects. Wikipedia is) a media that can be accessed, edited and modified by everyone (Fuchs, 2014,768. Rules change by time there and the rules have flexibility. However, we need to stress some differences. Ekşi Sözlük’s registration and authorship approval processes are not transparent and there is a preparation process for authorship. We can talk about two different hierarchies in terms of the comparison of these two projects. Even if we are talking about similar literacy skills in terms of new media regarding Ekşi Sözlük users, the political, social and personal tendencies are not that homogeneus. These people are still under the impact of agenda setting function of traditional media and their attitudes are shaped by existing discussions and tensions in bourgeoise public sphere of Turkey, which is mostly dependent on secular and conservative conflict in intellectual area.
Clay Shirky defended that chatting or speaking in the online sphere is content production while content production is establishing connection with others (Shirky 2008, 172). Again Shirky stated that, social media tools dramatically improved our tendencies regarding collaborating and cooperating (Shirky 2008, 304). Shirky’s those discourses regarding formation of activist movements reveal that there is a common aim and common effort for the realization of this aim. However, collaborative media examples do not emerge as results of common aims. Because collaborative solidarity based and collaborative competitive modes of media are also organized and due to new media’s political economy, this nuance caused emergence of different subcategories. In terms of financial structure, Wikipedia shouldn’t be compared to Ekşi Sözlük. Of course Wikipedi is not a revolutionary Marxist process principally; however in the end it is the result of its whole members (Fuchs, 2014, 778). Ekşi Sözlük as a registered company is not an idealized or commonly shared public sphere but a new media sphere under the hegemony of capitalist structure. Prosumers (authors) are involved within a process of exploitation. Including the ads, there are many blocks regarding free content production in Ekşi sözlük. Laws and regulations provide another restrictive topic here. So, like bourgeoise public sphere, Ekşi Sözlük is also a zone of hegemonic conflict and group polarization can not be thought free from this situation. It is also known that many authors produce content on demand for money. This monetization also caused manipulation of the information and harmed the census process. Therefore Ekşi Sözlük is not a democratic collaborative media platform. It has a collaborative information production process; however this is not a horizontal process. This is an hierarchial process. Data control mechanism works not due to the facts but to the interests of stakeholders or the media itself. So far we understood that Ekşi Sözlük is a corporate project rather than a democratic collaborative form. Ekşi Sözlük is a collaborative dynamic form like the hegemony as a process (Williams, 1977). Production processes in Ekşi Sözlük are mostly dictated by governance of Ekşi Sözlük; however within some rules people have a capability to resist against common senses and unwritten hegemonic codes of the platform. In some cases, discourses and counter discourses find equal opportunity to be expressed and the issue that’s observed within the article is such an incident. None of the discourses about the suicidal attempt (secular or conservative) have the means of production under their hegemony. However there is still a blockage here in terms of the formation of the opinion and Wikipedia Vandalism as a key term will be beneficial here as there are always some people who try to create noise or misinform people. Regarding Shachaf ve Hara’s (2010, 361-362) research, trolling as violation of a communication process with an agenda of self-satisfaction should be taken into the consideration there.
In social networks where different virtual communities are active in, individuals with different backgrounds come together with people who share similar opinions, it is a natural integration. However in most cases this cause group polarization (Nagel, 2002, 28). Stoner findings are taken as reference while conceptualizing group polarization. Due to these findings people who were less active before interaction became bore passionate and effective after polarized interaction starts. Risk takers step towards taking more risk. According to these theory, groups’ orientations are manipulated by more dominant risk takers (Aronsonvd., 2001, 340). Using Kripendorf’s methods and benefiting from group polarization as a key concept, we analyzed all the registered entries about suicide of Mehmet Pişkin in Ekşi Sözlük and found 1493 entries.693 of the entries were positive while 661 of them were neutral and 142 of them were negative. As a result it is found out that, suicide of Mehmet Pişkin created reproduction of conflict between the groups in Ekşi Sözlük regarding secularism and conservatism. 14% of the registered entries had religious references. This means that Turkey’s political sphere can not be directly understood towards Ekşi Sözlük because of differentiated demographics. Secular-Islamist tension wasn’t directly reproduced there. Looking at the chronological order of the entries, we can see strengthening entries in queue and it might be referred to the necessity of being approved or approving similar thoughts. Rather than data, arguments and counter-arguments became the basis of the rhetorical competition. It can be stated that this group polarization that triggered content production in Ekşi Sözlük stimulates cognitive capital of Ekşi Sözlük. All the opinions and user generated contents in Ekşi Sözlük are increased in number to the strength of group polarization and people spend more time on the web site and record more entry on topics due to the polarization. Ekşi Sözlük is a form of bourgeoise public sphere and it suffers from the same problems of commercialized public sphere of contemporary social order. |
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