Author(s): Volkan GÖÇOGLU** Mehmet Devrim AYDIN
In recent years, social media has begun to take a significant role on public policy making process. Social media has proved its power especially in Wikileaks Revolution and in the social movements like Arab Spring and Ukrainian Crisis. In Turkey, Gezi Park Protests in 2013 against Justice and Development Party’s public policy on an environmental issue and the corruption investigation on 17th of December in the same year both can also be considered as important examples for the effect of social media on public policy making. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between public policy and social media and to determine the effect of social media on the process of public policy making by examining these various social movements which recently occurred in Turkey and all over the world. In the first part of the study, public policy and social media concepts and their sub-concepts were included. In the second part of the study, the selected social movements were examined. According to the conclusion of the study, social media has direct effects on defining the problem, collecting policy demands, setting agenda and the assessment of the outputs of the policy implementation which are the steps of public policy making process.
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