Participation, Civil Society and the Facebook Use of NGOs in Turkey

This study finds out the use of Facebook by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Turkey to engage the social and political events of the country. NGOs are civil society organizations aiming at promoting participation of citizens in social and political issues. They are a part of democratic system and they have important role to struggle with corruptions and improve the legitimacy of political-legal organization in political system. NGOs work using social networks and promoting civic culture. Therefore, the use of new communication and interaction channels is necessary for NGOs to develop social networks and civic participation. Social media can be a new channel to promote social and political life. This study focuses on Facebook activities of 40 NGOs selected from eight different activity fields: politics, environment, woman rights, economy, emergency, education, human rights, and democracy. It uses content analysis method to understand the NGOs' activities in Facebook, in terms of social and political issues realized in the year of 2012.

Government Website, Social Media, and Citizens' Perceptions of Corruption

In this chapter, the author aims to empirically examine the effect of social media use and e-government adoption on citizens' perceived corruption. It is hypothesized that the use of social media by citizens is positively related to their perceptions of corruption, while the use of government websites is negatively related to perceived corruption. The author draws on a recent national telephone survey of citizens in 36 major cities in China to empirically test the above hypotheses. The multilevel model estimates suggest that social media use is insignificantly related to corruption perceptions, but government website use is negatively associated with perceived corruptions. The findings of this study help understand the anti-corruption effects of social media and e-government, and also generate helpful implications for other countries and regions in utilizing digital applications for anti-corruption purposes.

Navigating the Nexus between Social Media, Political Scandal, and Good Governance in Nigeria

The advent of the social media revolution in contemporary time has had a phenomenal impact in almost every area of human endeavor in many societies. However, social media has some credibility burden that could hinder its effective use and also produce unintended consequences such as political propaganda, and other unwholesome activities as it affects politics and governance. This study sought to assess the nexus between social media, political scandal and good governance in Nigeria. It also assessed the success or otherwise of the institutional counter-measures in checkmating the excesses of social media. Situated within the framework of reputation repair and social responsibility theories, the paper acknowledges that the conventional mass media has ties with the political and economic forces in the society, thus, are somewhat incapacitated in rising to the societal challenges. Consequently, the paper presents the social media as a veritable alternative, arguing that social media tools have what it takes to serve as a platform for citizen participation in governance.

Information Control, Transparency, and Social Media

Although the research linking social media and corruption is still in infancy, it provides important insights. It has been shown that social media can prove to be an important tool in fighting corruption. At the same time, freedom on the net is under threat in many parts of the world with governments using a variety of methods, including designing vague and flexible security laws as well as employing technological means, to censor the content that can be shared and accessed by net users. This chapter discusses the implications that government control over information can have for the effects of social media on corruption. It suggests that freedom on the net and the anonymity of net users must be protected if the effects of social media on corruption are to be fully realized.

Social Media's Role in Alleviating Political Corruption and Scandals

This chapter is an attempt to show how the use of social media in one country, the Republic of the Philippines, has grown and has been used to encourage political awareness and participation among the Filipino masses. The country is ranked among the most technologically savvy in the world but ironically is also considered one of the most corrupt countries as well. The authors believe that, as a result of the showings Filipinos have made when called upon via social media to oust corrupt officials, there is a method whereby such knowledge can be harnessed for the good thus alleviating scandals and ultimately corruption in the country. This research points to the direction the country, and various other countries in the world in similar situations, may take in order to combat corruption through greater citizen participation.

Hashtag Ideology

Hashtag is powerful in nature and gains undivided attention of the social media users. The dialectical phenomenon existing around these hashtags portrays collective consciousness spread across continents. Moreover, the discourse specific political engagements have one thing in common – fuelling global sentiment, perhaps, that is more homogenous and speculative. But the real question is how powerful as this hashtag phenomenon has become? Is it a disruptive culture that has become part of our everyday life? Consequently, the aim of this chapter is to deal with the recent hashtag phenomenon, engaging users in personal and social level. Hashtags such as #BringBackOurGirls and #HeForShe are used in this chapter as a case study to understand the power relations they exercise in the social media space and across cross-media platforms. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the growing literature of social media activism and the hashtag ideology.

There Is an App for That Too

Combating corruption is critical to the economic and social development of a country. Recent discussions surrounding strategies to combat corruption now include the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Currently, there is a growing body of research on the role of ICTs to combat corruption, however scholarly research on the use of these technologies by citizens in this regard is wholly lacking. The objective of this study is to address this gap in the literature as well as to popularize citizen-centric empowerment strategies to combat corruption around the world.

The Role of Social Media in Enforcing Environmental Justice around the World

This chapter is a critical analysis of the role that social media plays enforcing environmental justice around the world. It particularly examines how social media has been used internationally to foster Greenpeace International's actions to enforce environmental justice and compliance in three selected countries, namely India, Canada and Russia. The cases examined are a.) the Essar Ltd.'s coal mine project in the Mahan Forests in India; b.) Prirazlomnaya Oil Company's offshore drilling in the Artic Sea, and c.) Resolute Forests Products' mining in the Boreal Forest in Canada. The paper concludes that social media can be used to promote and foster environmental justice globally.

Scandal Politics and Political Scandals in the Era of Digital Interactive Media

This study focuses on scandal politics and political scandals in the era of digital interactive media. Scandals are the part of symbolic power struggles. Media is one of the main actors of these struggles. In fact, political scandals have a constructive function in democracies because they help releasing corruptions. After scandals, the public get the opportunity to discuss on the legitimacy of political-legal institutions and political system. However, this discussion is not possible in the conditions of scandal politics. This study is interested in scandal politics and political scandals in the era of digital interactive media. It evaluates the maintaining role of traditional media in the era of digital media, and the potentials of digital interactive media to utilize the constructive functions of political scandals in democracies. The cases of WikiLeaks and Ashley Madison affair are used to evaluate the scandal politics and political scandals in the era of digital interactive media.

Neo-Populist Scandal and Social Media

The article analyses a political scandal that occurred in Finland in 2015, when an MP of the populist right-wing Finns Party, Olli Immonen, published a Facebook update in which he used the same kind of militant–nationalist rhetoric against multiculturalism that Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik had used a couple of years earlier. By analyzing the content published in both social and news media, the role of social media and the relationship between news reporting and social media are explored by analyzing the progress of the scandal. The analysis indicates the prominent role of social media as being a starting point for scandal and for keeping scandal in the public eye, serving as forums for supporters and opponents of the scandalized politician. The relationship between social and news media seems symbiotic in this case because both of them fed and inspired each other during the scandal. However, further research is needed to fully understand the role of social media in scandals linked to north and west European populist right-wing parties, as well as political scandals occurring in different political contexts and media environments.