Social media as a means of creating public opinion: Anassessment in the context of Twitter hashtags

Public opinion is the common mind, ideas, and opinions of the people in general. Many factors play a role in the formation of the general opinion of the public. Today, among these factors, social media is of great importance. The public can gather around the same idea about a subject in a very short time through social media and thus a public opinion can be formed. Today, social media shows its existence as an important area in the shaping of the social, political, and economic fields in the relations of the individual and the state. In parallel with technological developments, developments in mass media have taken an important place in the studies of social sciences in this field. In this context, the main subject of the study is research on how effective the power of social media is to form public opinion today, especially in our country, its relationship with politics, and how it influences public opinion. The primary purpose of the study is to investigate the hashtag campaigns in the events that are of great interest to the agenda and the public, carried out on Twitter in the context of the power of social media to form public opinion, and to reveal the effect of public reactions on decision-makers by analysing the data obtained. In the study, the label campaigns carried out on selected subjects in the sample of Turkey were included in the research within certain limits, and the campaign processes and results were examined. In the study, it was concluded that social media is effective in the process of forming public opinion, especially for case studies. It is a result that emerges in the context of public politics that the new authorities of the digital society are also effective in the process of forming public opinion and that they are included in the decision-making processes by taking the support of the masses and exerting pressure on the decision-makers.