Examining the role of social media platforms in raising awareness of cleanliness and recycling: İnegol municipality Instagram example

The digitalizing world has not only changed communication methods, but also caused municipalities to review their communication strategies. As social media has become a part of our lives, it has become an inevitable necessity for municipalities to include this platform in their communication channels. Cleaning and recycling issues have an important place in international reports and environmental action programs. International decisions and environmental obligations impose important duties on local governments to isolate the problem at its source. The purpose of this study is to determine the role of Instagram in the process of announcing and adopting the cleaning and recycling activities of İnegöl Municipality. Purposeful sampling was used in the study to reach the research questions. In this context, @inegolbld, @alpertaban16 and @tim Instagram accounts were examined between January 2021 and November 2023. Posts about cleaning and recycling were evaluated with content analysis and public relations models. The findings were processed by dividing into categories in the Microsoft Office Excel program. Then, these findings were compared with the data received from İnegöl Municipality and evaluated in proportion to the population numbers. The research is important in terms of measuring the impact of Instagram on the announcement and effectiveness of local-scale activities that have the potential to create a big change on a global scale, and there are no studies on this subject in the field. At the end of the research, it was concluded that the activities that are among the duties and powers of municipalities are more publicized by sharing them on Instagram and are more effective in people's adoption of this service.