The effect of xenophobic attitudes on social media on the daily lives of Syrian refugees: The example of X (Twitter)

Xenophobia, which is defined as the totality of attitudes that societies exhibit towards foreign people and groups, is a concept that has been frequently examined in the literature in recent years. Especially the spread of individual and mass migration movements in the world has caused xenophobia to become more prominent. In this study, it is aimed to examine how social media discourses against Syrian migrants in Turkey are reflected in the daily lives of migrants, together with the perception of the local population. For the social prevalence of xenophobia, the Twexportly program was used to scan tweets with more than 2 thousand likes about Syrians in Turkey between 2020 and 2024. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 people, 25 locals and 25 Syrian migrants. As a result of the analysis of the tweets, many different themes such as economy, culture, demographic structure, security, national feelings and social crisis were observed. From the comments received as a result of the interviews, many different sub-fields such as health, discrimination, inequality in education, unfair competition in employment, social inequality, right to choose, cultural adaptation, identity perception, security perception, hate speech, lynch culture, women and children were identified. The findings of the study show that xenophobia on social grounds poses risks that will seriously affect both the local and the visiting community. In this sense, a good understanding of the causes and consequences of xenophobia is important for the community. Keywords: Social media, xenophobia, Twitter, Turkey, Syria