Investigation of lynch culture spreading in social media in specific to twitter and application of lynch atlas

Developments in communication technologies have spread almost all over the world. Especially with web 2.0 technology, social media transforms the attitudes, behaviors and abilities of individuals and societies. For this reason, concepts, behaviors and attitudes have begun to take shape separately in real and virtual environments. One of them is the concept of lynching. Lynch is not seen as punishing a group or someone with physical violence, but only in the squares and by like-minded crowds. Today, the concept of lynching has expanded its scope and started to exist in digital environments. In this context, social media took the place of squares, verbal violence took the place of physical violence, and users took the place of crowds. However, this is not enough to understand the digital lynching. In this context, identity construction in social media is important in terms of evaluating the concept of lynching separately in virtual and real terms. Especially with the new media, the disappearance of space and time dimensions, synchronicity and rapid spread of information have liberated individuals, changed and redefined socialization practices. For this reason, the emergence of violence in digital environments is as fast as information. Just like friendships quickly formed through social networks, violence emerges very quickly and individuals agree to judge someone very quickly. One of the main reasons why violence is more common in digital environments than in public squares is that users do not leave their comfort zone and create anonymous identities on social media. For this reason, users involved in digital lynching take less risk than the crowds in the squares, but the damage to the lynched individuals has become almost equal. Lynching campaigns initiated in digital environments can harm individuals psychologically, economically and legally. In this context, individuals who cannot cope with psychological violence have gone so far as to end their lives. When evaluated within the scope of Turkey, lynchings in the squares have generally emerged as nationalist, religious and political. In addition, it is seen that digital lynchings take place on national, religious and political issues as well as on micro issues. For example, an author whose book is not liked is lynched by users. Therefore, as the masses get used to accelerating in every field with digital media, it is seen that the tolerance limits decrease accordingly. For this reason, users are more intolerant of the shares they do not like and then lynch the person who shared it. This study deals with physical and digital lynchings in Turkey as a case study. Digital lynchings were reviewed on Twitter and were limited to six case studies.