Researching social media from the spiral of silence theory perspective: Discussions about "Solution Process" and "Nuclear energy" on twitter

While the mass communication is increasing its effect on the individual and social life through newspapers and technological changes and transformations in the new media, especially micro blog websites described as social media became determining the nations' agenda. Face book and Twitter have become to be talked about and discussed as a tool for speaking out and overcome spiral of silence in countries which have underdeveloped culture of democracy such as Turkey. In this study, creating public opinion via social media discussions and the factors affecting this process have been analyzed from a spiral of silence perspective. According to the spiral of silence theory, before out speaking their opinions on a controversial issue, people try to figure out the general tendencies of the society and if their opinion is on the side of the majority they tend to speak out their ideas while their idea is on the side of the minority they tend to reduce their voices and become silent because of the fear of exclusion. If this state of silence becomes a spiral, then the public opinion becomes more oppressive on the other side of the controversy more than its real power. Two controversial issues (peace process and nuclear energy) have been selected for this study. Later on, the tweets that contains the terms of "peace process" and "nuclear energy" have been determined for over a 12 month period and the tweets that were related to these terms have been selected. The selected tweets have been analyzed through descriptive techniques and sorted under three categories of "support", "oppose" and "neutral". In addition to this, to examine the existence of correlation with the fear of exclusion, the degree of using fake accounts was also included in the analysis. According to the results, spiral of silence has not been observed in both controversial issues in Twitter. Keywords: Social Media, Spiral of Silence, Twitter, Public Opinion.