Deprivation of Justice_Online
Why we lost our faith in justice, did we? Or we just gave up to seek as we got used to doing… How we became so much passive and reckless while getting after the truth?
Each era puts more meaning some concepts, hence, each of them has its unique approaches towards concepts. For example, “Liberté, égalité, and Fraternité” were the key ideas which were lying on the French Revolution. As a consequence of “liberty…”, our era possessed “Democracy, Justice and Individual rights”. Everything we’d done so far has some effects on those concepts in both good and bad ways. With the ascending, again, authoritative governments, and thus the power of the right-wing adherents, led deprivation on three major components of today.
For instance, Turkey has been governing under the control of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), which embrace conservatism and authoritativeness, for 18 years. This means the belief towards those phenomena was not abruptly plunged but people are likely to lose their belief gradually about justice. Embracing authoritativeness urges people to find novel solutions to old problems, the foremost effect of the development of media technologies. That is to say, all advancements in social media technology gave a chance to speak out against unjust oppression and operation from time to time.
Whilst this text ongoing, AKP has been arresting some HDP nominees by re-establishing a closed case. There is nothing either appalling nor surprising for the Turkish public though. Unfortunately, this, ongoing arrests, is such a usual event by now. Why we got used to it?
Well, did we get used to it? Or our actions got too passive and thus we think we got used to not showing our anger? A few decades ago, those events would have improbably culminated with protests, I mean real-life protests. However, former protests have been placed by online protests whose impact is much lower when to have pressure on officials. Yet, it doesn’t mean that it’s utterly ineffective nor useless. We can assume that it can make a difference in setting the agenda and maybe questioning the accountability of the government. However, you’re still a number of people who are going to disappear in an hour.
By considering today’s circumstances, like COVID-19 and personal willingness to stay away from political issues, tweeting seems the best option for an unjust occurrence for the majority. As far as I’ve got, there is an immense increase in “online protests”, the most popular subjects as; femicide, sexual attacks, and at last who’s been imprisoned in vain because of political reasons. Some examples harnessed those subjects as; #freeosmankavala, #AleynaÇakır, #MusaorhanTutuklansın, and more. Although subjects could be uncertain since based on self-observation, an increase in hashtags towards the justice system can be obtained by everyone.
My intention, regardless of my observations above, here is to examine how do public uses Twitter to demand justice and why is it jeopardous?
Usage Patterns in 2019
Since 2018, according to a conducted report by Reuters Digital News Report 2019, across age groups use of Instagram had doubled and the Report says that it’ll have been overtaking Twitter in 2020. Social media preferences had begun to become more visual, hence, the ratio of Instagram will be reached 11 per cent early this year. Meanwhile, Turkish citizens choose YouTube to reach the news, compared to other countries following news via YouTube far above to other social media platforms (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoul, & Nielsen, 2019). That can be because mainstream TV channels have been under the control of the government, people rely on similar platforms where the government cannot regulate, in other words, censor.
In the same report of Reuters, Facebook and Instagram were found above the Twitter when we compared the frequency of using and it’s placed as 5th. This
reveals that it’s not a quite popular platform neither for following the news, nor reaching news.The rational dispute begins here since Twitter is currently a place where we can arrange ad hoc protests, subsequently, those protests will most likely shape the covers. Even, it’ll occupy the ongoing agenda of the Ministry of Justice and officials, to prevent a misunderstanding as a misdeed on justice they’ll immediately take an action. #AleynaÇakır and #RabiaNaziçinAdalet tags would be a good example of that issues, unfortunately, neither of the cases had reached their aims, the trials are still ongoing and haven’t had any proceed yet. Up until here, despite Twitter is not much common amid public compared to opponents, its substance on effecting the other platforms and even agenda cannot arguable.
Tweeting Peril (!)
At last, the purpose of using Twitter while seeking justice, hence, disseminating unconfirmed information may cause a problem in proceeding of a court. In particular, unconfirmed information can easily lead to increased herd psychology and make things harder for the courts.
Regardless of its spurious “achieving feeling”, it treats the process of the justice system from time to time by disseminating alleged special information. Here we should remember that a journalist knows what to report and how to report, in the borders of journalistic ethics, on the other hand, the masses have no such ethic knowledge. For instance, publishing private information, which can intercept the proceed of the court as we told, or disseminating the name of rape victims were known inverse to media logic, although it’s a quite usual manner for a Twitter user.
In a nutshell, even a platform wasn’t the most popular one so far, it might have various impacts on the perceptions of the public. Thanks to authoritative regimes, people now much more rely on such platforms for being participants in the public sphere. These public spheres can be effective in case we’d use it properly. My advice is we should educate ourselves, in the light of media logic, for the benefit of public services and consider twice before publishing things.
Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoul, A., & Nielsen, R. (2019). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Reuters Institute.
