Child Marriages: The Role of Twitter on the Child Marriages Problem in Turkey

Abstract

Child marriage is one of the major human rights problems in the world. Media is one of the most important tools to deal with this problem. This study intends to analyze the current portrayal of the child marriage problem on Twitter and examine the role of social media on this problem in Turkey. The presentation of the child marriage problem on Twitter is analyzed by examining the Twitter posts of 14 different accounts from the representatives of 4 different groups (5 newspapers, 3 government agencies 3 women's rights defenders, 3 NGOs working on children) for 5 different child marriage cases that occurred in Turkey. The sample is determined by using the purposive sampling method. Van Dijk’s (1983) critical content and discourse analysis method is used for data analysis. 684 tweets for each case in the sample, shared on the day the cases happened and the following 8 days, were analyzed. According to the findings, the problem of child marriage in Turkey is not represented adequately on Twitter and the problem is not highlighted by the relevant groups. Despite the potential of social media to make the problem more visible, it has been observed that Twitter is not being used effectively to eliminate the child marriage problem in Turkey.

Keywords

• Child Marriages
• Social Media
• Twitter
• Gender
• Media Analysis
• Women’s Studies.

Çocuk Evlilikleri: Türkiye’de Twitter’ın Çocuk Evlilikleri Sorunu Üzerindeki Rolü

Abstract

Çocuk evlilikleri, insan haklarına ilişkin dünyamızın önemli sorunlarındandır. Medya ise bu sorunla mücadele etmenin en önemli araçlarından biridir. Bu çalışma, Twitter'daki çocuk evlilik sorununun ele alınış biçimini analiz etmeyi ve sosyal medyanın Türkiye'deki çocuk evlilikleri sorunu üzerindeki rolünü incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu kapsamda, çocuk evlilikleri sorununun Twitter’da temsil edilişini incelemek amacıyla amaca yönelik örneklem yöntemi kullanılarak, konuyla ilgili 4 farklı gruptan 14 farklı grup temsilcisinin (5 en çok satan gazete, 3 hükümet yetkilisi, 3 kadın hakları savunucusu, 3 çocuklarla ilgili çalışan STK), Türkiye’de meydana gelen 5 farklı çocuk evliliği vakası hakkındaki tweetleri incelenmiştir. Veri analiz yöntemi olarak Van Dijk’in (1983) kritik içerik ve söylem analizi yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Örneklemdeki vakaların gerçekleştiği gün ve takip eden 8 gün boyunda paylaşılan, vakalarla ilgili 684 tweet analiz edilmiştir. Elde edilen verilere göre, çocuk evlilikleri sorunu Twitter’da yeterince temsil edilmemekte ve konu ilgili gruplarca öne çıkarılmamaktadır. Sosyal medyanın sorunu daha görünür hale getirme potansiyeline rağmen, çocuk evlilikleri sorunuyla mücadele etmek için Twitter’dan etkin bir şekilde yararlanılmadığı görülmüştür.

Keywords

• Çocuk Evlilikleri
• Sosyal Medya
• Twitter
• Toplumsal Cinsiyet
• Medya Analizi
• Kadın Çalışmaları.

References

1. Albert, S. Connie and Salam, A.F. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis: Toward Theories in SocialMedia. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e249/c289b092cf2fae8e15d60521e0158415e65d.pdf. Accessed Date: 14.07.2013.
2. Alexa. (2016). “Twitter.com Traffic Statistics.” https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com. Accessed Date: 16.06.2016.
3. Bayraktutan, G., Binark, M., Aydemir. A., Çomu T., Doğu, B. and İslamoğlu G. (2013). Sosyal Medya Ortamlarının Siyasal İletişim Uygulamaları Açısından İncelenmesi: Türkiye’de 2011 Genel Seçimleri’nde Facebook ve Twitter’ın Siyasi Partiler ve Liderler Tarafından Kullanılması (Proje No.111K263). Ankara: Bilig.
4. Boyce, C. and Neale, P. (2006). Conducting In-Depth Interviews: A Guide for Designing and Conducting In-Depth Interviews for Evaluation Input. Pathfinder International: Senior Evaluation Associate.
5. Castells, M. (2003). The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. USA: Oxford University Press.
6. Consalvo, M. (2011). Introduction to Part II. Robert Burnett. Mia Consalvo and Charles Ess (Ed.), Handbooks in Communication and Media The Handbook of Internet Studies, within (pp.111-115). UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Cornell University Law School. (2014). “Marriage Laws, Marriage Laws of the Fifty States”. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/table_marriage. Accessed Date: 14.08.2014.
7. Flying Broom Report. (2012). “Early and Forced Marriage”. https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/wp content/uploads/2012/12/Flying-Broom-Flying-News-publication-on-Early-and-Forced-Marriage.pdf. Accessed Date: 14.08.2013.
8. Hall, J. (2001). Online Journalism A Critical Primer. London: Pluto Press.

9. Hermida, A. (2010). “Twittering The News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism”. Journalism Practice, 4 (3): 1-12.
10. Honeycutt, C. and Susan C. H. (2009). “Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via Twitter”. Forty-Second Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42). Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE Press. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.692.9575&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed Date: 14.07.2014.
11. Kaplan, M. A. and Haenlein, M. (2010). “Users of The World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media”. Business Horizons, 53, (1): 59-68.
12. Kellner, D. (2004). Tabandan Küreselleşme: Radikal Demokratik Bir Tenopolitikaya Doğru. Özbek, M. (Transl.). İstanbul: HilYayın. Lewin, K. (1947). “Frontiers in Group Dynamics”. Human Relations. Vol.1, 5-41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/001872674700100103. Accessed Date: 14.06.2014.
13. Mathur, S., Margaret, G. and Malhotra, A. (2003). “Too Young to Wed”. https://www.icrw.org/sites/default/files/publications/Too-Young-to-Wed-the-Lives-Rights-and-Health-of-Young-Married-Girls.pdf. Accessed Date: 14.07.2014.
14. McCombs, M. E. and Shaw, D. L. (1972). “The Agenda Setting Function of Mass Media”. The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 36, (2): 176-187. UK: Oxford University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i328158.
15. Morgan, J., Shafiq, Z. M. and Lampe, C. (2013). “Is News Sharing on Twitter Ideologically Biased?” 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 887-897. New York: ACM.
16. Morozov, E. (2012). The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World. USA: Penguin. OHCHR. (1979). “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women”. https://www.ohchr.org/documents/professionalinterest/cedaw.pdf. Accessed Date: 16.07 2014.
17. O’Reilly, T. and Milstein, S. (2009). The Twitter Book. USA: O’Reilly Media. Rouse, M. (2015). “Twitter”. https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Twitter. Accessed Date: 16.08.2015.
18. Riffe, D., Lacy, S. Fico, F. G. (2005). Analyzing Media Messages Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
19. Shoemaker, J. P. and Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the Message in The 21st Century A Media Sociology Perspective. NewYork: Routledge.
20. TDHS. (2019). Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies. 2018 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS-2018). Ankara: Elma Teknik Basım Matbaacılık.
21. Timisi, N. (2003). Yeni İletisim Teknolojileri ve Demokrasi. Ankara: Dost Kitapevi.
22. TÜİK. (2020). Statistics on Child 2020. Ankara: Turkish Statistical Institute Printing Division.
23. UN. (1948). “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. https://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf. Accessed Date: 24.07.2014.
24. UN. (2011). “Population Facts, World Marriage Patterns”. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/popfacts/PopFacts_2011-1.pdf. Accessed Date: 24.07.2014.
25. UN. (2013). “World Marriage Data 2012”. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/dataset/marriage/wmd2012/MainFrame.html. Accessed Date: 24.07.2014.
26. UNFPA. (2014). “Turkey Child Marriage 2014”. https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/eeca/shared/documents/publications/Turkey%20English.pdf. Accessed Date: 24.07.2014.
27. UNICEF. (2014). “Global Database. Child Marriage in the World Report Statistics”. https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/child-marriage/. Accessed Date: 24.07.2014.
28. Van Dijk, T. A. (1983). “Discourse Analysis: Its Development and Application to the Structure of News”. Journal of Communication, 33, (2): 20-43.
29. Wearesocial. (2016). “Digital in 2016 Report”. https://wearesocial.com/uk/special reports/digital-in-2016. Accessed Date: 16.07.2016.
30. Webrazzi. (2016). “Twitter Users Reached to 9.6 Million in Turkey”. https://webrazzi.com/2013/02/12/twitter-turkiye-istatistikleri-2013/. Accessed Date: 16.07.2016.
31. Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. USA: PublicAffairs.