The Limits of the Digital Public Sphere: An Analysis of Homophily and Dyadicity in Social Networks through Animal Rights Debates in Turkey

Year 2026, Issue: 59 , 93 - 113 , 30.04.2026

Ömer Dönmezçelik , Himmet Hülür , Cem Yaşın

https://doi.org/10.52642/susbed.1776531

https://izlik.org/JA23UJ69SF

Abstract

This study questions whether social media platforms can function as a public sphere and aims to develop an original analytical framework to assess the public sphere quality of digital debates. Drawing on Habermas’s theory, the research approaches the democratic function of the public sphere and examines interaction patterns on social media through social network indicators such as homophily, heterophily, and dyadicity. The significance of the study lies in its empirical assessment of whether social media fosters pluralistic public deliberation. Within the scope of the research, a dataset consisting of 256 users and 367 connections was analyzed using NodeXL software, based on discussions under the hashtag "#HayvanHakları" (“#AnimalRights”) that emerged on the X platform (formerly Twitter) following amendments to the Animal Protection Law in Turkey in 2024. The findings reveal that the discussions predominantly occurred among like-minded users and that the network structure was distinctly homophilic. This indicates that a public sphere based on rational-critical discourse and mutual interaction does not emerge on social media; rather, each group tends to reproduce its own views within echo chambers.

Keywords

Public Sphere , Habermas , Social Network Analysis , Barabási , NodeXL , Dyadicity , Animal Rights

Ethical Statement

As authors, we declare that all processes of the study are in accordance with research and publication ethics, and that I comply with ethical rules and scientific citation principles.

Dijital Kamusal Alanın Sınırları: Türkiye’de Hayvan Hakları Tartışmaları Üzerinden Sosyal Ağlarda Homofili ve Diyadiklik Analizi

https://izlik.org/JA23UJ69SF

Abstract

Bu çalışma, sosyal medya platformlarının kamusal alan işlevi görüp göremeyeceğini sorgulamakta ve dijital tartışmaların kamusal alan niteliğini ölçebilecek özgün bir analitik çerçeve geliştirmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Kamusal alanın demokratik işlevi üzerine yapılan tartışmalara Habermas’ın kuramı temelinde yaklaşılmış, homofili, heterofili ve diyadiklik gibi sosyal ağ göstergeleriyle sosyal medya üzerindeki etkileşim örüntüleri incelenmiştir. Araştırmanın önemi, sosyal medyanın çoğulcu kamusal tartışmalar üretip üretmediğini ampirik olarak sınamasından kaynaklanmaktadır. Çalışma kapsamında, 2024 yılında Türkiye’de Hayvanları Koruma Kanunu’nda yapılan değişikliklerin ardından X (eski adıyla Twitter) platformunda oluşan "#HayvanHakları" etiketi altındaki tartışmalardan 256 kullanıcı ve 367 bağlantıdan oluşan veri seti NodeXL yazılımı ile analiz edilmiştir. Elde edilen bulgular, tartışmaların büyük oranda aynı görüşteki kullanıcılar arasında gerçekleştiğini ve ağın belirgin biçimde homofilik olduğunu göstermektedir. Bu durum, sosyal medyada kamusal akıl yürütme ve karşılıklı etkileşim temelinde bir kamusal alanın oluşmadığını, aksine her grubun kendi görüşünü yankı odalarında yeniden üretildiğini ortaya koymaktadır.

Keywords

Kamusal Alan , Habermas , Sosyal Ağ Analizi , Barabasi , NodeXL , Diyadiklik , Hayvan Hakları

Ethical Statement

Yazarlar olarak, Çalışmanın tüm süreçlerinin araştırma ve yayın etiğine uygun olduğunu, etik kurallara ve bilimsel atıf gösterme ilkelerine uyduğumu beyan ederiz.

References

• Adorno, T. W. (1991). The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (Ed. J. M. Bernstein). London: Routledge.
• Adut, A. (2012). A Theory of the Public Sphere. Sociological Theory, 30(4), 238–262.
• Albert, R., Jeong, H., and Barabasi, A.-L. (1999). Diameter of the World Wide Web. Nature, 401, 130–131.
• Baesens, B. (2020, October). Measuring homophily in social networks. Https://Www.datami̇ni̇ngapps.com/. https://www.dataminingapps.com/2020/10/measuring-homophily-in-social-networks/
• Barabási, A.-L. (2014). Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life (3/30/03 edition). Basic Books.
• Barabási, A.L. (2016). Network science. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
• Bardoel, J. (2002). The Internet, Journalism and Public Communication Policies. International Communication Gazette, 64(5), 501–511.
• Bennett, Lance (2003). “New Media Power The Internet and Global Activism”, içinde Contesting Media Power. Alternative Media In A Networked World, Ed. N. Couldry & J. Curran, Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield: 17-37.
• Bennett,W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2009). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of Communication, 58, 707–731.
• Berry, G., Si̇ri̇anni̇, A., Weber, İ., An, J. ve Macya, M. (2021). Estimating homophily in social networks using dyadic predictions. Soci̇ologi̇cal Sci̇ence, (8), 285-307. https://doi.org/10.15195/v8.a14
• Cardoso, G. (2011). From mass to networked communication. Stylianos Papathanassopoulos (Ed.), İçinde: Media Perspectives for the 21st Century içinde (117-136). Routledge.
• Carroll, J. M. (2001). Community computing as human‐computer interaction. Behaviour & Information Technology, 20(5), 307-314.
• Cohen, A.P. (1985). The Symbolic construction of community. London and New York: Routledge.
• Cohen, B. C. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Collins, R. (2005). Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
• Conway, B.A., Kenski, K. Ve Wang, D. (2015),. The rise of twitter in the political campaign: Searching for intermedia agenda-setting effects in the presidential primary Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20 (4), 363-380.
• Conway-Silva, B. A., Filer, C. R., Kenski, K., & Tsetsi, E. (2018). Reassessing Twitter’s agenda-building power: An analysis of intermedia agenda-setting effects during the 2016 presidential primary season. Social Science Computer Review, 36(4), 469-483.
• Dahlberg, L. (2001) The Internet and Democratic Discourse: Exploring The Prospects of Online Deliberative Forums Extending the Public Sphere, Information, Communication & Society, 4:4, 615-633.
• Dahlgren, P. (2005). The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation. Political Communication, 22(2), 147–162.
• DeLuca, K. M. & Peeples, J. (2002) From public sphere to public screen: democracy, activism, and the "violence" of Seattle, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19:2, 125-151,
• Domingo, D., Quandt, T., Heinonen, A., Paulussen, S., Singer, J., & Vujnovic, M. (2008). Participatory journalism practices in the media and beyond: An international comparative study of initiatives in online news-papers. Journalism Practice, 2(3), 326–342.
• Enjolras, B., Salway, A. (2023). Homophily and polarization on political twitter during the 2017 Norwegian election. Social Network Analysis and Mining. 13 (10). 2-13.
• Fraser, N. (1991). "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Crique of Actually Existing Democracy," Social Text, 25(6), 56-80.
• Goode, L (2005). Jürgen Habermas : democracy and the public sphere. London: Pluto Press.
• Guo, L., & Vargo, C. J. (2017). Global Intermedia Agenda Setting: A Big Data Analysis of International News Flow. Journal of Communication, 67(4), 499–520.
• Gusfield, J. (1975). The Community: A Critical Response. New York: Harper Colophon.
• Habermas, J. (1991). The Structural transformation of the public sphere - An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. The MIT Press.
• Habermas, J. (1997). Kamusallığın yapısal dönüşümü (T. Bora & M. Sancar, çev.) İstanbul: İletişim.
• Höijer, B. (2011). Social Representations Theory. Nordicom Review, 32(2), 3–16.
• Hülür, H. ve Yaşın, C. (2020). Yeni medya, toplum ve siyasal iletişimin dönüşümü. H. Hülür ve C. Yaşın (Der.), Yeni medya, toplum ve siyasal iletişim (s. 9-88) içinde. Ankara: Ütopya Yayınevi.
• Jankowski, N. & van Selm, M. (2000). The Promise and practice of public debate in cyberspace. In. Kenneth L. Hacker & Jan van Dijk (Eds.). Digital democracy: Issues of theory and practice (pp.149-165). SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Jin, B., & Lee, S. (2013). Enhancing community capacity: Roles of perceived bonding and bridging social capital and public relations in community building. Public Relations Review, 39(4), 290–292.
• Kant, I. (1903). Perpetual peace; a philosophical essay. Sonnenschein. Kavanaugh, A., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., Reese, D. D., & Zin, T. T. (2005). Participating in civil soc iety: the case of networked communities. Interacting with Computers, 17(1), 9-33.
• Keane, J. (1995). Structural transformations of the public sphere. The Communication Review, 1(1), 1–22.
• Keane, J. (1999). Medya ve demokrasi. İstanbul: Ayrıntı.
• Keskin, F. (2020). Dijital müzakereci demokrasi. H. Hülür ve C. Yaşın (Ed.), Yeni medya, toplum ve siyasal i̇letişim içinde (s. 121-136). Ütopya.
• Koh, J., & Kim, Y.-G. (2003). Sense of Virtual Community: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Validation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 8(2), 75–93.
• Kostas S., Spence, R., Oscar de Bruijn & Patrick Purcell (2006). Ambient Intelligence: Human–Agent Interactions in a Networked Community. Patrick Purcell (Ed.), İçinde: Networked Neighbourhoods The Connected Community in Context içinde (s. 279-303). Springer.
• Lamour, C. (2016). The Neo-Westphalian Public Sphere of Luxembourg: The Rebordering of a Mediated State Democracy in a Cross-Border Context. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 108(6), 703–717.
• Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York: Dower Publication.
• Lippmann, W. (1925). The phantom public. New York: Macmillan.
• Liu, Y., & Li, C. (2018). Intermediary Agenda Interaction Research in the Dissemination of Natural Disaster. 2018 International Joint Conference on Information, Media and Engineering (ICIME). 49-54.
• Luca, M. (2015). User-Generated Content and Social Media. S.P.Anderson, J.Waldfogel ve D.Stromberg (Ed.), Handbook of Media Economics içinde (s.563–592). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Marcuse, H. (2007). One-Dimensional Man Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Routledge.
• McCombs, M. E., Shaw, D. L. & David H. Weaver (2014). New directions in agenda-setting theory and research, Mass Communication and Society, 17:6, 781-802.
• McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. (1972). The agenda-setting function of the mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187.
• McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Revıew of Socıology, 27, 415-444. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415Dahlgren, P. (2000). The Internet and the Democratization of Civic Culture. Political Communication, 17(4), 335–340.
• McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., ve Cook, J.M. (2001). Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annual Revıew of Socıology. 27. 415–444.
• Nahon, K., & Hemsley, J. (2014). Homophily in the Guise of Cross-Linking: Political Blogs and Content. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(10), 1294-1313. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764214527090 (Original work published 2014).
• Negt, O., & Kluge, A. (1993). The public sphere and experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Neuman, W. R., Guggenheim, L., Mo Jang, S., & Bae, S. Y. (2014). The dynamics of public attention: Agenda-setting theory meets big data. Journal of Communication, 64(2), 193–214.
• Óskarsdótti̇r, M. ve Baesens, B. (2018, February). Homophily in social networks. https://www.dataminingapps.com/2018/02/homophily-in-social-networks/
• Papacharissi, Z. (2002). The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere. New Media & Society, 4(1), 9-27.
• Park, J. & Barabasi, A.-L. (2007) Distribution of node characteristics in complex networks. Proceedings of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 104, 17916–17920.
• Pavlik, J. V. (2001). Journalism and New Media. Columbia University Press.
• Peterson, N. A., Speer, P. W., & McMillan, D. W. (2008). Validation of a brief sense of community scale: Confirmation of the principal theory of sense of community. Journal of Community Psychology, 36, 61–73.
• Poster, M. (1995) ‘The Internet as a Public Sphere?’, Wired 3(1): 209.
• Putnam, R.D. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA.
• Rendueles, C. (2017). Sociophobia: political change in the digital utopia. (Heather Cleary, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 2013).
• Rheingold, H. (2006). Social Networks and the Nature of Communities. Patrick Purcell (Ed.), İçinde: Networked Neighbourhoods The Connected Community in Context içinde (s. 47-75). Springer.
• Schneider, S. M. (1996). Creating a Democratic Public Sphere Through Political Discussion: A Case Study of Abortion Conversation on the Internet. Social Science Computer Review, 14(4), 373-393.
• Sennett, R. (1997). Kamusal insanın çöküşü (S. Durak-A. Yılmaz, çev.). İstanbul: Hill.
• Sennett, R. (2002). The fall of public man. Penguin Books.
• Sombart, W. (2017). Economic life in the modern age. Routledge.
• Sparks, C. (1996). Newspapers, the Internet and Democracy. Javnost - The Public, 3(3), 43-57.
• Su, Y., & Xiao, X. (2024). Intermedia Attribute Agenda Setting Between the US Mainstream Newspapers and Twitter: A Two-Study Analysis of the Paradigm and Driving Forces of the Agenda Flow. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.
• Sung, M., & Hwang, J.-S. (2014). Who drives a crisis? The diffusion of an issue through social networks. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 246–257.
• Tocqueville, Alexis de (1835). Democracy in America. New York: G. Dearborn & Co.
• van Dijk, J., & Hacker, K. (2003). The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon. The Information Society, 19(4), 315–326.
• Zmerli, S. & Newton, K. (2008). Social Trust and Attitudes Toward Democracy, Public Opinion Quarterly, 72 (4), 706–724.