The Current Perspective on Social Media 9783631803271, 9783631806821, 9783631806838, 9783631806845

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The Current Perspective on Social Media

Yalçın Kahya (ed.)

The Current Perspective on Social Media

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. cover image: © iStock.com/exdez Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck

ISBN 978-3-631-80327-1 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-80682-1 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-80683-8 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-80684-5 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b16334

© Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2019 All rights reserved.

Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Preface and Acknowledgments As a result of the developments in the IT sector, Social Media, which is an effective phenomenon in political, economic, social and cultural terms, stands as a structure that touches all areas of life. At the same time, social media, which affects interpersonal relations, makes the subject more meaningful and deep by moving the communication style to a different platform. In line with this purpose, studies in this book bring together different perspectives on social media from various disciplines. In the first chapter titled “Social Media Use of Companies in Public Disclosure:  Potential Risks and a Possible Solution”, Metin Kılıç addresses the direct effect of the developing social media on the success of companies. The study analyzes, based on examples, what kinds of advantages and disadvantages making social media use a legal obligation for companies may bring to them. Latif Pınar discusses the social and political effects of social media in his chapter titled “Social Media and the Turkish Foreign Policy”. In that study, Pınar tries to explore the effects of social media on Turkish foreign policy. The chapter titled “ ‘YouTube’ as a Social Media Tool and ‘YouTuber’ as a New Job”, written by Yalçın Kahya and Onur Bayrakcı, discusses YouTube, one of the most important and oldest forms of social media, in detail. They provide a sociological discussion on the transformation of YouTube into a job called YouTuber and its recent effects. Having the same theme as the issue of the transformation of social media into an effective tool for financing and advertising but addressing the matter from a different perspective, Hicran Özgüner Kılıç brings up emojis, the most basic communication form of social media. Özgüner Kılıç analyzes the emoji uses of companies and attempts to show the symbolic importance of emojis, especially in the marketing sector. İbrahim Sabuncu’s study titled “Social Media Analytics” provides an extensive study on the width and fast fluidity of the data obtained on social media and companies’ use of such data in the fields of marketing and advertising. The next chapter is a product of research with a similar scope to that of Sabuncu. The study titled “Social Media Use by Companies and Its Evaluation Based on Selected Financial Indicators”, co-authored by Ali Özdemir, Fatih Temizel, and Ethem Esen, demonstrates the strong influence of social media on the marketing and financing activities of companies. The study tries to examine the importance of companies’ use of social media in the marketing field based on the companies listed on Borsa Istanbul. In her study titled “How Does Social Media Effect International Trade?”, Sevilay Küçüksakarya

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Preface and Acknowledgments

underlines the determining effects of social media and use of social media on companies’ international trade policies. In the penultimate chapter of our book titled “The Reflection of Othering and Hate Speech in Social Media Videos/ News and Comments Related to Syrian Asylum (Facebook 2018)”, Zeynep Ekşi discusses the Syrian immigrants issue based on “othering”, which has an important meaning in the social sphere, and provides an analysis of the reactions to the issue on social media (Facebook). This study allows evaluating whether social media can/cannot develop a strong hate speech and the degree of effect of social media on it. As a result, this study is trying to give a little explanation to its comprehensive structure which can be effective in every corner of the social space because “Social Media is very current and variable. Sincerely yours. Editor; Yalçın Kahya

Contents List of Contributors .................................................................................................  9 Metin Kılıç 1  Social Media Use of Companies in Public Disclosure: Potential Risks and a Possible Solution ..........................................................................................  11 Latif Pınar 2  Social Media and the Turkish Foreign Policy .................................................  25 Yalçın Kahya and Onur Bayrakcı 3  “YouTube” As a Social Media Tool and “YouTuber” As a New Job .............  35 Hicran Özgüner Kılıç 4  The Place and Importance of Emojis in Social Media Marketing ...............  49 İbrahim Sabuncu 5  Social Media Analytics ......................................................................................  61 Ali Özdemir, Fatih Temizel, and Ethem Esen 6  Social Media Use by Companies and Its Evaluation Based on Selected Financial Indicators ................................................................................  71 Zeynep Ekşi 7  The Reflection of Othering and Hate Speech in Social Media Videos/ News and Comments Related to Syrian Asylum (Facebook 2018) .................  85 Sevilay Küçüksakarya 8  How Does Social Media Effect International Trade? ......................................  99 List of Figures ..........................................................................................................  113 List of Tables ...........................................................................................................  115

List of Contributors Onur Bayrakcı Assistant Prof. Dr., Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University, Balıkesir, Turkey, [email protected]

Ali Özdemir Associate Prof., Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey alozdemir@ anadolu.edu.tr

Zeynep Ekşi Graduate Student. Maltepe University, İstanbul, Turkey, zeynepeksii@ hotmail.com

Hicran Özgüner Kılıç Assistant Prof. Dr., Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University, Balıkesir, Turkey, [email protected]

Ethem Esen Associate Prof., Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey etheme@anadolu. edu.tr

Latif Pınar Assistant Prof., Karabuk University, Karabük, Turkey, latifpinar@karabuk. edu.tr

Yalçın Kahya Assistant Prof. Dr., Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University, Balıkesir, Turkey, [email protected]

İbrahim Sabuncu Assistant Prof., Yalova University, Yalova, Turkey, [email protected]. tr

Metin Kılıç Assistant Prof. Dr., Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University, Balıkesir, Turkey, [email protected]

Fatih Temizel Associate Prof., Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey, ftemizel@anadolu. edu.tr

Sevilay Küçüksakarya Assistant Prof., Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey satlama@anadolu. edu.tr

Metin Kılıç

1  Social Media Use of Companies in Public Disclosure: Potential Risks and a Possible Solution Introduction Information and communication technologies have shown incredible development in recent years, influencing all other areas. The current digital transformation seems to be difficult to understand and make sense of when compared with the situation 40–50 years before. We are currently going through a process of change during which we see events resembling plots of science-fiction movies, which we have a hard time comprehending, yet to which we get accustomed easily. The generation emerging after the 2000s express themselves as a virtual generation. Almost all kinds of labor, capital, information, and materials are defined and perceived through virtual values. While a statement or implication given by a company manager through a newspaper article or television created sudden changes in stock values or an article or statements written by a head of state caused international crises a few years ago, a tweet on Twitter, a couple of words on Instagram, or a Facebook post is followed, analyzed, and evaluated by millions for decision-making nowadays. This change leads companies and managers to use social media effectively in their communicative activities with stakeholders with personal interests. Traditional press conferences and statements are being replaced by instant messages and posts. Many companies and organizations inform the public through social media platforms. Although the legal obligation for new companies to create websites and inform the public through this site is a recently adopted trend, many companies use one or more social media accounts voluntarily without any legal obligation. The present study aims to emphasize the power of social media tools, to put forward the risks entailed by statements and publications made by companies and managers to meet the needs for public disclosure and transparency, and to indicate key points for effective social media use.

1 Corporate Needs for Public Disclosure and Transparency For companies, maintaining operations depends on good relations with stakeholders. Solidarity among the company and its stakeholders will make the

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company stronger. To promote such solidarity, information about the company required by stakeholders must be provided. As a natural result of relationships between stakeholders and the company, the former regard the access to comprehensive information concerning corporate activities and goals as a legitimate right (Oliver, 2004). This right brings about a continuous increase in the demands of stakeholders regarding transparency. By ensuring transparency, investor confidence can be improved through satisfaction of stakeholders’ need for information and attainment of market efficiency by the company while information asymmetry and stock price fluctuations in the market can be reduced. From this point of view, transparency means the public disclosure of financial and nonfinancial information about the company, excluding confidential business information that is yet to be disclosed, in a timely, correct, complete, comprehensible, interpretable, cost-efficient, and easily accessible manner (SPK, 2011). Companies disclose information for both getting the support of shareholders and complying with legal obligations. It is possible to classify the public disclosure practices of companies into two groups as obligatory and voluntary ones (KAP, https://www.kap.org.tr). Obligatory public disclosure practices include duties entailed by legislation on capital markets and stock exchanges. Disclosure of special circumstances, financial reports, or other information (monthly notices, weekly reports, etc.) demanded within the framework of regulations of legal authorities (e.g., Capital Markets Board) are examples of obligatory public disclosure. Voluntary public disclosure practices include announcements made out of the company’s own volition in addition to the information that is legally required to be made public. Sustainability reports may be given as examples. Companies make use of either obligatory or voluntary methods while conducting public disclosure activities. These methods are: • Financial tables and footnotes, independent audit reports and states of responsibility, special circumstances disclosures, and annual activity reports (either in printed or digital format) given via institutions determined by competent authorities (Public Disclosure Platform [KAP] for Turkey) • Corporate website • Notices and announcements (registration statement, circular, general assembly communique, etc.) made on public or private printed media (e.g., Turkish Trade Registry Gazette and daily newspapers) • Statements given to data distribution organizations • Meetings, teleconferences, or one-on-one appointments with shareholders, investors, analysts, and capital market experts and informative/promotional documents like investor presentations

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• Communications made through telephone, electronic mail, telefax, etc. • Press releases published on printed/visual/auditory media concerning important developments • Social media posts like announcements and explanations. Companies need to act within the framework of an information policy while making disclosures. Apart from information that is required to be disclosed in accordance with the relative legislation, an information policy must include trade registry information, up-to-date partnership and management structure information, detailed information on privileged shares, the latest version of partnership contracts along with the dates and issues of the Turkish Trade Registry Gazette where changes are published, special circumstances disclosures, financial reports, operation reports, registration statements and other disclosure documents, agendas of general assembly meetings, table of participants and minutes, forms for voting in proxy, share purchasing offers or mandatory information forms prepared while obtaining a power of attorney and similar forms, repurchasing policy regarding own stocks if such a policy is present, profit distribution policy, information policy, ethical rules created by the company, and, under the title of Frequently Asked Questions, information demands and complaints along with responses (Resmi Gazete, 2014). While companies make the aforementioned informative documents available on their official websites, the recent developments in information and communication technologies have led to the effective use of social media accounts for public disclosure and provision of information for stakeholders. The biggest factor here is the great power of social media.

2 The Power of Social Media A post or a publication can motivate masses, but it can also create sudden damage to the reputation and trust built over the course of years. It can influence the behaviors and attitudes of individuals. Individual movements can turn into a social action. Discussions on the importance and effects of social media have gradually increased after the use of social media as a tool for organization and communication in public movements sparked in early 2011 predominantly in the Middle East and North Africa and the consequent naming of such movements as “social media revolutions”. People got together and organized mass demonstrations particularly using Facebook and Twitter as well as other social media outlets. Initially used for purposes like socialization, entertainment, and improving social capital,

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Metin Kılıç

social media tools served as the primary means of communications during such movements (Babacan, Haşlak & Hira, 2011). Social media also had an influential presence during the “Gezi Park” demonstrations in Turkey in 2011. While there were around 10 million Twitter users in Turkey in 2011, 91 million tweets were posted in the first week of “Gezi Park” demonstrations. About 400 million tweets being sent in that period and around 84 % of people in the said area making interactive live broadcasts (Güzel, 2013) indicate the power and activeness of social media. The “yellow vests” demonstration in France in 2018 is another important event showing the influence of social media. The first person to call for demonstrations was Eric Drouet, a 33-year-old truck driver, publishing a message calling people to “block France” on 17 November. After that, the French started to mobilize rapidly using social media. People communicating through social media met up in offices of political parties, associations, and unions as well as shopping malls and formed committees (Taştekin, 2018). They demonstrated and created uproar for months. There are still sporadic demonstrations even though the start of the entire process was over a year ago. Social media is so powerful that it can affect societies in a way aggravating national economic problems. On June  13,  2018, the Turkish Security General Directorate announced that 346 social media accounts sharing posts provoking the appreciation of the US dollar against the Turkish lira and creating perceptions of this kind were detected and that legal investigations were ongoing regarding this issue (www.bianet.org). Between March 1 and August 14, 2018, the USD/TRY exchange rate rose from 3.79 up to 6.90 Turkish liras, showing an increase of 82 % (www.paracevirici.com). Considering the fact that the gross foreign debt stock of Turkey was $457 billion and its net foreign debt stock was $300.4 billion in the said period (www.euronews.com) and that the rate of exports meeting imports was 70.2  % in the same period (Habertürk Gazetesi 2, 2018), such manipulative publications directing the market had a considerable impact upon individuals, companies, national economy, and politics. We can say that perceptions created through social media were as important as economic indicators in such increase in exchange rates. In the following one-year period, the USD/TRY exchange rate in 2018 fell from 6.95 to 5.80 Turkish liras, showing a decline by 21  % when compared with the peak value in June 2019 (www.bigpara.com.tr). Social media have also proven to be influential over companies in certain time periods. They were used during crises either for their increment or alleviation. For example, the black boy used on the H&M online store in a promotional photo for a product and the sentence on his sweatshirt lead to the accusations

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of racism directed at the brand on social media in early 2018. The sentence on the sweatshirt read “coolest monkey in the jungle”. This led to harsh comments about H&M especially on social media, and the brand saw a backlash from many people. The word “monkey” in the sentence and the black kid were associated with racism, causing the reaction to be huge. The visual in question was removed from all H&M media platforms after the backlash on social media. An official giving a statement on behalf of the brand expressed apologies to everyone feeling offended (Üçhisarlı, 2018). The effective use of social media to manipulate electoral behavior was observed during the presidential elections in the United States. The scandal known as Cambridge Analytica broke out when the personal information as well as the list of friends of users downloading an app in disguise of a “personality test” was sold to UK-based political consulting firms without their consent. Despite the statement from Facebook indicating that the social networking site will take necessary precautions to protect personal information, the accusation of the legal action claimed that even the information about users not downloading the app was sold and the social media platform had been aware of this from 2014 (www.dw.com.tr). After the scandal, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, said in a written statement on Facebook that their mistakes led to the acquisition of user data by analysis companies (Üçhisarlı, 2018). All these events caused Facebook stocks to depreciate by 4.7 % in the said time period (www.dw.com.tr). Social media have started to be a platform for upper-level company managers and leaders to publish their press releases. Managers also announce important decisions via social media. For example, when Yıldız Holding, owner of the Ülker brand, bought the British United Biscuits after a large-scale acquisition, Murat Ülker shared photographs from the signature ceremony at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and announced that the acquisition was final (Habertürk Gazetesi, 2014). After the signature, the value of Ülker stocks increased by 5 % in the two-day period (Milliyet Gazetesi, 2014). In May 2015, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party and thenprime minister who won the British elections of the time, announced the formation of the new cabinet via his Twitter account (www.haberler.com). In 2017, responding to the statements made by the British PM Theresa May on Twitter, the Russian foreign minister tweeted the following messages:  “We know what you are doing”. We know what you are doing as well. Dear Theresa, we hope, one day you will try Crimean Massandra red wine (Habertürk Gazetesi, 2017). This is an example of the new diplomatic traffic. Announcing most of the crucial governmental decisions via Twitter, Donald Trump is sometimes criticized because of seemingly governing the most powerful

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Metin Kılıç

country in the world through social media. Apart from the video showing him in an American wrestling match as he knocks down someone whose head was replaced by the CNN logo as he accuses CNN International of broadcasting fake news, Trump received backlash because of his tweets targeting national leaders including North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Iran’s Rouhani, and France’s Macron (Takvim Gazetesi, 2018). These reactions create a new channel of diplomacy on social media while adding to the influence of social media as a new platform through which leaders can show their power. The cast of The Daily Show broadcasted on the American Comedy Central channel organized an exhibition titled “The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library” showcasing the tweets of the American president (Habertürk Gazetesi 1, 2018). Such examples demonstrate the power and sphere of influence of social media.

3 The Reasons behind the Social Media Use by Companies Social media users tend to share and comment on new information they learn about or a novel experience on social media. These posts and comments reach wider audiences in a short time owing to the ratings and likes of other social media users. Experiences of social media users, either good or bad, affect the decisions of other social media users or, in other words, stakeholders of companies. Furthermore, companies have the chance of interacting with their target audiences directly through social media (Kaya & Mengi, 2019). The use of social media by companies is getting more widespread each year, and social media accounts act as the new representatives of companies (Özmen & Villi, 2014). According to the data from January 2019, there are 4.4 billion Internet users in the world. The same data show that there are around 3.5 billion active social media users around the world and Facebook, the most popular, is followed by YouTube and Instagram, respectively (Kemp, 2019). Social media users around the world spend around 2 hours on social media each day and share millions of messages, videos, photos, likes, comments, and so on. For instance, 300  million photos are uploaded on Facebook every day, while the figure is around 95 million for Instagram; users upload 300 hours of videos each minute on YouTube; and more than 5 million videos are viewed each day. Maintaining its popularity since the day it was established, Twitter has a daily flow of more than 140 million tweets (Erdör, 2019). The volumes mentioned here are significant as they show the power, speed, and interactive nature of social media. Companies are present in social media to benefit from this power for a variety of reasons. These reasons can be listed as follows (Yeniçıktı Tufan, 2016; Altındağ, 2017; Netvent, 2015):

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• Reaching the target audience:  Cooperation can be fostered through direct communication and interaction with the target audience without any intermediaries. Therefore, social media help companies receive feedback and, in accordance with the feedback, make corrections and take precautions. They might provide priceless opportunities for transferring new products, strategies, and policies to stakeholders. • Building trust and reputation: By diffusing positive messages, companies may communicate effectively with millions of social media users and seize the opportunities to maintain their reputations and to attain higher positions. • Improving brand recognition and customer loyalty:  Social media provides novel opportunities to improve brand recognition and sustain customer loyalty. Surveys allowing the company to get to know its customers better can be created and, consequently, it can help and guide them better. If all these steps are taken considering the value of customers and communicating with them in a way that makes them feel special, the goal of improving brand recognition and customer loyalty is reached. In addition, positive feedback exchanged among users concerning the goods and services offered by the company would help to increase the number of customers. • Attracting new visitors and potential clients: Companies can also use social media to attract more visitors and prospective clients to their websites. With the promotion of goods and services through the content on social media, visitors can be redirected to the company website to obtain detailed information. Thus, website traffic can be improved remarkably. Creating new online communities may result in them becoming new clients. • Providing sales and technical support: Instead of traditional methods, clients now reach brands through modern means. Rather than going to the physical stores, they prefer using e-trade sites. They opt for social media to get technical support in place of calling customer services. Considering these new preferences, social media acts as a platform for both selling goods/services and providing technical support. As these services are provided through a channel that is open 24/7, this might swiftly bring significant advantage against competitors. • Gathering information about the market and competitors: Following social media accounts of competitors might help companies easily learn about their activities, strategies, campaigns, and social responsibility projects. Missing or false information on corporate accounts can be corrected. Counter strategies can be formed and implemented in light of the information gathered in such a way.

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Metin Kılıç

• Sharing campaigns and announcements in a fast and cost-efficient way: Corporate social media accounts are the fastest and the most cost-efficient way to promote campaigns, make announcements, and publish statements. In addition to costing less than newspaper or television ads, campaigns and announcements are communicated to the target audience in an effective and timely manner. Social media has become a new tool for sharing information for publicly held companies. Today, they might also provide a fruitful infrastructure for enterprises for them to form bonds with investors and attract small investors. In terms of investor relations, social media may also provide companies with an opportunity for direct communication and interaction with shareholders (Özmen & Villi, 2014). Both individual and corporate investors might use the information on social media while making decisions. Nowadays, having social media accounts is an obligation for companies rather than a need. It becomes increasingly difficult for companies without social media accounts to form and develop enduring relationships with stakeholders.

4 Risks Caused by Social Media for Companies Besides real accounts, social media also has a high number of fake accounts created for various reasons. For instance, Facebook announced that it suspended 2.2 billion fake accounts in the first quarter of 2019. Considering the fact that 2.38 billion people use Facebook actively on a monthly basis, the number of suspended fake accounts is enormous (Segarra, 2019). Similarly, it is stated that 8 % of Instagram accounts (Agrawal, 2019) and around 12 % of Twitter accounts are fake. To underline the effect of fake accounts, the New York Times made such a statement: The fake (Twitter) accounts are counterfeit coins in the booming economy of online influence (Dodaro, 2019). Fake accounts on social media might bring about many malicious activities (identity theft, phishing, falsely using the name of reputable companies, lottery scams, fake security software, scamming, cloning, third-party application threats, fake product sales, bad connection requests, spam e-mails, deceiving website codes) (Ceyhan, Demiryürek & Kandemir, 2015). An erroneous post or statement may result in reputation loss and infringements of financial/privacy/legal/ethical/societal values. Furthermore, companies might encounter risks as a result of malicious activities other than their own practices. In such a case, many results as listed in Tab. 1.1 await the company: The risks indicated in Tab. 1.1 can mark the beginning of a process leading to bankruptcy. These might occur as a result of corporate activities or because of

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Tab. 1.1:  Social Media Risks and Potential Outcomes. Source: Kaya, E. & Mengi, B.T. (2019) Risks Reputation loss

Financial risks

Privacy risks

Legal risks

Risks of infringement of ethical and social values

Outcomes Damage to corporate image Loss of trust Speculations about the organization Threats to the future of the organization Reduction in sales Loss of clients Depreciation of stock values Boycotting products and services Corporate data theft System infrastructure harmed by malicious software Hacking of social media accounts Abuse of hacked social media accounts Legal action against the organization Fines Copyright fines Bans on ads Messages containing cuss words, insults, and harassment Protests and petitions Embarrassment in front of the public eye False accusations and black propaganda

publications from a corporate social media account or the personal account of company authorities.

5 How to Protect Companies from Risks of Social Media There is a popular saying in Turkish that reads as “If you don’t get on the road, you don’t have an accident”. However, this is not valid for social media. Even if you do not use social media, there might be hundreds of thousands of posts about you and your company. You might be exposed to all the risks entailed by social media despite the fact that you are not present in those media. Therefore, while managing their social media presence, companies can make use of William Deming’s PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle (see Fig.  1.1) in order to avoid the aforementioned risks (Schaffer, 2012). Following these four steps, the cycle constantly renews itself and advances towards perfection.

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Metin Kılıç

PLAN = Creating a social media strategy

ACTION = Fine-tuning the social media strategy, tactics, plans for campaigns, and even potentially refining or changing metrics or how measurements are performed.

DO = Implementing tactics and campaigns aligned with the social media strategy.

CHECK = Regular (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) review of metrics created as part of the strategy to determine if business ROI in social media has been sufficiently achieved or not.

Fig. 1.1:  PDCA Cycle in Social Media Use. Source: Based on Schaffer, N. (2012). “My Japanese Approach to Social Media Strategy”

Plan: To create a strategic communication plan and to use social media in accordance with this strategy is an appropriate step for communication objectives. The strategic plan for social media must include the creation of a social media strategy (introducing communication objectives, planning the timeframe and tactics, defining the target audience); completing managerial organization; maintaining cybersecurity management (information management required for page security); choosing which social networking channels to use; creating a profile (creating profile pages suitable for corporate identity); content planning; content creation; defining frequency; posting and following; synchronization; crisis intervention; feedbacks; page management; reporting; and devising communication plans in case of crises (T.C. Ulaştırma Denizcilik ve Haberleşme Bakanlığı, 2018). Do: Tactics and other practices determined based on the social media strategy are implemented in accordance with the organizational structure, distribution of duties, and authorizations. Check: This stage helps to evaluate to what extent the practices are successful. Depending on the purpose and objective of the company behind its social media presence, the level of achievement is measured in predetermined time periods.

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For example, if the aim of the company is to increase its sales revenues in one month following its social media activities, the change in sales revenues is evaluated at the end of this period. Action: In this stage, the company reexamines the entire process (social media strategies, objectives, tactics and campaigns, organization, distributions of tasks, etc.); determines possible errors and mistakes; and reports them to take necessary measures. After this stage, the cycle goes back to the start. The repetition of the process is maintained through planning for eliminating insufficiencies and mistakes. Companies using social media can benefit from this cycle to minimize possible risks and attain the best position. Social media provides substantial benefits for companies when they are used proficiently. However, a lack of control brings about as much harm to companies and clients. In particular, senior executives must have an awareness of these risks as they have full responsibility and authority.

Conclusion Through targeted information sharing and public disclosure, companies can understand the demands of stakeholders and respond to them as quickly as possible while turning negative perceptions into positive ones. Today, social media appears as the best tool to direct this information flow or, in other words, perception shift. This is the reason why companies want to be present and active in such media. The main reason for this desire is the objective of directing stakeholders by using the great informative and communicative power of social media in accordance with corporate objectives and goals. Today’s individuals shorten the reaction time by benefiting from other users’ experience before they experience something themselves and make instant decisions about a given subject or react accordingly. This brings about unprecedented speed and influence. Especially leaders (e.g., politicians and company managers) and institutions (profit-oriented organizations, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, etc.) have become aware of the influence of social media and use them frequently. However, social media also makes many malicious actions possible. The misuse or inattentive use of social media may result in reputation loss and infringements of financial/privacy/legal/ethical/social values for companies and users. Companies can minimize these risks by using the PDCA cycle in their social media operations. Becoming increasingly powerful, social media offers an undeniable power. Yet, uncontrolled power is not power. Social media must be carefully used by anyone wishing to get the support of stakeholders. Senior executives must have a strong awareness in this respect.

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References Agrawal, S. (2019). “New Instagram Statistics 2019: Know The Latest Instagram By The Numbers”, https://www.digitalgyd.com/instagram-statistics/, Retrieved: 19.05.2019. Altındağ, A. (2017). “Kurumlar Neden Sosyal Medyada Olmalı?”, https:// mediatrend.media markt.com.tr/kurumlar-neden-sosyal-medyada-olmali/, Retrieved: 19.05.2019. Babacan, M. E., Haşlak, İ. & Hira, İ. (2011). “Arab Spring and the Social Media”, Journal of Academic Inquiries, 6 (2), 63–91. Ceyhan, E. B., Demiryürek, E. & Kandemir, B. (2015). “Current Security Risks And Prevention Methods In Social Networks”, Uluslararası Bilgi Güvenliği Mühendisliği Dergisi, 1 (1), 1–10. Dodaro, M. (2019). “Unmasking Fake Twitter Followers, Social Media Fraud & Fake Profiles”, https://topdogsocialmedia.com/fake-twitter-followers/, Retrieved: 18.05.2019. Erdör, M. (2019). “Sosyal Medyada En Çok Zaman Geçiren Ülkeler”, https:// digitalage.com.tr/sosyal-medyada-en-fazla-zaman-geciren-ulkeler/, Retrieved: 15.05.2019. Güzel, F. (2013). “Gezi Parkı Olayları ve Sosyal Medya (İstatistiksel İnceleme)”, http://fatmagulguzel.com/gezi-parki-olaylari-ve-sosyal-medya/, Retrieved: 20.05.2019. Habertürk Gazetesi. (2014). “United Biscuits’in Satın Alınmasının Sinyalleri”, https://www.haberturk.com/ekonomi/is-yasam/haber/1005891-unitedbiscuitsin-satin-alinmasinin-sinyalleri, Retrieved: 20.05.2019. Habertürk Gazetesi. (2017). “Rusya İngiltere Başbakanı’na Twitterdan yanıt verdi: Sevgili Theresa”, https://www.haberturk.com/rusya-ingiltere-basbakanina-twitter-dan-yanit-verdi-sevgili-theresa-1713783 Retrieved: 01.06. 2019. Habertürk Gazetesi 1. (2018). “O kadar çok tweet attı ki… Donald Trump’ın Twitter hesabı sergi oldu”, https://www.haberturk.com/tv/dunya-hali/ haber/2008495-o-kadar-cok-tweet-atti-ki-donald-trump-in-twitter-hesabisergi-oldu, Retrieved: 20.05.2019. Habertürk Gazetesi 2. (2018). “Haziran Ayı Dış Ticaret Rakamları Açıklandı”, https://www.haberturk.com/son-dakika-haziran-ayi-dis-ticaret-rakamlariaciklandi-2040844-ekonomi, Retrieved: 01.06. 2019. Kamuyu Aydınlatma Platformu (KAP). https://www.kap.org.tr/project/KAP/ file/content/KA P%20Hakk%C4%B1nda%2FGenel%20Bilgiler%2FKAP%20 Brosur%20Yeni, Retrived: 15.05.2019. Kaya, E. & Mengi, B. T. (2019). “The Role of Internal Audit in Managing Social Media Risks”, The Journal of Accounting and Finance- April, (82), 97–110.

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Kemp, S. (2019). “The State of Digital in April 2019: All the Numbers You Need to Now”, https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/04/the-state-of-digital-in-april2019-all-the-numbers-you-need-to-know, Retrieved: 15.05.2019. Milliyet Gazetesi. (2014). “Ülkerin Piyasa Değeri Dudak Uçuklattı”, http:// uzmanpara.milliyet.com.tr/ haber-detay/gundem2/ulkerin-piyasa-degeridudak-ucuklatti/6000/ 6971/, Retrieved: 01.06.2019. Netvent. (2015). “Neden Sosyal Medya Sorusuna 6 Geçerli Cevap”, https://netvent.com/neden-sosyal-medya-sorusuna-6-gecerli-cevap/, Retrieved: 20.05.2019. Oliver, R. W. (2004). “What Is Transparency”, The McGraw-Hill, Blacklick, USA. Özmen, H. & Villi, H. İ. (2014). “Social Media And Financial Performance: A Research On Companies Traded In Borsa İstanbul”, Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 14 (1), 269–293. Resmi Gazete. (2014). http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/ eskiler/2014/01/20140103-3.htm, Retrieved: 20.05.2019. Schaffer, N. (2012). “My Japanese Approach to Social Media Strategy”, https://nealschaffer.co m/japanese-approach-social-media-strategy/, Retrieved: 18.05.2019. Segarra, L. M. (2019). “Facebook Removed 2.2.Billion Fake Acounts This Year, It Only Has 2.38 Billion Active Users”, https://fortune.com/2019/05/23/ facebook-fake-accounts-transparency-report/, Retrieved: 18.05.2019. Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu (SPK). (2011). “Kurumsal Yönetim İlkelerinin Belirlenmesine ve Uygulanmasına İlişkin Tebliğ Seri: IV, No: 56”, http://www. spk.gov.tr/Sayfa/Dosya/66, Retrieved: 18.05.2019. Takvim Gazetesi. (2018). “Trump’ın Tweetleri Dünyayı Şaşkına Çeviriyor”, https://www.takvim.com.tr/dunya/2018/07/27/trumpin-tweetleri-dunyayisaskina-ceviriyor, Retrieved: 20.05.2019. Taştekin, F. (2018). “Sarı Yelekliler: ‘Fransız Baharı’ mı “Faşizmin Ayak Sesler”‘ mi?”, https://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler-dunya-46405041, Retrieved: 18.05.2019. T.C. Ulaştırma Denizcilik ve Haberleşme Bakanlığı. (2018). “Kamu Kurumlarında Sosyal Medya Kullanım Rehber (Taslak)”, http:// afyonluoglu.org/PublicWebFiles/Reports-TR/genel/201804Kamu%20 Kurumlar%C4%B1nda%20Sosyal%20Medya%20Kullan%C4%B1m%20 Rehberi-TASLAK.pdf, Retrieved: 18.05.2019. Üçhisarlı, C. (2018). “Son 1 Yılda Global Çapta Kriz Yaşayan 5 Büyük Marka”, https://pazarla masyon.com/son-1-yilda-global-capta-kriz-yasayan-5-buyukmarka/, Retrieved: 15.05.2019.

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Yeniçıktı Tufan, N. (2016). “Hakla İlişkiler Aracı Olarak Instagram: Sosyal Medya Kullanan 50 Şirket Üzerine Bir Araştırma”, Selçuk Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Akademik Dergisi (Journal of Selcuk Communication), 9 (2), 92–115. https://www.haberler.com/ingiltere-basbakani-yeni-kabineyi-twitter-dan7299314-haberi/, Retrieved: 01.06.2019. https://www.dw.com/tr/facebooka-cambridge-analyticadavas%C4%B1/a-46810401, Retrieved: 01.06.2019. https://tr.euronews.com/2018/09/28/turkiye-nin-dis-borc-rakamlar-aciklandi, Retrieved: 21.05.2019. https://bianet.org/bianet/ekonomi/199933-346-sosyal-medya-hesabina-dolarkuru-sorusturma si-baslatildi, Retrieved: 21.05.2019. http://paracevirici.com/doviz-arsiv/merkez-bankasi/gecmis-tarihli-doviz/2018/ amerikan-dolari, Retrieved: 21.05.2019. http://bigpara.hurriyet.com.tr/doviz/dolar/1yil/, Retrieved: 01.06.2019.

Latif Pınar

2  Social Media and the Turkish Foreign Policy Introduction This research aims to study the relationship between social media and the Turkish foreign policy. The study seeks to answer the question of whether the popular opinion formed against the foreign political strategies on social media being carried out by policy makers has any serious influence on the course of the foreign political attitude and behavior of Turkey. The hypothesis of the study is formulated in this way: on social media which has been brought about as a result of technological advances in mass communication and telecommunication devices, the popular opinion formed against the political strategies carried out by policy makers does not have a noteworthy influence on the course of the foreign political attitude and behavior. In order to reply the stated question, here is the roadmap to follow: with a view to easing the analysis of the subject, it is prudent to initially briefly dwell on the relationship between social media and foreign policy. In order to enhance the intelligibility of the evaluations to follow, an outline of the course of Turkish Foreign policy in the 2000s and some national security issues undergone within the period will be mentioned. Lastly, the popular opinion-foreign policy relationship will be unfolded, and the effect of the social media on the Turkish foreign policy within the mentioned time period will be analyzed within the light of the findings obtained. During the composition of the study, literature and press canning, personal comments on the course of the Turkish foreign policy, and some sharing Turkish Policy makers made on social media organs were made use of. Accordingly, primary sources that have made a thorough analysis regarding the topic were sought after. Nevertheless, in some cases it was not possible to reach all the primary sources. As there are not enough scientific studies on foreign political attitude and behavior of Turkey within the existing international relations literature, this research was designed to fill in the gaps in the area as a genuine study.

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1 Social Media and Foreign Policy Relationship Social media is “a common term for online tools and web sites which create mutual interaction by enabling users the users to share information, notion and interest” (Solmaz, Tekin, Herzem ve Demir, 2013: 24). Providing people with the opportunity to share and discuss their thoughts, likes, events, and other actions online, social media bears great significance with respect to being user based, bringing individuals and even masses together, and augmenting the interaction among people quickly (Yeşiltuna, 2015: 212). Social media which emerged within the early 2000s and became a serious habit for the virtual platform users, increased influence and power on political developments noticeably in parallels with the increase of interest in information communication technologies (Vural ve Bat, 2010: 3349). The fact that materials such as texts, videos, images, and so on with political content which are shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks result in developing new political behaviors in individuals serves to prove this situation clearly (Dursunoğlu, 2017: 1582). Organizing the civil society in a country very quickly, social media in our time has become one of the strategic constituents that help shape the discussions in the foreign policy area (Korkmaz, 2014: 25). Therefore, in today’s world, the phenomenon of politics which can be identified as the external strategies, tools, and actions a state determines in order to actualize national interests (Ateş, 2014: 35; Güleç, 2018: 80), cannot be free from the discussions on social media organs. “Social media enabling the simultaneous sharing of any message, idea or content with other users, ensures the feedback, an important component of communication, to be fast and direct” (Kurt, 2014: 823). This characteristic of it brings about the direct influence on countries’ external political attitudes and behaviors in production and implementation processes by forming popular opinions. What lies beneath this influence process is that the policy makers in countries where Western-type liberal democratic systems rule do not involve in foreign political attitudes and behaviors which are not supported by their peoples (Bayram, 2011: s. 69), since there is the necessity of mutual agreement between policy makers and the popular opinion in the process of developing foreign political strategies and application of them (Pınar, 2018: 1905). Additionally, this necessity brings along the obligation to take into account the societal reactions for political issues occurring on social media platforms. In this context, it would be safe to point out the existence of a versatile, strong relationship network that offers continuity in countries where a liberal democratic system is in effect.

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2 2000s in the Turkish Foreign Policy and Security Issues Experienced in the Process During the Cold War struggle, in order to break loose from the pressure the Soviet Union was imposing, Turkey, which joined the Western Alliance lead by the United States of America performed the foreign political attitudes and behaviors requested by the alliance, found the opportunity to act with more ease internationally when the conditions of struggle in question were removed (Sever, 2012:  11–16). Utilizing this opportunity well, Turkey chose to develop relationships with the countries in the same region and notably succeeded in doing so, following a more independent policy than the United States of America and other Western countries. This change occurring in the Turkish foreign policy became more apparent in the 2000s. Thus, Turkey sought to sustain its relationships within the countries in the close proximity and far in a foreign political context in which “the long and arduous processes between regimes and bureaucrats were omitted and the inter-societal relations intensified, and economic and cultural elements gained importance” (Balcı, 2013: 258). Accordingly, Turkey signed strategic cooperation agreements with countries within its premises in order to enhance the mutual relations in areas of economic, social, political, and cultural interest and so forth (Ayhan, 2009: 31) and tried to normalize the relations with other countries and organizations that are members of international systems (Oğuzlu, 2012: 15–17). However, after a short period of time, in which Turkey got out of the defensive reflex resulting from the feeling of being surrounded with enemies at all times (Koçer, 2008: 922), Turkey had to give up on its foreign policy understanding and its applications towards placing itself at the center of energy, commerce, and human movement happening at the local and global scale (Balcı, 2013: 258). The reason why Turkey underwent this foreign policy friction is undeniably the civil war that broke out after the societal incidents called the “Arab Spring” had spread to Syria in 2011 and the sensitive national security issues which were brought along with it.1

1 It can be argued that foreign political developments like 2003 occupation of Iraq by the USA and the Mavi Marmara Crisis directly or indirectly had a role to play in Turkey’s abandoning of this political understanding which was built on three principles: “historical and cultural connections, democratictradition and institutions, developing free market economy” with Turkey and neighboring countries (Balcı, 2013: s. 259).

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The first of these issues is the unilateral actions of the authoritarian administration in Syria that violated the border security of Turkey. Taking down of warplanes flying in Turkish international territorial waters by the Syrian Regime forces, launching of rockets and artillery from Syria to Turkey, and firing of Syrian soldiers upon Turkish soldiers and civilians are some of these unilateral actions. The second security issue mentioned is that terrorist organizations such as ISIS, PKK, PYD, and YPG seriously intensified their attempts towards Turkey, making use of the lack of authority in Syria after the civil war. The given terrorist organizations attempted to shake the state’s authority and frighten the civilians by organizing armed attacks and setting off bombs in Turkish soil. The third and the gravest of the security issues stated is the attempts to form an independent Kurdish state in the North of Syria. The endeavors to establish the social and the political infrastructure of this state by the terrorist organizations of PKK, PYD, and YPG supported by some great powers within the international system, became an element of exhaustion for Turkey. All these issues resulted in Turkey’s beginning to act within the context of a new foreign political policy aimed only at preserving the national security of Turkey. The fact that Turkey took economic, social, political, and military precautions towards confining the movement of the oppressing Syrian regime, and the military operations towards the Syrian soil organized to prevent the armed attacks by these terrorist organizations and their attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state are indicators that Turkey started following a foreign policy primarily focused on security.

3 The Influence of Social Media on Turkish Foreign Policy In the strict sense, popular opinion can be identified as “the sum of all views of the public on common topics of interest; depictions of attitudes of members of common public on political or contemporary topics; or common judgment of people living in a specific society on a phenomenon or belief ” (Yüksel, 2007: 572). In the broader sense, “it can be stated to be the average of ideas that some social groups and outspoken personalities try to convey to the political authorities undisclosed through mass communication media such as press, radio, and television broadcast, or word of mouth or whispers” (Temizel, 2008: 130). Within the discipline of international relations, described as “range of views of the citizens of a country on foreign policy related topics,” popular opinion is one of the outstanding potential power factors that can restrict the movement

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capabilities of states with decree authority specially in countries where liberal democracy is practiced in full (Goldstein and Pevehouse, 2015: 201). “The fact that popular opinion constitutes a formidable potential power in terms of drawing the boundaries of how foreign policies will be shaped necessitates that states not leave formation of popular opinions to themselves” (Gönlübol, 1993:  s.  242). Therefore, states might resort to some manipulative methods such as refusing to share information, keeping the shared information under strict supervision, or directly controlling the media organs actively in order to shape popular opinions and set their courses in the way they desire (Gönlübol, 1993: s. 242).2 Yet, the emergence of social media renders the aforementioned methods ineffective significantly, thus resulting in the popular opinion directly affecting foreign policy area. Considering this viewpoint, it can be argued that social media is different from traditional media in that it enables an individual to create content with ease, comment on the arguments he/she has obtained easily, and get the best of the images and audios to make the desired contribution to his/her soul. Therefore, it holds a unique position in developing foreign policy–related popular views as it makes information easy to access and share, creates a discussion platform for people pertaining the information reflected, and enables forming groups, following other individuals’ related ideas instantly, participating in these at will (Eren ve Aydın, 2014: 197–198). Hence, the unilateral conveyance of information on foreign policy by traditional media such as radio, television, cinema, newspapers, and magazines has undergone a change (Eren ve Aydın, 2014: 198). In other words, with the increased use of social media, it has become virtually obsolete to influence people’s thoughts on external events and developments using traditional media.3 Therefore, social media has taken its place as a factor that policy makers have to take into account when establishing and practicing a foreign policy. In Turkey, there are some 43 million Facebook, 38 million Instagram, 9 million Twitter, 7  million 300  thousand LinkedIn, and 6  million 350  thousand Snapchat users (HaberTürk, 2019); and a considerable amount of these users

2 It should not be forgotten that states occasionally manipulate social media or restrict the citizens’ use of social media tools. 3 Traditional media organs convey the information on foreign political developments to the public generally through official channels. However, social media grants access to public directly. In this context, it can be stated that social media alleviates the dependence to official sources (Bayram, 2015: 434).

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share their foreign policy–related thoughts, feelings, and knowledge with other users (Hatipoğlu, Gökçe, Dinçer ve Saygın, 2016: 185). These shares result in forming a specific thought pattern on aforementioned foreign political incidents in their heads through the mentioned social media tools, forming a popular opinion to an extent in this direction. Much as social media promotes individuality (Kırık ve Karakuş, 2013: 63), on sensitive topics related to the country’s national security and territorial integrity, it is a fact that Turkish citizens reach a consensus on social media.4 For instance, having inspected the shares regarding the crossfires brought about with the border violations during the Syrian civil war, attacks of terrorist organizations like PKK, PYD, YPG, and ISIS and the attempts to form an independent country supported by great powers, Turkish people are not indifferent to these problems posing a threat to the national security; on the contrary, an intellectual fraction seems to strive to form a popular opinion displaying a sense of responsibility.5 Additionally, the Turkish policy makers seem to not ignore the positive popular opinions regarding the foreign political strategies to preserve Turkey’s national security, and they contribute to these personal shares that are positively supporting, guiding, and expanding the popular opinion (Twitter, 2018; Twitter, 2013). Nevertheless, it is difficult to acknowledge the enough attention given by Turkish policy makers on the social media outputs against the foreign policies aimed at preserving national security (Hatipoğlu, Gökçe, Dinçer ve Saygın, 2016:  193).6 What lies beneath this situation might be that the policy makers believe the partial or general popular opinion against national security policies “organize around a general party/belonging context” (Hatipoğlu, Gökçe, Dinçer ve Saygın, 2016: 193). Thus, Turkish policy makers provide support for activities that match with the foreign policy strategies, but they mostly ignore the ones against these policies. In that, social media might be argued that it has a unilateral effect on Turkish foreign policy.

4 This consensus might be positive or negative towards the attitudes and behaviors of state on foreign policy. 5 This detection is the outcome of research of personal social media accounts done by the writer of this paper. 6 Policy makers might try to convince the people who find the foreign political strategies wrong through their social media shares.

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Conclusion States, which constitute major players in international politics, are obliged to move in uniform within an international system, as the aforementioned system has a special structure, and the states which do not make their moves in sound integrity are faced with serious problems. Besides, it might be necessary to keep some information regarding foreign policy applications for national security problems, and in these cases, policy makers might decide not to share the information at hand with citizens. For these reasons and similar ones, policy makers might sometimes fail to hear some distinct voices rising in the country. Nonetheless, ignoring voices as such regarding the foreign policy topics especially of national security might result in the emergence of new foreign policy problems directly or otherwise in the long term. The rate of social media use in Turkey is immense. Moreover, individuals interested in foreign policy take part in activities to form popular opinions regarding the incidents and developments taking place in the international arena. While Turkish policy makers support activities in line with the foreign policy strategies, they largely ignore the ones which do not correspond to them. Within this context, on social media, the popular opinion against the foreign policy strategies might not be considered effective in influencing attitudes and behaviors pertaining the course of foreign policy. At this point, it is important to point out that numeric data on social media tools like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on to analyze the relationship between social media and Turkish foreign policy has not been formed completely yet. Therefore, it is urgent that the numeric data be obtained in order to get a healthier analysis of the relationship without delay.

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Bayram, Y. (2015). “Medya-Siyaset Gündemi İlişkisi Kapsamında Tü-rkiye’de Ulusa Sesleniş Konuşmalarının Gündem Belirleme Gücü”, Tarih Okulu Dergisi, 8 (24), 405–438. Dursunoğlu, İ. (2017). “Sosyal Medya ve SiyasalDavranışİlişkisi”, Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler FakültesiDergisi, 22 (15), 1579–1585. Eren, V. ve Aydın, A. (2014). “Sosyal Medyanın Kamuoyu Oluşturma-daki Rolü ve Muhtemel Riskler”, KMÜ Sosyal ve Ekonomik Araştırmalar Dergisi, 16 (1), 197–205. Goldstein, J. S. ve Pevehouse, J. C. (2015). Uluslararası İlişkiler, Çev. Haluk Özdemir, Ankara, BB101 Yayınları. Gönlübol, M. (1993). Uluslararası Politika İlkeler-Kavramlar-Kurumlar, Ankara, Atilla Kitabevi. Güleç, C. (2018). “Dış Politika Analizinde Kararverme Süreci ve Karar Verme Modelleri”, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 3 (1), 79–102. Habertürk. (2019). “İşte Türkiye’nin Güncel Sosyal MedyaKullanıcı Ver-ileri”, https://www.haberturk.com/turkiye-de-kac-sosyal-medya-kullanicisi-var2406847-teknoloji, Retrieved: 26.06.2019. Hatipoğlu, E., Gökçe, O. Z., Dinçer, B., ve Saygın, Y. (2016). “Sosyal Medya ve Türk Dış Politikası: Kobani Tweetleri Üzerinden Türk Dış Politi-kası Algısı”, Uluslararası İlişkiler, 13 (52), 175–197. Kırık, A. M. ve Karakuş, M. K. (2013). “Sosyal Medya ve İnternet Teknolojisi ile Yöndeşen Televizyon Yayıncılığı: Sosyal TV”, Online Aca-demic Journal of İnformation Technology, 4 (12), 61–73. Koçer, G. (2008). “AKP’nin ve TayyipErdoğan’ın Dış PolitikaFelsefesi”, Türk Dış Politikası, Ed. Haydar Çakmak, Ankara, PlatinYayınları, 920–926. Korkmaz, A. (2014). “Sosyal Medya ve Toplumsal Hareketler”, Kamuda Sosyal Politika, Ed. Memur-Sen, 8 (27), 25–29. Kurt, H. (2014). “Gazetecilik Pratiği ve Sosyal Medya”, Gaziantep Uni-versity Journal of Social Sciences, 13 (4), 821–835. Oğuzlu, T. (2012). “Komşularla Sıfır SorunPolitikası: Kavramsal Bir An-aliz”, Ortadoğu Analiz, 4 (42), 8–17. Pınar, L. (2018). “Dış Politika Yapım Sürecinde Medya’nın Rolü”, İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Araştırmaları Dergisi, 7 (3), 1904–1916. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (2013). “Suriye’de Olup Biteni Görünce, O Çocuk-ları Görünce Tepkisiz Kalmak Mümkün Değil”, Twitter. https://twitter.com/ RTErdogan/status/370606205514702848, Retrieved: 27.06.2019.

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (2018). “Suriye’nin Kuzeyinden Türkiye’ye Yönelik Birkaç Yıldır Devam Eden Tacizler Karşılıksız Kalmıyor, Kalmaya-cak. Bu Konudaki Kararlılığımız Ortadadır”, Twitter. https://twitter.com/rterdogan/ status/955515507108655104, Retrieved: 27.06.2019. Sever, A. (2012). Türkiye’nin Ortadoğu İlişkileri Kavramsal ve Olgusal Bir Analiz, İstanbul, Derin Yayınları. Solmaz, B., Tekin, G., Herzem, Z., veDemir M. (2013). “İnternet ve Sosyal Medya Kullanımı Üzerine Bir Uygulama”, Selçuk İletişim, 7 (4), 23–32. Temizel, H. (2008). “Kamuoyu Kuramları ve Kamuoyu Oluşumunda Kitleİletişim Araçları”, Sosyal Ekonomik Araştırmalar Dergisi, 8 (15), 126–146. Vural, Z. B. A. ve Bat, M. (2010). “Yeni Bir İletişim Ortamı Olarak Sosyal Medya: Ege Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesine Yönelik Bir Araştırma”, Journal of Yaşar University, 20 (5), 3348–3382. Yeşiltuna, D. ve Tükel, İ. (2015). “Yeni Medyanın Yeni Dünya Düzeni” Ed. Yeşiltuna, D., İletişim ve Medya, Nobel Akademik Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 209–236. Yüksel, E. (2007). ““Kamuoyu Oluşturma” ve “Gündem Belirleme” Kavramları Nerede Kesişmekte, Nerede Ayrılmaktadır” Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 1, 571–586.

Yalçın Kahya and Onur Bayrakcı

3  “YouTube” As a Social Media Tool and “YouTuber” As a New Job Introduction While rapid changes in information systems bring about social and cultural changes on societies, they also cause serious changes on our identities. The deep penetration of the Internet into the lives of all individuals led to the establishment of different networks of communication, but also the formation of new professions and interests. People want to communicate via social networks over the Internet in order to connect with people they know before or with people they do not know at all for different reasons. Web 2.0 features such as YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, and Instagram, which are evaluated within the scope of social networks, perform this function. These sites, which are considered as social networks, are used for socializing, having fun, accessing information, learning, and doing professional work (Tonta, 2009: 742). Wasserman and Faust (1994) attempted to explain the concept of social network without the emergence of social media and its derivatives. According to Wasserman and Faust, a group of people and the connections between these people constitute the content of the social network. What makes people who live in a social network today differentiate in terms of social and commercial relations? The question comes up frequently (cited in Kara, 2013: 52–53). Social networks, which have a strong influence on the results of individual behaviors, show that their will is not enough for people’s choices. While social networks are important in understanding the way society operates, it creates experiences and interactions between individuals that do not exist in themselves. Therefore, through social networks, individuals transcend themselves in a good or bad way and become part of something bigger. In other words, social networks are not limited to the people we know if we influence our friends through our behaviors and thoughts and affect their friends. In this sense, it also affects the people we have never encountered. As a result, the key to understanding people is to understand the connections between them (Chrisstakis & Fowler, 2012: 9.44). According to Gülsoy (2017), the encounters and interactions in social media are not different from the encounters in daily

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life. According to him, virtual identities overlap with his facts in many points. In addition, today’s online interactions are influenced by everyday life as a feature of the network society. According to Weinberg (2014), the term “social media” becomes increasingly important in the world in which we share information, experience, and perspectives with the help of websites. Peters (2011) argues that the content of social media mainly includes a large number of platforms defined by users, while platform users create content and social relationships with each other through ratings, comments, and experiences. According to Grabs, Bannour, and Vogl (2014) social media use also provides multiple communications. In this sense, the contents produced by the users are permanently used without any time limit (cited in Thorschmidt, 2016). In the 21st century, large-scale changes in communication systems have brought about not only the major technical changes involving the exchange of information in communication systems, but also large changes that transform the social structure. These changes in communication technologies attract the attention of researchers at two different points. First, research focusing more on social media users without considering the macro context; secondly, critical media and communication studies that evaluate online social networks within the framework of capitalism. Firstly, when looking at user-oriented studies, the studies address the potential, participatory, and democratic characteristics of networks. Henry Jenkins (2006), Alex Bruns (2007), Clay Shirky (2008), Dan Tapscott, and Anthony Williams (2006) research on web and social networks consumer participation, broadening the perspectives of taking part in different Internet forums, both participation in network culture. They also talk about the ways in which they reinforce the democracy by consolidating the collective mind, and that websites such as Flickr, YouTube, Myspace, and Facebook create opportunities for public participation, with the spread of the Internet, a new economic democracy where everyone is involved, where they can freely say what they want to say. And also according to critical media and communication studies, the media and communication researches that analyze social media and the phenomenon of Internet in the context of capitalism, pointing to the commodification of the instrument, that the use of the Internet and online social networks are dictated by large companies for profit. Research on critical media and communication studies focuses on class, exploitation and capitalism. Research on online social networks includes non-critical and mostly user- or macro-based analyzes (cited in Netchitailova, 2017: 2-3).

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1 YouTube and Video Blog With the first appearance of the Internet, this period, which is called World Wide Web, is the only one in the Web 1.0 Period. In a time when there was no human interaction, users could download a limited number of programs or files from their websites. In short, users had a passive character in the web 1.0 period (Çağlar, 2017: 31–32). During Web 2.0 period, users started to make purchases from e-commerce sites while interacting in social media. With Web 2.0, people can create and share information, documents, audio files, video files, photos, and similar visuals with each other. The Web 2.0 era brought interactive interaction (Kırcova & Enginkaya, 2015: 4–7). It is the largest video-sharing category in the YouTube area. The platform, which shares videos in different areas, has become a major video search engine in recent years. YouTube allows users to watch videos about all conceivable topics. According to YouTube’s “Publish Itself ” motto, users place themselves and their daily lives at the center of attention. YouTube’s concept allows users to subscribe to channels, track other users, and communicate with each other through messages or comments (Thorschmidt, 2016). YouTubers serve the desire for originality, but also convey their true brand experience. According to Peter (2016), Youtube has a tremendous commercial potential, YouTube grows on a daily basis, becomes more popular, and thanks to video bloggers it offers a great deal of access to potential customers. Also known as Vloggers, YouTubers are people who have their own channels on YouTube and regularly publish their own content. Videobloggers have an important place especially among young people because they only earn points because of their authenticity, reliability, proximity, and concreteness. According to Schweiger and Schrattenecker (2009), YouTube promotes interaction between vloggers and viewers. Viewers can write their comments under the videos published online, and creators can respond to these comments. In this way, YouTube serves as a platform that calls for more interaction by directly answering viewers’ questions (cited in Thorschmidt, 2016). While YouTube and vlogs have changed many things around the world, the innovations it has brought have enabled individuals to have their own broadcasting. On the other hand, individuals have the opportunity to watch what they want to watch over YouTube without being connected to TV programs. In addition, YouTube contributes to mutual interaction and sharing in education, news, entertainment, and advertising (Yüksel, 2017: 42.43). When Vlog is called, coming into the mind, there are more videos instead of text or images shared on

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the Internet. In shared videos, the purpose is to talk in front of the camera, to make eye contact with the audience, to understand them, and to help them to connect with them in brief. In this context, everyone in the world of social media can become equal to everyone. Social media is an area where individuals communicate with the masses and offer equal opportunities to everyone. In this field, individuals share their views with the videos they have received, and they constitute the sense of sincerity and trust in the viewers (Schmıttauer, 2017: 41–43). Social media users are interacting with the YouTubers they follow through the YouTube channel, relying on their preferences, information, and advice. YouTubers can push more and more to appeal to Internet users; this means that media tools are now much more perceived and discussed in the media. Unlike traditional advertisers, the fact that YouTubers enjoy ever-increasing popularity raises the following research question: How do active followers trust YouTubers? The focus of the formulated issue and empirical research is particularly on man Lifestyle Blogs Form. For example, cosmetic, fashion, and healthy nutrition issues are thematized. Therefore, Beauty Blogs, ‘Fashion Blogs’, and finally food blogs are important. One of our research problems is based on the assumption that YouTubers are more reliable and therefore closer to the reader, as opposed to corporate bloggers (Valentina, 2015). In this sense, where we live, agree, and discuss with each other, gain the color of our attitudes and discuss views and perspectives that affect our actions is transformed by social networks and blogs. The activities and thoughts of individuals are deeply related to the institutional, economic, and cultural structure of the society in which they live, and through these stocks they provide information on how to present solutions to problems by creating recipes for cultural action and how to shape the perceptions and understandings of the world (Layder, 2010: 257). In this context, Çiçek’s (2018) researches about who watched YouTuber videos, how and why they watched the results of the study, the respondents preferred to get the most information and entertainment videos, videos taken by YouTubers are mostly watched on weekends, the number of followers and YouTuber has been found to be effective on the number of views of the sex of the person. Men mostly watch the videos of YouTubers about games, entertainment, and technology, while women prefer videos about beauty, make-up, and fashion (Çiçek, 2018: 163,168).

1.1 YouTube as Social Network YouTube video platform, founded in 2005, extends from cosmetics to video games to documenting everyday life. In each region there are one or more

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people who have the mission to entertain or inform their audience. In the process, this form of entertainment has become a profession. Videos of Vloggers are periodically produced and published. A typical vlog usually does not have a prescription scenario or production team. The relevant video blogger is responsible for editorial work, camera section, lighting, moderation, post production, and marketing. However, the content creator can choose to be supported by a YouTube network. Thanks to numerous contacts with companies, these network creators can generate more revenue through collaborations (cited in Leiermann, 2016:  11). However, this point is not enough to make YouTubers successful (Derksen, 2017: 4). According to Stuber (2012), YouTube not only has a video-sharing platform, it also functions as a social media format. YouTube is characterized by the “change of user-generated content” in interaction with interaction options. YouTube is called interactive network that invites people to become consumers and producers at the same time. This content is characterized by the fact that almost everyone can be a producer from the consumer. While Stuber (2012) produced a mobile phone camera quickly recorded and then shared on social networks, Graap (2015) says that is the development of this blurred borders and consumers today are becoming a successful producer tomorrow on YouTube (cited in Derksen, 2017: 2nd). According to Graap (2015), defined by Google as New Generation YouTube or “Gen C”, which means scaling, linking and community. The keyword is about creating, maintaining, linking, and community content. This content is characterized by the fact that almost everyone can be a producer from the consumer. According to Stuber, produced content via a mobile phone camera can quickly be recorded and then shared on social networks. On the other side Graap (2015), Graap (2015) believes that this development has blurred the boundaries, and today consumers are becoming a successful producer tomorrow on YouTube (cited in, Derksen, 2017: 2).

1.2 Success Factors on YouTube Platform YouTube has some advantages in the competition with additional financial resources available to the current network and technical requirements. Faster computers and broadband Internet enable YouTube to deliver its video platform worldwide for free. The platform is continuously updated with continuous technical development. Content and structural factors such as the graphical user interface or the user-friendly design of the platform are of great importance. Designing the technology to be used in a simple way provides ease of use for

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content sharing of users. Another important factor in content sharing is who the target audience is. With an almost endless content source, YouTube addresses a wide range of diverse interests. These areas are from the beauty videos to the game department, meeting the many needs for both men and women. In particular, for target groups with special interests, YouTube offers a sufficient amount of content, unlike traditional television (Meyer, 2016). For these reasons, YouTube’s commercial components are expanding in recent years. However, YouTube’s actual value is contained in user-generated content. Because most of the videos are produced by active members, it does not need to be edited by the platform itself. Network effect comes into force when sufficient content is available. This means that active videos produce more users. Finally, YouTube is an attractive factor for many young people. Andy Warhol once said, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes in the future. YouTube seems to be an ideal place to maintain creative talent and gain fame over the Internet. The platform already supports numerous careers and helps the success of various artists (Meyer, 2016). YouTuber’s difficulties in this area at the beginning of the daily content needs to be shared on a daily basis. The solution to feed the content monster is of two types. The first is to create content and the second is to play with content. Creating content includes long messages and pictures or video footage. According to the experiments, creating more than two parts per week seems very difficult for social media. At this point, creating content brings a certain capacity and experience. Playing with content is to find, summarize, and share quality content that other people share. This point benefits everyone. Because they do not have enough time to share content, people need filters that reduce the flow of information (Kawasaki & Fitzpatrick, 2018: 27–28).

2 “YouTuber” as a New Job People with different professions, such as artisans, artists, comedians, actresses, make-up artists, earn their real jobs and earn income on YouTube. Well, then, is the profession of these people YouTuber or their specialty? As a new role model for young people, YouTubers reach millions of audiences not only with video shoots or make-up, but with very little work on many subjects. Today, when we check the reality, not only singers or actors, but also YouTubers come into the minds first of all as idols of children and adolescents (Wampfler, 2017). In Kahraman’s (2016) study, he explains the factors influencing the conversion of standard YouTube users into YouTube celebrities and shows how YouTube celebrities make use of certain common factors in producing content. When

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the results of the research are examined, the line between the classic vowels and online celebrities is different and the line between the two is very thin and the people who are defined as classic celebrities are using the platforms efficiently to gain new fans, online celebrities using the classical media organs to fan the way they are going to multiply. Although each YouTuber has fans, each one is monitored and publicized by the masses. Successful YouTubers stand out as modern celebrities of our time. However, this status requires a certain process and conditions. Each of them has to draw fans on their own path (Kahraman, 2016: 37–40). Considered in terms of views and numbers of followers, YouTubers are an important role model for their followers and what they tell. In the digital age, YouTubers are seen as an opportunity not to be missed within brands, while sponsorship and product placement applications are effectively used within the videos that YouTubers share (Yıldırım, 2018:  150). Skyes (2014) says that YouTubers have to present their own living spaces, to express their views on current issues, to make recommendations in the opposite of the screen, that is to say in our viewers like us or one of us or makes him a friend and friends very close to ourselves. These thoughts can easily be seen in the comments on the shared videos (cited in Yıldırım, 2018: 151). Based on the experience of interviews with children and adolescents at Wampfler, the youth expresses their desire to be YouTubers. The reasons for this seems to be that they make very little effort, have an exciting life, get to know exciting and well-known people, always be on the move, and most importantly, they earn a lot of money. Yeah, that’s a little appealing. But how much of this is realized? What is the reality of content builder, i.e., the reality of YouTubers when reality is checked? What is required for a possible career, and why can only a few achieve this? Here are three legendary questions about the YouTuber, which is the dream job, Wampler answers as follows (Wampfler, 2017): • You earn millions as a content builder: “No. This is not the same for everyone. Internationally, there are certainly people who earn a lot of money from this job. But in Switzerland, the YouTube market is still relatively small. Only a few of these provide their livelihood. 19-year-old Lionel Battegay has 35,000 subscribers on YouTube with the ini Ask for Switzerland ‘motive, but earns an apprentice’s fee on his channel” (Wampfler, 2017). • YouTubers are always on holiday: “No. The Internet is temporary. If you don’t do anything, you’re quickly disappearing in the crowd. You must always be active and ready. That’s why I try to publish a video every week on Mondays and Thursdays. But it takes time. I spend about 25 hours a week on my channel.

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There is not much time left for holidays or leisure. But I  like to do it, says Lionel Battegay” (Wampfler, 2017). • As YouTuber you get everything as a gift: “Wrong. More access to a person is becoming more interesting for a potential client. However, it can take up to two years to have a large community that can attract advertisers, says Daniel Koss, Managing Director of online marketing agency Yxterix AG. This requires not only regular, high-quality content, but also a lot of perseverance and a certain entertainment ability” (Wampfler, 2017). Who is a YouTuber? When you play a game on the computer or when you do not know how to pass sections on YouTube and enter the game to find solutions to the game you are playing in the process leads to the YouTube channel and video broadcasting. YouTuber based on this technology and game channels in Turkey started in this context and later evolved into other areas. While YouTuber concept actually means YouTube publisher, professional YouTubers are now the only people who are producing full-time videos in different subjects, not constantly shooting high-quality home videos to their followers. If you are able to satisfy the expectations of hundreds of thousands of subscribers’ regular and consistently high standards, YouTuber Star will be popular with all its advantages and disadvantages. YouTube offers different types of content for everyone to find something for themselves. These are video and computer games, music and beauty channels, and comedy channels (Yamak, 2014). The links of YouTubers with each other and with others in the network community bring connections with other groups of linked people in other parts of the network. This network consists of people and the connections between them, and there are some rules of life within this network. The first is the connection and who is connected with whom, the persons it contains, and the specific models of the links that connect them, and the second is what flows through those networks. These can be money, violence, fashion, happiness, or health. If we want to understand how social networks work, we need to understand the rules of social networks in the context of structure-function (Chrisstakis & Fowler, 2012:  22–27). While each new technology creates a change in society, individuals turn real relationships into virtual relationships by showing their expertise skills in social networks. The capitals of individuals affect their success in social networks. Realities, meanings, and new identities are derived within social networks. In this research, the people who are called YouTubers are evaluated in the context of their capital, and their internal tendencies are determined.

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3 Method of Research In this study, the so-called YouTubers were selected based on data from the Social Blade website, which holds live statistics and has an agreement with YouTube. When the list of 18 Turkish YouTubers with the most followers intel is examined, the first 18 YouTubers on this list are included in the analysis. YouTube categories are based primarily on cars and vehicles, comedy, education, movies, entertainment, games, music, news and politics, nonprofit organizations, individuals and blogs, pets, science and technology, sports, and sightseeing when divided into topics (https: //creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/welco to). On YouTube, channels that produce Turkish content with the most followers are NetD Music, Enes Batur, Orkun Işıtmak, SK Games, OHA, Do it, Heads, Channel D, Soul Chime Videos, Burak Oyunda, ATV, Furkan Yaman All Inclusive, Munnik TV, and Game Freak (https://socialblade.com. 09.08.2018). The main backbone of this study, which is included in the social sharing sites, is videos shared on YouTube with the videos of YouTubers.

Conclusion The following table shows the YouTubers that are included in the ranking made by Socialblade. YouTubers have been examined in terms of the content they have produced, and they have made videos about their own funny videos, mostly music videos, make-up topics, and general practical information. Most of the people named YouTuber are university graduates and students, and some of them have also included their family members in the videos they have taken. In addition, YouTubers, which include famous people in the videos they produce, share the videos of the famous YouTubers, both in Turkey and abroad, with their followers. On the other hand, there are three women YouTubers in the rankings. YouTubers have a birth date of 1974–2001. The majority of YouTubers in the ranking started as a hobby and carried their own channels by moving themselves to the next level. They regularly upload videos to their sites and keep their channels alive. At the same time, the content, creativity, subject, and presentation format of the videos they have uploaded, or being an original subject, makes a significant contribution to being followed by more people. On the other hand, all of them have a high level of computer competence, and the quality of fiction is effective in increasing the number of followers. Being a YouTuber actually requires communication with its followers. That is why YouTubers are not very much involved in selfish behavior, they perform joint project activities simultaneously with many channels or companies,

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Tab. 3.1:  YouTuber Ranking by Number of Followers. Source: https://socialblade.com/ youtube/top/country/tr/mostsubscribed Name 1. Enes Batur Followers 8,197,335 Video views 3,537,545,698 2. Orkun Işıtmak Followers 5,357,002 Video views 1,158,914,605 3. Kafalar 1. Bilal Hancı 2. Fatih Yasin 3. Atakan Özyurt Followers 4,326,440 Video views 664,144,556 4. Ruhi Çenet Followers 3,141,803 Video views 376,547,847 5. Burak Oyunda Followers 3,028,911, Video views 978,211,598 6. Furkan Yaman Followers 2,679,606 Video views 654,615,030 7. Reynmen- Yusuf Aktaş Followers 2,441,158 Video views 232,524,354 8. Berkcan Güven Followers 2,431,200 Video views 314,960,096 9. Oyun Delisi- Tamer Yeşildağ Followers 2,413,440 Video views 805,305,579 10. Yavuz Selim Followers 2,343,282 Video views 914,324,357

Field For 5 years, he has posted videos and videos about computer and console games on YouTube and music videos he has created himself. Together with its YouTube channels, it attracts attention as one of the fastest growing YouTube channels with its travels, play videos, and challenge videos. He tells the places he went and shares his life with the videos filled with entertainment and comedy. Particularly entertainment, they shoot interesting videos in every area and mysterious places. They provoke each other with the videos of the paranormal event and the so-called “provocation videos. They travel to different countries and explain life and cost. They make their audience laugh by arranging jokes on each other. They joined Youtube on 2014 The important information on YouTube videos is described in an interesting way, which is very interesting. Joined YouTube in 2012. In 2012, he founded the YouTube channel and with the game videos he published, he reached 20 million views per month. From an early age, he has a YouTube channel and has been shooting videos. The account provides content to millions of people every week. It publishes fun and song videos on YouTube. Etken Scorp en was the most important factor in the phenomenon. Joined YouTube in 2016. Celebrities with funny videos and shoot videos to spend a day. In 2015, he started to use YouTube channel more actively. His video uştur YouTube is My Job, başlıklı has been the most watched video of over 26 million views. He employs his family in most of his works. Especially people who are known for their GTA 5 videos are a good FPS players. He also shares horror games, funny videos, and videos of his friends. He joined YouTube in 2006. In 2013, he entered the YouTube channel to create a pleasant atmosphere in a highly respectful environment, as well as to create a lifestyle by playing computer games and making games more enjoyable than lifestyle. Osman is shooting funny videos with his uncle typing.

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Tab. 3.1: (continued) Name 11. Baturay Anar Followers 2,326,826 Video views 543,159,483 12. Uras Benlioğlu Followers 1,975,773 Video views 420,766,374 13. Danla Bilic Followers 1,844,452 Video views 229,792,634 14. Barış Özcan Followers 1,739,927 Video views 109,856,806

15. MuratAbiGF Murat Engin Followers 1,723,087 Video views 236,230,799 16. Hayrettin- Hayrettin Onur Karaoğuz Followers 1,715,219 Video views 265,196,112 17. Duygu Köseoğlu Followers 1,694,726 Video views 381,003,261 18. Meryem Can Followers 1,667,760 Video views 214,649,800

Field The GTA 5 and Happy Wheels series are very popular. He also took part in a film by YouTuber. The game shares videos as well as funny videos. In 2014 he joined YouTube. He has created a channel called Practical Information and reached a huge fan base. In 2014 he joined YouTube. As of 2016, he shares make-up videos on YouTube. He has also been paying attention with the make-up works he has done with celebrities and the names he gave to the videos he shared with the chats. He creates its own make-up brand and sells it on the Internet. Joined YouTube on 2007. He works with many international companies and brands and provides consulting and social media services for international software companies such as Apple, Adobe, and LinkedIn. The stories of art, design, and technology have been tracked more than 1.5 million people, viewed more than 90 million. He is a professional keynote speaker and TEDx speaker and one of YouTube’s chosen ambassadors of change. Since 2011, it has been broadcasting via YouTube. First he opened his channel to enjoy the zıkkım taste and then vlog publications, then the new channel continued to take jokes and vlog videos. He likes games like FPS and Strategy. Instead of playing games perfectly, he prefers to play in the same way as he enjoys. Until 2010, after the stand up and street performances in 2010, after the same show with the name of the talk show program. Joined 2006. He shoots funny videos like on campus with his videos, student house raids, and vocalized music videos. He announced his name by the game videos published on the Internet. She shares funny videos and music videos of her own voice. Joined YouTube on 2013. YouTube channel in the first make-up videos in the field, while in the next period, the challenge, vlog, and video clips are attracted.

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and at the same time follow the daily trends in order to be successful in their own channels. Although they are in a certain order with the content they produce, they generally produce funny videos for games and entertainment as a content, and they are aiming to increase the number of clicks by reflecting their social capital on the pages. Some YouTubers share the make-up, practical information, and the information they have from domestic and international travels. Looking at YouTuber rankings, it is seen that people transform their cultural and social capital into economic capital. When the data obtained are examined, the interest and interconnections of YouTubers from the childhood to the field of informatics and computer games have led to the development of the capital they possess. To sum up, the hobby which develops over curiosity has turned into a profession.

References Çağlar, Ş. (2017). Sosyal Medya Etkisi. İstanbul: Literatürk. Christakis, N. A. & Fowler, J. H. (2012). Sosyal Ağların Şaşırtıcı Gücü (D. Yüksel, Çev.) İstanbul: Varlık Yayınları. Çiçek, M. (2018). Youtuber Videoları: Kim, Nerede, Ne Zaman, Nasıl, Neden İzler. Avrasya Sosyal ve Ekonomik Araştırmaları Dergisi. 5(7), 163–170. Derksen, A. (2017). Ein You Tube-Kanal mit Designkonzept? Visuelle Kommunikation und Marketing-Strategie eines YouTubers aus dem Bereich Beauty, Lifestyle und Mode. Bachelorarbeit. Ostfalia Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften Fakultat Verkehr – Sport Tourismus Medien. file:///H:/YOUTUBER/Derksen_Ein_YouTube-Kanal_mit_Design konzept_s.pdf. 20.01.2019. Gülsoy, S. (2017). Bir Uyarlama Denemesi: Dijital Oyunlarda Sahne. Sosyoloji Divanı. 5(9), 149–164. ISSN:2147-8902. Kahraman, N. (2016). “The Factors That Influence the Transformation of A Regular User To A YouTube Celebrity”. Master of Arts in New Media. Kadir Has University. https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/. 10.12.2018. Kara, T. (2013). Sosyal Medya Endüstrisi (1. b.). İstanbul: Beta. Kawasaki, G. & Fitzpatrick, P. (2018). Sosyal Medya Sanatı. (M. Benveniste, Çev.). İstanbul: MediaCat. Kırcova, İ. & Enginkaya, E. (2015). Sosyal Medya ve Pazarlama (1. b.). İstanbul: Beta. Layder, D. (2010). Sosyal Teoriye Giriş (2. b.). (Ü. Tatlıcan, Çev.). İstanbul: Küre. Leiermann, J. (2016). YouTube Blogging – Die Seifenoper des Web 2.0. Eine Analyse der Koexistenz der zielgruppenaffinen Unterhaltung im neuen

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und alten. Medium Hochschule Mittweida Unıversıty of Applıed Sciences. Bachelorarbeit. https://monami.hs-mittweida. de/frontdoor/index/index/ year/2018/docId/8422. 06.02.2019. Meyer, B. (2016). YouTube als Teil der Jugendkultur? Auswirkungen und Einfluss der Videoplattform auf ihre jugendlichen Nutzer. Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin. com/document/344450. 10.01.2019. Netchitailova, E. (2017). Flaneur, Aylak ve Empatik İşçi. F. Aydoğan içinde, Yeni Medya Kuramları (F. Aydoğan, Çev., s. 4). İstanbul: Der. Schmıttauer, A. (2017). Vlog: Youtube Fenomeni Olmak (1. b.). (D. Gürcü, Çev.). İstanbul: Sola. Thorschmidt, M. (2016). YouTuber, Instagrammer und Co. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen für Unternehmen. Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/ document/377934. Tonta, Y. (2009). Dijital Yerliler, Sosyal Ağlar ve Kütüphanelerin Geleceği Türk Kütüphaneciliği. 23(4), 742–768. http://www.tk.org.tr/index.php/TK/article/ view/534/527. 15.10.2019. Valentina Z. (2015). “Follow me”. Authentische Kommunikation als Erfolgsfaktor für YouTuber. Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/ document/308761. 25.12.2018. Wampfler, P. (2017). YouTube als Beruf: Das sind die grössten Mythen. https:// www.srf. ch/radio-srf-virus/kompass/youtube-als-beruf-das-sind-diegroessten-mythen. 20.12.2018. Yamak, M. (2014). Youtuber Kimdir? Youtue’dan Nasıl Para Kazanılır? http:// www. webtekno.com/youtube/youtuber-kimdir-youtube-dan-nasil-parakazanilir-h3851.html. 20.12.2018. Yıldırım, M. (2018). Yeni Medyada Ürün Yerleştirme: Youtube Kanalları ve „Youtuber’lar“. Uluslararası İletişimde Yeni Yönelimler Konferansı. http:// acikerisim.ticaret.edu.tr/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11467/1894/M01154. pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 18.12.2018. Yüksel, O. (2017). Youtube ve Video Blog Rehberi (1. b.). Ankara: Nirvana. https://socialblade.com. 10.11.2018. https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/country/tr/mostsubscribed. 30.10.2018.

Hicran Özgüner Kılıç

4  The Place and Importance of Emojis in Social Media Marketing Introduction As the world rapidly changes and develops, many factors laying the foundations of its structure such as habits, lifestyles, and norms of individuals within the global society are influenced by this process. The phenomenon of socialization and the ways of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings have taken on a different dimension. Especially the technological developments have caused both the society and enterprises to spend time on digital spaces rather than physical ones and thus to develop their activities in these spaces. Social media, which is among the frequently used digital channels, has started to be featured more by enterprises and consumers compared to traditional platforms. Companies have started to conduct the majority of their marketing activities through social media platforms. The wide range of social media platforms used effectively in this respect includes social networking sites, blogs, wiki information blogs, content-sharing sites, discussion forums, video-sharing sites, photo-sharing sites, and virtual communities. As far as companies are concerned, the possible aims of making use of social media are to attract target audiences, to create a brand through increased visibility and advertising, to communicate with clients, to convince audiences, and to increase the web traffic of a website (Paswan, 2018: 8). From the consumers’ point of view, social media has many advantages such as accessing information easily without any spatial and temporal limitations, being able to compare different products and services, following positive and negative feedback, and keeping up with latest developments. Starting with the increase in time spent on social media platforms by consumers and the shift of marketing activities to social media by brands, the process led to a boost in competition and a need to enhance the effect of emotions, thoughts, and intended messages and to make a difference. The use of emojis is one of the ways of making messages directed at target audiences more effective and stronger in social media marketing. Even though emoticons and typographic displays have been used since the beginning of the Internet, nowadays enterprises and consumers prefer and increasingly use emojis to convey reactions quickly through little images (Bacon, Barlas, Dowling & Thomas, 2017: 463).

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This chapter will focus on social media and marketing, the emergence of emojis, and their place and importance in social media marketing.

1 Social Media and Social Media Marketing Social media are “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010:  61). Michael Fruchter uses 5 Cs to describe social media. According to Fruchter, social media consists of five components: conversation, community, commenting, collaboration, and contribution (Göksu, Öngören Zafer & Aka, 2018: 141). Many social media platforms are used based on these components. Even though social media platforms might differ in terms of their intended uses, they are classified similarly when the sources form the basis of an analysis. Within the framework of these classifications, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking sites, photo- and video-sharing platforms, social networking sites, podcasts, wikis, and forums are considered to be social media platforms (Kırcova & Enginkaya, 2015: 41). According to the data from January 2019, there are around 3.5 billion active social media users around the world, and Facebook, the most popular platform, is followed by YouTube and Instagram, respectively (www.wearesocial.com). Social media platforms have become not only a medium of communication between individuals but a useful tool for several aspects of business sectors like decision-making process, information-based decision support systems, brand promotions, brand marketing, brand-product cooperation, and product distribution (Arora, Bansal, Kandpal, Aswani & Dwivedi, 2019:  86). Many companies and brands accepting the vital catalyzing role of social media platforms in the creation of assets through effective communication with consumers have directed their attention towards social media marketing (Jin, 2018: 154). Due to the dynamic nature of social media marketing, there is no concrete or comprehensive definition, as many definitions have been put forward by several scientists. Social media marketing is generally seen as the interaction between marketers and consumers through bilateral digital platforms. In addition, social media marketing is also about the use of technology-based marketing tools to ensure fast and effective communication with and distribution to end users (Enyioko & Okwandu, 2019: 2). According to Weinberg, social media marketing can be defined as a process allowing individuals to promote their websites, products, brands, and services, to raise awareness concerning them, and to communicate and interact with wide audiences that are hard to reach through traditional media (Sevinç, 2012: 64).

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Brands on social media are preferred by consumers as they provide a sufficient flow of content for those using social media as a service channel and an information source. Social media has emerged as an effective marketing tool that improves the data processing skill, builds trust in purchasing decisions, strengthens the perception regarding the brand among the target audience, and increases satisfaction (Kavisekera & Abeysekera, 2016: 203). Brands are not the only ones benefiting from social media marketing. Consumers get satisfaction as well. They are able to get information about the products they need, and this information is accessible anytime and anywhere with an Internet connection (Wang, Baesens & Zhu, 2019: 83). At the same time, social media marketing helps enterprises increase website traffic and number of subscribers, form business partnerships, and improve their positions on search engines. Furthermore, it is effective in creating high-quality prospective clients and reducing general marketing expenses due to better customer development efforts (Rao, Lakshmi, Sahyaja & Dimple, 2018: 114). Especially after observing the rapid development of virtual community websites, numerous companies have started to focus on forming close and amicable relationships, creating virtual brand communities, and deepening their communicative and interactive processes with users. This is due to the emphasis on the importance of virtual brand communities in organizing marketing events that can create themes and sensory stimulation to impress clients with good memories within the competitive marketing scene (Chen & Lin, 2019: 22–23). Managing fan pages of brands over social media is a method used by companies. With these pages, clients can become fans of the brand and like, share, or just comment on brand publications (Khan, Dongping & Wahab, 2016: 694). Social media can be used by B2B companies as part of their marketing efforts to monitor comments made by clients regarding their goods and services, to answer inquiries, and to provide customer support through giving necessary information. Ashley and Tuten (2015) state that they are also used to conduct targeted campaigns and attract clients to social media platforms in order to attain general business and marketing objectives (Enyioko & Okwandu, 2019: 2). Apart from textual communication, contents like images, photographs, and videos are gradually becoming more popular in social media marketing and attract increased attention (Han, Gu & Peng, 2019: 2). Through fan pages on social media, brand managers are presented with endless opportunities to share and send information using photos, videos, messages, and comments (Raji, Rashid & Sobhi, 2017: 2). In social media marketing, emojis appear as one of the ways of making messages directed at target audiences more effective and stronger.

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2 The Emergence and Development of Emojis Docomo, a Japanese communication firm, designed the very first emoji in the shape of a heart and included the design in some of its devices in 1995. In 1998, Shigetaka Kurita from the same company developed icons to express emotions and thoughts to be used in digital communication channels (Demir, 2015). The term “emoji” derives from the Japanese Kanji character for “picture” (絵 = e) and “character” (文字 = moji) (Berard, 2018). After Google and Apple discovered the impressive side of emojis in the mid-2000s, the codes for 722 emojis were standardized by the Unicode Consortium, the organization setting global standards, in 2010 (Çeken, Aypek Arslan, Tuğrul, 2017: 94). According to the data updated by the Unicode Consortium annually, there are 2530 emoji characters as of 2018 (Berard, 2018). The term “emoji” was included in the Oxford Dictionary in 2013 (www.saremedya.com). Since 2014, 17 July is celebrated as the World Emoji Day. The reason for the particular date is the number 17 being visible in the calendar emoji (Kömürcü, 2018). In 2015, the Oxford Dictionary chose the emoji “Face with Tears of Joy” as the “Word of the Year” (Sampietro, 2016: 92). In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary declared that emojis, selected as the “Word of the Year”, not technically words yet replacing them anywhere in social media/e-mails/texts, are indeed a part of the language (Arya, Sethi & Verma, 2018: 652). Emojis consist of numerous pictorial characters including signs showing facial expressions, emotions, events, objects, human figures, weather, vehicles, buildings, food and drinks, animals, plants, flags, and other communicative symbols to clarify and strengthen the message between the sender and the receiver (Hill, 2016: 3; Berard, 2018). In other words, the term “emoji” can be defined as icons that simply express emotions and thoughts developed to reduce restrictions on text messages (Yakın & Eru, 2017:  231). With their similarity to real-life objects, emojis convey a variety of meanings and thus complement, or even replace, written language (Jaeger & Ares, 2017: 275). They show wide variety with graphic symbols showing not only facial gestures but also concepts and ideas like celebration, weather conditions, vehicles, buildings, food and drink, animals, plants, emotions, and activities (Vangelov, 2017: 133). The use of emojis in written communication might clarify the aim of intended messages and make the communicative process more comprehensible (Kaye, Malone & Wall, 2017: 67). They may be employed to intensify and set the emotional tone of a message and to complete a significant part of nonverbal online communication (Vaiciukynaite, Massara & Gatautis, 2017: 469). In a 2015 study conducted to observe the reasons behind emoji use, findings suggested that emojis are used to maintain an interactive connection, to make the conversation

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more enjoyable, and to create a common and unique space with the recipient (Özant & Kelleci, 2017: 402). Adrian Cockle, the Digital Innovation Manager of WWF (World Wide Fund For Nature), describes emojis as a global language and argues that they have a unique universal attractiveness. Therefore, they might help with the resolution of communication-sourced marketing problems encountered in the global market (Gökaliler & Saatcıoğlu, 2016: 71). Emojis cover a gradually widening range of topics with each passing day. Used by 92 % of the online population, emojis are increasingly popular particularly among young people under 30 years and women as a quick way of conveying emotions and attitudes in instant messaging services and social media (Marengo, Giannotta & Settanni, 2017: 74). They have become quite popular in smartphone messaging applications and social media platforms. Researchers indicated that emojis are easily adopted in digital communication not only because of their ease of use and rich variety, but also due to their service as socio-emotional providers (Zareen, Karım & Khan, 2016: 257). Emojis are used daily by Internet and phone operators to improve their promotional copies and social media posts (Janssen, 2018: 707). The use of emojis in SwiftKey Android and iOS motherboards for devices like smartphones and tablets was analyzed, and the development process was presented in the SwiftKey Emoji Report (Novak, Smailović, Sluban & Mozetič, 2015: 1–2), stating that emojis are quite various and popular in individual and even international usage. According to a 2016 research by Braze (formerly Appboy), an online marketing company, the use of emojis by companies for marketing activities increased by 777 % when compared with the previous year while showing an increase by 20 % on a monthly basis. These statistics show that the employment of emojis will pave the way for important developments in global digital communication (Wijeratne, Balasuriya, Sheth & Doran, 2017: 437). Andral and Larroque underline that companies and marketers are aware of the target audience towards which they can use emojis to increase the interest in the brand among consumers and to make them more conscious and that they have started integrating emojis into their marketing tools (Das, Jha, Sarkar, Sundaram & Gayathri, 2017: 137).

3 The Place and Importance of Emojis in Social Media Marketing It is crucial for brands to develop unique communicative strategies to interact with clients effectively and to lead in the competitive scene. Bearing this in mind, brands have started to make use of emojis as a way of direct, easy, and

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to-the-point communication through their social media channels. In particular, global brands’ realizing the potential of emojis in creating a universal language in social media marketing communication leads the way for their increasing usage (Kurtoğlu & Özbölük, 2016:  149). However, there are some details to which brands wishing to use emojis in their social media marketing content must pay attention. One of these details is that the meanings of emojis can change from culture to culture. For instance, while the thumbs-up emoji has a positive meaning in North America and Asia, it denotes an insult in Iraq and Greece. Furthermore, the presence of shapes, colors, and emojis varies from one platform to another. For example, the emoji with a zipper mouth in Facebook is expressed with a different symbol in microblogging sites based in China. On the other hand, the Chinese Ultraman emoji (meaning “leaving behind the trend”) is not available on Western social media platforms (Ge & Gretzel, 2018: 1275). Within the framework of social media marketing, there are many points to be minded by brands using emojis in their messages to speak the language of their clients and to strengthen the impact of their marketing messages. It is vital for brands to use emojis that are suitable for and consistent with the intended marketing messages if the brand wants to create positive perceptions among clients without any confusion. The emojis to be selected must take client sensitivities into consideration and approach the issue with appropriate seriousness. While using emojis in social media marketing, one should create a cosy atmosphere by using sincere emojis on one hand and adhere to certain principles on the other hand (Uğur, 2017). A distinct and unique cultural structure has emerged through emojis, which have developed in parallel with the developments in social media. Liking a post announcing death or illness is a concrete example (Anık, Kınık & Soncu, 2017:  51). The inherent enjoyable, semantically rich, and convincing aspects of emojis have led to their current position in social media marketing. Emojis are used by companies in activities such as advertising, branding, and marketing campaigns more frequently each day (Ge & Gretzel, 2018: 1275–1276). Various applications are available for brands developing or seeking to develop emoji labels to promote products or sales so that they can share content on social media with their target audiences. For instance, Twitter offers an option of developing unique brand emojis activated by hashtags corresponding to their respective brands (Mathews & Lee, 2018: 48). Another example is the numerous posts shared by many brands including Garanti Bankası (a bank in Turkey), Unilever, Yapı Kredi Bankası (another Turkish bank), NTV Science and Technology, Bioderma Turkey, Pegasus Airlines, Turkish Airlines, KFC, and PTT (Turkish postal services) on the World Emoji Day 2018 (www.campaingnt.com).

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Such activities might be evaluated within the scope of public relations activities of brands. Furthermore, available for use since 2016, Twitter’s “emoji-based targeting” feature paves the way for targeting users based on the emojis used in their tweets and their moods and ways of thinking. The feature also connects users and brands based on instantaneous emotions (www.dunya.com). With the “Emoji Slider” survey option added to Instagram in 2018, individuals and brands have a better connection with their followers; more developed relationships are possible; there is an option of making choices among different alternatives; and asking questions with emojis is easier (www.dijitalajanslar.com). Renewed on a daily basis by brands, “emoji keyboards” are also quite popular on social media. For example, Starbucks has developed its own emoji keyboard. Available for Android and iOS, the emoji keyboard has emojis showing Starbucks products. The keyboard can also be used with WhatsApp, Messenger, and iMessage applications (www.dijitalage.com.tr). Furthermore, the long list of brands creating their own brand-based emojis includes Mentos, IKEA, Domino’s, Coca-Cola, Burger King, Beymen, Pepsi, Samsung, Orkid, and Chanel (Şener & Atar, 2017: 199). Brands have included an enjoyable, different language of unique emoji keyboards, social media campaigns, and moving emojis used in advertising like actors in their marketing communication strategies (Güven, 2018: 88). One of the good examples of emoji use in social media marketing is as follows: Çaykur, a Turkish tea brand, created a new social media campaign to promote Turkish tea culture in the world and stated that the existing tea emojis do not look like “our traditional tea cups” with the hashtag #TEAmojiNOW, thereby encouraging users to share on social media (www. marketingturkiye.com.tr). Ucuzabilet.com, a Turkish plane ticket vendor, used emojis with human bodies rather than real-life actors as part of advertisements and made the video available on YouTube before videos to be watched (www. youtube.com, 2018). The brands-related section of a study conducted by FikriMühim, the first and the biggest Turkish marketing agency and research company specialized in word-of-mouth marketing, concludes that emojis recall communication brands most, which are followed by brands in the food sector. Brands associated with each emoji are given in Fig. 4.1 (www.fikrimuhim.com). It is possible to say that emojis used by brands have a significant effect on positive perceptions regarding them in social media marketing. As emojis have become a more popular medium of communication, they provide an opportunity for fashion brands to humanize themselves and thus to increase their interactions with their target consumers (Mathews, Botwin & Lee, 2017: 1).

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Fig. 4.1:  Brands Frequently Associated with Emojis. Source: https://www.fikrimuhim. com/

Conclusion Social media consists of numerous platforms and applications that renew themselves and get renewed through creative ideas. The number of enterprises not making use of social media for marketing purposes decreases with each passing day. Apart from traditional media, focusing on social media marketing has become inevitable for companies. The employment of emojis by brands is crucial while conducting marketing activities on social media in order to speak the language of consumers and to strengthen the impact of marketing messages. Emojis might offer brands the opportunity to increase the effectiveness of their communicative activities, express emotions and thoughts better, and empathize and bring them to a privileged position on social media. These privileges may be effective in brands creating marketing activities on social media and releasing unique applications. In conclusion, it can be predicted that social media platforms will be renewed and improved through creative ideas; the number of social media users will rise; and this trend will continue in an increasing manner every passing day. As long as the process takes place this way, it is plausible to state that enterprises will increase their investments in social media marketing activities. The awareness of emojis as enjoyable and communicative tools for social media marketing is likely to increase among companies and consumers, and the importance attached to them is likely to reach a considerable extent.

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İbrahim Sabuncu

5  Social Media Analytics Introduction Technological developments such as the Internet, mobile applications, and social media allow enterprises to collect large amounts of data. The cost of storing these data is decreasing gradually. This resulted in an increasing amount of stored data at exponential speed. As a matter of fact, the size of the data in the digital universe is expected to increase 10 times from 2013 to 2020 and increase from 4.4 trillion gigabytes to 44 trillion (International Data Corporation (IDC), 2014). Data stored in the digital environment has become a very important asset for companies. The emergence of large amounts of data and making use of these data have led to the development of a business management model based on the data. Businesses are trying to obtain useful information by analyzing big data with the methods called Business Analytics. Business analytics is the use of information technology, statistical analysis, quantitative methods, and mathematical or computer-based models to help managers become better informed about business activities and make better, fact-based decisions (Evans, 2016). Business analytics methods can be used in all departments of the enterprise such as production, quality control, research and development, logistics, finance, and accounting, but most in marketing. In fact, Vaughan (2017), referring to a survey conducted by the Bain & Company research company, stated that the biggest impact of the big data was in the field of marketing with 38.2 %. Business analytics applications in the field of marketing is called customer analytics (Charan, 2015). Customer analytics is the use of data obtained from many channels such as accounting records of businesses, social media, web page, and mobile applications for processing with appropriate methods to make marketing decisions according to the obtained information (Venkatesan, Farris, & Wilcox, 2014). The use of social media data for customer analytics has been defined as social media analytics as an important subfield of business analytics (Holsapple, Hsiao, & Pakath, 2018). Social media data can be used for segmentation, targeting, marketing communication, product pricing, and sales (Salo, 2017). By analyzing social media and search engine activities of individuals such as sharing, viewing,

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liking, interacting pages and applications, it is possible for companies to identify potential customers and provide advertisements about their product to potential customers (Laudon & Traver, 2017). Natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence algorithms are used to analyze social media data (Lee, 2018) (Syam & Sharma, 2018). By using these analyses, social media posts can be categorized as positive, negative, and neutral. Categorized posts are used for tracking brand image, calculation net promoter score (NPS), and net advocacy index (Charan, 2015). In addition, by using text mining and topic modeling algorithms prominent issues in these posts can be identified (Charan, 2015). Thus, important information such as the distribution of positive/negative shares according to regions and important issues in the messages about the brand is obtained. By understanding the main topics in the negative messages, managers can make proactive decisions in order to eliminate brandrelated negativities.

1 Social Media Analytics Applications An important subfield of business analytics is social media analytics (Holsapple et al., 2018). Within the scope of social media analytics, it is stated that social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TripAdvisor can be used effectively for brand communication and promotional activities and improve business performance (Wang, Pauleen, & Zhang, 2016). There are large amounts of unclassified data on social media. In order to convert this data into useful information, methods such as text mining, natural language processing, artificial intelligence (Makridakis, 2017), and machine learning are needed (Evans, 2016). The first three analysis methods that the researches in the field of social media analytics have taken into consideration are 15.4 % Content Analysis, 15.3 % Natural Language Processing, and 13.4 % Sentiment Analysis, respectively (Misirlis & Vlachopoulou, 2018). Social media analytics applications can be performed on social media platforms such as Facebook (Ketter, 2016) (Sitta, Faulkner, & Stern, 2018); Twitter (Birjali, Beni-Hssane, & Erritali, 2017) (Ahuja & Shakeel, 2017) (Öztürk & Ayvaz, 2018) (Kim, Sung, & Kang, 2014) (Saif, He, Fernandez, & Alani, 2016); Instagram (KALE, 2016); and TripAdvisor (Chang, Ku, & Chen, 2017). The effect of social media analytics on business profitability, success, and performance depends on various factors. For example, the findings of the survey conducted with 220 sales experts in the United States show that the use of social media can benefit B2B sales (Guesalaga, 2016). In this study, it is stated that the managers of companies should be educated about social media. In addition, the

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importance of social media expertise and the use of social media in brand development were mentioned. Among other studies indicating that social media and analytics increase sales performance (Itani, Agnihotri, & Dingus, 2017) (Cuevas, 2018), there are studies investigating the social media analytics applications in the field of brand image. For example, research on 384 hotels in the United Kingdom showed positive effects of social media on hotel branding, innovation capabilities, and performance (Tajvidi & Karami, 2017). An example of analyzing social media data with the NLP method for image management is the study of Chang et al. with TripAdvisor data (Chang et al., 2017). In this study, the authors developed a method that automatically does sentiment analysis of hotel reviews published on TripAdvisor. With this method, their objective is defined as to help hotel managers understand the emotion in the new comments. In another study related to the processing of social media, data was performed by sentiment analysis of Twitter messages (Birjali et al., 2017). It is stated that Twitter data is the largest ever-growing social networking site and is seen as an important source of big data. In this study, data was collected from social networks with Apache Flume and recorded in Hadoop repository. To analyze this data, InfoSphere BigInsights big data technology was used. Also, BigSheets was used to visualize the results. With the effect of electronic word of mouth on social media, mentions about a brand either can benefit the brand’s image or damage it. Traditional word of mouth is defined as the sharing of feelings, thoughts, and experiences of individuals about a brand, a product, or an organization. In social media, such posts are referred to as electronic word of mouth (E-WOM). While the traditional word-of-mouth effect is limited to a few people around the source, such mentions can reach a large number of individuals due to the nature of social media and a large number of users (Melancon & Dalakas, 2018). This shows the importance of social media in image management (Duan, Gu, & Whinston, 2008) (Bone, 1995).

2 Social Media Analytics Methods Utilizing social media analytics requires a three-step process. Firstly, it is necessary to collect the required social media data, then analyze the data with the appropriate software, and at the last stage, interpret the obtained results. In this section, the methods that can be used to carry out these steps are described. There are some companies that will help to get that data from Social Media. For example, Hootsuite is a company that does data collection on Facebook,

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Instagram, and Twitter. Brand24 and Sprout Social are other examples of a company that collects data from social media. There are many other companies that are collecting information on what customers are saying and doing on social media. By using these data, it can be seen how company brand mentions might be changing over time. A lot of kinds of questions can be answered using this type of data. The first one is audience engagement. The number of people who response an advertising campaign on Facebook or Twitter can be calculated. That gives a sense of how good that campaign is. Another example might be more along the lines of thinking about brand mentions. Companies can learn if their brand is being mentioned more times than their competitors. This is called a share of voice (Iyengar, 2016). The number of times the brand is mentioned is as important as how it is mentioned. It should be learned if it is mentioned in a positive or negative way. To manage that sentiment analysis is needed to be applied to social media messages. All different kinds of issues should be considered together with brand mentions to see how they might change over time. Social media monitoring companies can help to collect this type of data to see how a brand is trending on social media as compared to competitor brands. It is possible to link social media accounts with the company website and mobile applications. Thus, not only the interaction of customers with their social media accounts but also the website visits and actions that are taken on the website can be followed. For this purpose, there are cookie codes generated by social media sites. These cookie codes must be uploaded to the website. For example, these codes are named Facebook Pixel for Facebook and LinkedIn insight tag for LinkedIn. As an alternative to companies that provide ready-to-use data as above, businesses can import data directly from social media sites and analyze it with their own analysis software. Examples of software that can be used to extract the data needed from social media are R open source software or data mining software such as RapidMiner (https://www.rstudio.com; https://rapidminer.com). In order to extract data from social media with these software, it is necessary to use the API application of the relevant social media platform. For example, to gather messages from Twitter that include an identified brand, company, or product name, or any other keyword, a Twitter developer account should be created at first, followed by generating a Twitter API application. Using the Twitter API application’s access and token codes, the TwitteR package of the R program or the SearchTwitter module of RapidMiner data mining software can search for relevant words in the Twitter database and download the appropriate messages (https://developer.twitter.com/; https://apps.twitter.com/

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app/; https://www.rstudio.com/products/rpackages/). If a free Twitter developer account membership is used, the messages to be searched are limited to the last week only. However, if the premium paid option is used, it is possible to browse all of Twitter’s database messages. Once the data is collected, it needs to be analyzed, visualized, and interpreted. The data can be visualized even using a simple MS Excel table, and graph provides important information. For example, by using Twitter posts, the daily numbers of messages referring to a particular brand can be transferred to an Excel spreadsheet and changes can be observed according to the days. In the days of excessive increases in the number of mention, it may indicate that there is a remarkable event or news related to the brand, and the impact of this news can be seen on social media. Of course, besides the visualization of the number of shares, there is a lot of available further analysis. Examples of these analyses are text mining, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis for determination of emotion in social media messages. The analyses can be performed both with the R program and with the ready functions available in RapidMiner. Data can also be saved in spreadsheet or database file format and analyzed in different statistical software. For sentiment analysis, the “Syuzhet ”package of the R programming language or the sentiment analysis module of the RapidMiner data mining software can be used. Also, there is MS Excel add-in such as MeaningCloud for sentiment analysis (https://www.meaningcloud.com/). The sentiment analysis function of the R Syuzhet package is dictionary-based. The dictionary has precalculated scores for each word in 10 different emotion categories. These emotion categories are: “Anger”, “Expectation”, “Disgust”, “Fear”, “Joy”, “Sadness”, “Surprise”, “Confidence”, “Positive”, and “Negative”. The emotion scores of the words were calculated manually by the crowdsourcing method (Mohammad & Turney, 2013). To determine whether a Twitter message is positive or negative, the emotion scores of the words are summed. For example, if there are four words with positive emotions next to two words with negative emotions with equal points, the message is categorized as positive since the total score will be positive. Once the emotions of social media posts are identified, the change of positive and negative mentions about the brand is examined. As a result of an advertising campaign, positive shares are expected to increase. However, if negative shares are also increasing, situations that cause negative perceptions of advertising should be inspected. The topic modeling method is used to detect negative issues in negative posts. With the topic modeling function, which is available in the R programming language, the words usually found together in the texts given are determined. As a result of this analysis, words that are frequently repeated in

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negative messages and commonly used together are determined. These words give clues about the subject of negative shares. At the end of the few steps described here, the issues that cause thousands of people to think negative about the brand can be identified very quickly. What’s more, the social media account names of the people who are sharing a negative or positive message can be downloaded together with the message and other data. If the person has set their profile settings to public, even the picture, location, and other personal information of the person who had mentioned about the brand can be downloaded, too. By using this information, it is possible to communicate with the person who has negative thoughts about the company, and his discomfort may be eliminated before the negative message spreads too much. On the other hand, positive sharing can be encouraged through chatbots that automatically thank people who share positive messages. In fact, if the person who makes a positive mention is a profile with a lot of followers, it is possible to increase his positive mentions by giving him various awards. So, as a result of electronic word of mouth because of these positive posts of a popular person, his followers may post a positive message about the brand, too. As a result, brand image tracking can be performed with the information obtained from the analyses of social media data. When a new campaign is launched, it can be determined how and to what extent this campaign affects the mentions about the brand on social media. Instead of collecting data from limited numbers of people through high-cost traditional methods such as surveys, it may be possible to learn people’s opinions about the company, brands, and products by analyzing people’s voluntarily shared messages on social media.

Conclusion The reviewed studies show that business analytics, customer analytics, and social media analytics are important tools for businesses. For business analytics applications, businesses are required to collect data using a variety of software and technologies. It is difficult to benefit from business analytics for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who have not yet established the necessary IT infrastructure and do not store their data regularly. However, since data on social media are provided by the relevant social media companies, it is possible for SMEs to benefit from social media analytics applications without any investment. What is needed is only information gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data from social media. This increases the importance of social media analytics. Despite its importance, social media analytics and similar methods are not widely used. The two most important reasons (Evans, 2016) for this are the lack

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of information and personnel on how to use analytical methods and the inadequate understanding of the benefits compared to the perceived costs of analytical studies. Social media data are assets that are waiting to be processed for marketers. However, only marketing science knowledge is not sufficient for processing these mines. To get the most out of social media analytics methods, companies need software developers who know how to collect data, data analysts and statisticians who know how to handle this data, and marketing science experts who know how to interpret processed data. Of course, the need for managers who understand all of these processes is increasing. As a result, there is a need to increase the awareness of academicians and private sector representatives and to add these subjects to the education curricula through further studies in this field.

References Ahuja, V., & Shakeel, M. (2017). Twitter presence of Jet Airways-deriving customer insights using netnography and wordclouds. Procedia Computer Science, 122, 17–24. Birjali, M., Beni-Hssane, A., & Erritali, M. (2017). Analyzing social media through big data using InfoSphere BigInsights and Apache Flume. Procedia Computer Science, 113, 280–285. Bone, P. F. (1995). Word-of-mouth effects on short-term and long-term product judgments. Journal of Business Research, 32(3), 213–223. Chang, Y.-C., Ku, C.-H., & Chen, C.-H. (2017). Social media analytics: Extracting and visualizing Hilton hotel ratings and reviews from TripAdvisor. International Journal of Information Management. Charan, A. (2015). Marketing Analytics: A Practitioner’s Guide to Marketing Analytics and Research Methods. Singapore, World Scientific Publishing Company. Cuevas, J. M. (2018). The transformation of professional selling: Implications for leading the modern sales organization. Industrial Marketing Management, 69, 198–208. Duan, W., Gu, B., & Whinston, A. B. (2008). The dynamics of online word-ofmouth and product sales-An empirical investigation of the movie industry. Journal of Retailing, 84(2), 233–242. Evans, J. R. (2016). Business Analytics (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. Guesalaga, R. (2016). The use of social media in sales: Individual and organizational antecedents, and the role of customer engagement in social media. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, 71–79.

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Holsapple, C. W., Hsiao, S.-H., & Pakath, R. (2018). Business social media analytics: Characterization and conceptual framework. Decision Support Systems. International Data Corporation (IDC). (2014). The digital universe of opportunities. Retrieved from https://www.emc.com/collateral/analystreports/idc-digital-universe-2014.pdf Access date: 15.03.2019. Itani, O. S., Agnihotri, R., & Dingus, R. (2017). Social media use in {B2b} sales and its impact on competitive intelligence collection and adaptive selling: Examining the role of learning orientation as an enabler. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, 64–79. Iyengar, R. (2016).Descriptive Customer Analytics. Retrieved from https://www. coursera.org/learn/wharton-customer-analytics. Access date: 10.03.2019. Kale, G. Ö. (2016). Marka İletişiminde Instagram Kullanımı. The Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art and Communication, 6(2), 119–127. Ketter, E. (2016). Destination image restoration on facebook: The case study of Nepal’s Gurkha Earthquake. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 28, 66–72. Kim, E., Sung, Y., & Kang, H. (2014). Brand followers’ retweeting behavior on Twitter: How brand relationships influence brand electronic word-of-mouth. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 18–25. Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2017). E-Commerce 2017 (13th ed.). Pearson Education Limited. Lee, I. (2018). Social media analytics for enterprises: Typology, methods, and processes. Business Horizons, 61(2), 199–210. Makridakis, S. (2017). The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on society and firms. Futures, 90, 46–60. Melancon, J. P., & Dalakas, V. (2018). Consumer social voice in the age of social media: Segmentation profiles and relationship marketing strategies. Business Horizons, 61(1), 157–167. Misirlis, N., & Vlachopoulou, M. (2018). Social media metrics and analytics in marketing – S3M: A mapping literature review. International Journal of Information Management, 38(1), 270–276. Mohammad, S. M., & Turney, P. D. (2013). Crowdsourcing a word-emotion association lexicon. Computational Intelligence, 29(3), 436–465. Öztürk, N., & Ayvaz, S. (2018). Sentiment analysis on Twitter: A text mining approach to the Syrian refugee crisis. Telematics and Informatics, 35(1), 136–147.

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Saif, H., He, Y., Fernandez, M., & Alani, H. (2016). Contextual semantics for sentiment analysis of Twitter. Information Processing and Management, 52(1), 5–19. Salo, J. (2017). Social media research in the industrial marketing field: Review of literature and future research directions. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, 115–129. Sitta, D., Faulkner, M., & Stern, P. (2018). What can the brand manager expect from Facebook? Australasian Marketing Journal, 1–6. Syam, N., & Sharma, A. (2018). Waiting for a sales renaissance in the fourth industrial revolution: Machine learning and artificial intelligence in sales research and practice. Industrial Marketing Management, 69, 135–146. Tajvidi, R., & Karami, A. (2017). The effect of social media on firm performance. Computers in Human Behavior. Vaughan, R. J. (2017). Examining the data analytics skill gap in mid-level marketing professionals. Driven by the Continuing Exponential Growth of Big Data, 5(3). Venkatesan, R., Farris, P., & Wilcox, R. T. (2014). Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics: Real World Cases and Data Sets for Hands-on Learning. Pearson Education. Wang, W. Y. C., Pauleen, D. J., & Zhang, T. (2016). How social media applications affect {B2B} communication and improve business performance in {SMEs}. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, 4–14.

Ali Özdemir, Fatih Temizel, and Ethem Esen

6  Social Media Use by Companies and Its Evaluation Based on Selected Financial Indicators Introduction In present-day financial markets, joint-stock companies have started to benefit significantly from social media regarding competitive matters of public relations and financial communication. The effect, added-value, and cost benefits of the effective use of websites in general and social media in particular are noteworthy. These advantages provide the impetus for the rapid and continuous boom and diversification of initiatives by joint-stock companies in this regard. This is a natural and sound development. This situation is substantial and imperative for the transparency of relationships with both investors and clients. At the same time, being one of the vital components of the virtual world for diversified marketing activities and appropriate crisis management, social media management is gradually becoming a considerably effective communication channel for joint-share companies. The democratization of finance has helped individuals assume responsibilities for managing their own finances. In this case, as social beings, people have become able to reach any kind of information concerning their financial responsibilities through social media online. Therefore, communicating with a limited circle of corporate investors, securities analysts, suppliers, and financial organizations lost its popularity as a strategy for joint-share companies. Meanwhile, with the contribution of globalization, the actors mentioned above have shown significant progress in terms of both numbers and geographical distribution. This rendered direct communication unsustainable. On the other hand, now needing to assume the responsibility for managing their own finances, individual investors have come into play. As a result, millions of shareholders from different parts of the world with different goals and expectations have started to demand live and continuous information flow regarding themselves from jointshare companies. Social media has come to the forefront as a channel through which joint-share companies can meet this novel demand for information in an interactive, instantaneous, sustainable, and cost-efficient manner. In addition to

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functioning as an information transfer hub, social media has become a platform within which information is analyzed publicly. Joint-stock companies included or aimed to be included in the financial markets of developed countries must keep up with these developments. This makes up the motivation for selection of the joint-share companies in the BIST All Index, including a significant share of joint-share companies in such a position, as the subject of the present study. Determining the positions of joint-share companies in Turkey in terms of their social media use is vital in this respect as it will be possible to compare the outlook with reality. Following that, the use of the possibility can be brought to the agenda. Such evaluations will play a key role in the determination of guidelines for Turkish joint-share companies.

1 Literature Review The area of use of social media by companies for public disclosure widens rapidly on a global scale. This paved the way for many studies in the literature. In a study titled “The Impact of Having a Corporate Blog on the Companies’ Revenue and Profit: A Study on the Fortune 500”, Özgüner Kılıç (2011) examined blogs, one of the social media platforms, in a conceptual manner and made a comparative analysis of revenues and profits of companies included in the Fortune 500 list that have and do not have corporate blogs. The analysis results indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of revenues and average profits. Companies having corporate blogs generate, on average, more revenues and profit. Furthermore, there is a correlation between having a corporate blog and being in the upper percentages in the Fortune 500. Within the scope of a study titled “New Generation Marketing in Social Media and a Research on Usage of Social Networks in Turkish Communication and Information Technologies Industry”, Kara (2011) conducted research on social media marketing methods used by prominent companies in Turkey following an explanation of social media networks and their effectiveness. For this purpose, the six largest companies in the field of information and communication services were analyzed. It was found that only three of the companies in the sector analyzed in Turkey are active in social media networks. In addition, the research results suggested that companies offering products and services for personal use tend to use social media networks. Zhang, Fuehres, and Gloor (2011) attempted to estimate stock market indices like Dow Jones, NASDAQ, S&P 500, and VIX by analyzing Twitter data within the framework of their study titled “Predicting Stock Market Indicators Through

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Twitter: I Hope It Is Not As Bad As I Fear”. Tweets posted within six months were collected for estimating hope and concern. The correlation between the indices mentioned above and stock market indicators was analyzed. The percentage of emotional tweets was revealed to have a significant negative correlation with Dow Jones, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 while having a positive correlation with the VIX index. Bollen, Mao, and Zeng (2011) tried to see whether the daily feed on Twitter is really useful in estimating the public stock market using mood measurement tools named Opinion Finder and Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS) within the scope of a study titled “Twitter Mood Predicts the Stock Market”. As a result, it was observed that the accuracy of Dow Jones index predictions can be remarkably improved when mood time series are taken into consideration or, in other words, there is a positive correlation. An accuracy rate of 86.7 % was revealed for the Dow Jones index by the end of the day. In a study titled “The Effects of Social Media on Consumer Behaviours:  A Research on Social Media Users in Turkey”, İşlek (2012) conducted a survey on social media users in order to observe the impact of social media on consumer behavior. The research results indicated that social media tools influence consumer decisions before and after the purchase. Kazançoğlu, Üstündağlı, and Baybars (2012) conducted a research on user attitudes towards Facebook ads and the influence of these ads on purchasing behavior within the scope of their study titled “The Effect of Consumers’ Attitudes Towards Social Network Advertisements on Purchasing Behaviour: The Facebook Example”. A  survey was administered to Facebook users, and the results were evaluated based on 409 valid questionnaire forms. The findings of the study indicate that the main factors contributing to the formation of consumer attitudes towards Facebook ads are the time spent on Facebook and the intensity of consumer attention towards the ads. Furthermore, it was revealed in the study that the negative attitudes towards Facebook ads also affect purchasing behavior negatively. In their study titled “An Investigation on Place of Social Media in Promotion Mix”, Köksal and Özdemir (2013) examined the role of social media in the marketing mix. It was underlined in the study that social media must be regarded as a novel element of promotion within the marketing mix. Sprenger, Sandner, Tumasjan, and Welpe (2013) analyzed around 250,000 entries from microblogging forums using the computational linguistics method within the framework of their study titled “Tweets and Trades: The Information Content of Stock Microblogs”. The sensitivity of tweets regarding abnormal stock yields and message volumes was calculated in order to estimate the trading

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volume for the next day. The results of the analysis indicate that users offering above-average investment advice are retweeted more and have more followers. This creates an increase in the volume of entries in microblogging forums. İşler, Çiftçi, and Yarangümelioğlu (2013) dealt with social media within the scope of public relations and focused on the advantages and disadvantages of these tools in their study titled “Social Media as an Instrument of Public Relations and New Strategies”. Their findings suggest that public relations strategies should be examined in terms of their effective use of social media and should be updated accordingly. Chen, De, Hu, and Hwang (2013) investigated how investor opinions reflect on investor trading and securities prices on Seeking Alpha, a popular social networking site, within the scope of their study titled “Customers as Advisors: The Role of Social Media in Financial Markets”. To that end, a new software tool was designed to download articles written between a specific time period from the Seeking Alpha website and to gather relevant information from these downloaded files. It was revealed in the study that the opinions shared on Seeking Alpha are strongly correlated with stock yields of companies. The significant effects of social media interaction on investor behavior were emphasized. The impact of peer advice over financial markets was also underlined. In a study titled “Social Media in Financial Services: A Theoretical Perspective”, Kumar and Devi (2014) examined the relationship between social media and finance from a theoretical perspective. The study provides an account for the claims that financial institutions adopting the use of social media platforms can address online customer complaints in a better way, and that they can answer these complaints before they hurt their reputations. Companies providing financial services should benefit from the power of social media to increase customer services, to manage their reputations, and to gain competitive advantage. The social media brings companies together with their stakeholders while making information more accessible. Yang, Kevin Mo, and Liu (2015) presented empirical evidence regarding the existence of a financial community among Twitter users with their study titled “Twitter Financial Community Sentiment and Its Predictive Relationship to Stock Market Movement”. A new methodology was created to detect this community influencing financial markets. A sensitivity criterion was created using a new sentiment analysis algorithm, and the relationship between the social sensitivities of influential Twitter users among the financial community in question and the financial market trends was detected. In a study titled “The Evolving Disclosure Landscape:  How Changes in Technology, the Media, and Capital Markets Are Affecting Disclosure”, Miller

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and Skinner (2015) examined the ways companies use for public disclosure under five subtitles. One of these subtitles is the use of social media. According to Miller and Skinner, stock repurchase announcements of companies using Facebook and Twitter have fewer negative effects when compared with those of companies that do not make use of these networks. Companies might inform users and clients on social media in order to mitigate the negative impacts of “crises” regarding repurchasing. In a study titled “Do Financial Blogs Serve an Infomediary Role in Capital Markets?”, Rickett (2016) employed the method of multivariate regression analysis in order to see whether the abnormal yields of companies mentioned in the posts on the financial blog SeekingAlpha.com are related to the information asymmetry of the market reaction concerning these publications, revenue quality, and economic uncertainty. According to the findings of the study, the financial blog in question and abnormal yields are related in market conditions where information asymmetry is elevated and which tend to lower prices, and purchasing advice is published on the blog especially for companies with high information asymmetry. In a study titled “Social Media Big Data and Capital Markets—An Overview”, Bukovina (2016) gives an outlook of the academic research on the connection between social media and capital markets. The theoretical logic of this relationship is mainly defined with behavioral finance. In the study, social media data are presented in both technical and economic terms. Furthermore, the study contributes to the theoretical structuring of the transmission mechanism between social media and capital markets.

2 Methodology Companies use social media to contribute to their public relations efforts and competitiveness. Initiatives of companies wanting to benefit from the advantages of effective social media usage gradually become more evident. Companies make use of social media for a variety of purposes ranging from developing transparent relationships with investors and clients to diversifying marketing activities and crisis management, thereby transforming social media into effective tools of communication. In the present study, social media usage rates between 01.01.2016 and 01.01.2017 of companies operating in Turkey and traded in BIST All Index and whether these companies differ in terms of the selected financial indicators were analyzed. To that end, social media presences and usages of companies registered in BIST between 01.01.2016 and 01.01.2017 in the selected social media platforms were examined. The uses of Facebook, Twitter,

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and YouTube by companies in the said time period were investigated, and the companies were classified based on this criterion. The differentiation of companies in terms of their social media use was based on the median number of posts. Companies making more posts than the median were regarded as active users while those making fewer as passive users. Therefore, it became possible to make a comparison of active and passive users of social media in terms of their financial indicators. Within the scope of the study, data were collected under two groups. The first group of data concerns the social media uses of all companies registered in BIST. The numbers of posts made on the said social media platforms by companies were collected. The second group is about the financial performances of companies. These data are from the final quarter of 2016 and come from the annual financial reports of companies. Net income, net sales and revenues, the market value of the company, market value/book value, interest, and earnings before tax were selected as the indicators of financial performance. Initially, the states of companies in the Borsa Istanbul National All (XUTUM) Index regarding their uses of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were determined. Then the companies registered in BIST were classified as active users and passive users of social media. Research hypotheses aimed at comparing selected indicators such as net income, net sales or revenues, the market value of the company, market value/book value, interest, and earnings before tax were proposed and tested using Mann Whitney U Test, a nonparametric hypothesis test.

3 Findings In this part of the study, Facebook/Twitter/YouTube usage tendencies of and financial performance comparison between companies in the BIST All Index are presented separately.

3.1 Facebook Usage Tendencies of Companies in the BIST All Index and a Financial Performance Comparison The states of companies regarding their use of Facebook were analyzed in terms of having/not having an account and the number of posts made from this medium. Table 6.1 shows whether companies in question have a Facebook account. It was found out that 91 out of 292 companies included in the study did not have a Facebook account in the period in which the data was collected. Meanwhile, 201 companies had a Facebook account in this period, accounting for around 69 % of the companies examined in the study.

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Tab. 6.1:  Companies Having/Not Having a Facebook Account. Source: Created by Authors

With an Account Without an Account Total

The Number of Companies 91 201 292

Percentage 31.2 68.8 100.0

Cumulative Percentage 31.2 100.0

Tab. 6.2:  Facebook Post Quartile Values. Source: Created by Authors N

The Number of Companies Reached The Number of Companies Not Reached

Average Median Percentile

25 50 75

198 3 129.08 82.00 8.50 82.00 177.75

Table 6.2 shows the quartile values of companies in terms of Facebook posts. The average number of Facebook posts made within the said time period was found to be around 129 while the median value is 82. Upon ranking the companies in ascending order of number of posts, it is seen that companies sharing around eight posts or less constitute 25 % of the total number of companies. The value dividing companies into two equal groups in terms of the number of posts was found as 82. For the companies within the last group of 25 % with the most sharing, the minimum number of posts was found as nearly 177. Research hypotheses to see whether companies differ in terms of selected indicators such as net income, net sales or revenues, the market value of the company, market value/book value, interest, and earnings before tax when their usages of Facebook are taken into consideration are as follows: H1: Companies that are active and passive users of Facebook differ in terms of their net income. H2: Companies that are active and passive users of Facebook differ in terms of their net sales or revenues. H3: Companies that are active and passive users of Facebook differ in terms of their market values.

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Tab. 6.3:  Mann-Whitney U Test Results for Companies That Are Active and Passive Facebook Users in Terms of Selected Financial Variables. Source: Created by Authors Net Income Sales or Revenues Mann-Whitney U 3345.0 Z -1.554 Asymp. Sig. 0.120 (2-tailed)

2833.000 -3.069 0.002

Company Market Value 3129.500 -3.250 0.001

Market Interest Value/Book and Value Earnings Before Tax 4058.500 3382.500 -0.475 -0.966 0.635 0.334

H4: Companies that are active and passive users of Facebook differ in terms of their market value/book value. H5: Companies that are active and passive users of Facebook differ in terms of interest and earnings before tax.

Table 6.3 shows the Mann-Whitney U Test results for companies that are active and passive users of Facebook in terms of selected financial variables. The hypothesis test results show that the sales/revenues of companies using Facebook actively (median= 891691.500) are different from those that are not (median= 488702.000) with a significance level of 0.05 (p=0.002