Yasemin Tosun, who works as a researcher at VIRAL Lab, which conducts research in the field of Computational Social Sciences at Sabancı University, has been awarded support under the TÜBİTAK 3501 Career Program with her project entitled “A Study of Online Activism on Social Media: The Case of Turkey”.
The project conducts a comprehensive analysis to understand how digital activism is shaped in Turkey and how it interacts with political dynamics. It investigates digital activism patterns and user clusters on social media, focusing particularly on election periods and ideological polarization processes. In this context, it examines the structure of online discussions, users' political interaction patterns, and the strategic responses of political elites using large-scale Twitter data.
The project's three main research themes focus on how social media reflects democratic processes: digital activism in election cycles, polarization and agenda setting, and the strategic behavior of political elites.
Dr. Onur Varol, faculty member of the Computer Science Program at Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mert Moral, faculty member of the Sabancı University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will act as consultants in the project.