The Mobilization Process of Syria’s Activists: The Symbiotic Relationship Between the Use of ICTs and the Political Culture

Using extensive interviews of Syrian activists and tracing the course of initially peaceful protests, this article explores the mobilization tactics protesters adopted over four distinct phases of Syrian protests up to August 2011. Analysis reveals that in establishing trustful relations and a sense of effectiveness and belonging among the protesters, interpersonal communication was more effective and faster than the hybrid media activities of Facebook administrators. Nevertheless, the uprising’s later stages show that the more protesters became accustomed to protest culture, the more they benefited from ICTs. Many scholars studying ICTs’ role in the protests have advanced the idea that people’s use of the technology—not the technology itself—affected social processes. This study takes this argument a step further to claim that people’s use of technology constitutes a dependent variable linked to the country’s political culture

Balding Goes Trolling? Cross-Media Amplification of Controversy at the 2012 Olympics

Article published with author as Billur Aslan not Billur Ozgul

Reliability and Validity of “Parents’ Evaluation of Responsible Behaviors of 5-6 Year Old Children” Scale

This study is aimed at developing a scale (Parents’ Evaluation of Responsible Behaviors Of 5-6 Year Old Children) for measuring parents’ evaluation of their 5-6 year-old children’s responsible behaviors . The construct validity of the scale was tested by Factor Analysis. Factor analysis determined that the scale can be clustered under 10 factors. Item total correlations were calculated and independent samples t-test was conducted in order to determine the presence of a meaningful difference between the top and the bottom %27 groups. The reliabilities of the scale and their subscales were analysed by using Cronbach Alpha technique. Cronbach Alpha of the whole scale is 0, 92. And cronbach alpha analysis of the subscales were also so high. Also split half and test-retest reliability analyses were done. 1st Section reliability was found as Alfa: 0, 83 and 2nd Section reliability as Alfa: 0, 90.The results showed that the scale had good psychometric properties and thus could be used to assess the responsibility behaviors of 5-6 year olds

The Different Organizational Structures of Alternative Media: Through the Perspective of Alternative Media Journalists in Turkey and Greece

This article analyses and compares the organizational structures of alternative media projects in Turkey and Greece; two countries that have recently witnessed networked social movements. Drawing on in-depth interviews with journalists working in six alternative media projects, we inform on the news production process, the news values and normative ideals adopted by these journalists while covering the news and explore if they make use of similar or different organizational structures. Our research invites a rethinking of alternative media to focus on their unique features and the differing experiences and values of their journal ists. Our findings indicate that, alternative professional journalists’ news production routines in both countries vary based on their organization’s scale, normative ideals, the political and media con texts in which they operate. In this study, we reflect on what these different news production routines accomplish or fail to, and their broader implications for journalism

The psychology of democracy

What is a democracy? Why do we form democratic systems? Can democracy survive in an age of distrust and polarisation? The Psychology of Democracy explains the psychological underpinnings behind why people engage with and participate in politics. Covering the influence that political campaigns and media play, the book analyses topical and real-world political events including the Arab Spring, Brexit, Black Lives Matter, the US 2020 elections and the Covid-19 pandemic. Lilleker and Ozgul take the reader on a journey to explore the cognitive processes at play when engaging with a political news item all the way through to taking to the streets to protest government policy and action. In an age of post-truth and populism, The Psychology of Democracy shows us how a strong and healthy democracy depends upon the feelings and emotions of its citizens, including trust, belonging, empowerment and representation, as much as on electoral processes

Association of polymorphisms in APOE, p53, and p21 with primary open-angle glaucoma in Turkish patients

Purpose To investigate the association between Apolipoprotein E (APOE), tumor suppressor protein p53 (p53), and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1A (p21) genes and primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) in a cohort of Turkish subjects. Methods Seventy-five POAG patients (49 women, 26 men) and 119 healthy subjects (67 women, 52 men) were genotyped with polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Allele and genotype frequencies between healthy subjects and glaucoma patients were compared by the χ2 test, and intraocular pressure (IOP), cup/disc ratio (C/D) and visual field indices (MD and PSD) were compared among different APOE, p53, and p21 genotypes in POAG group. A p value 0.05). POAG subjects with the ε2ε3 genotype had a worse PSD value (median=2.2) than those with the ε3ε4 genotype (median=1.77; p=0.01) and POAG subjects with the ε3ε3 genotype had worse MD and PSD values (median= -7.4 and 3.4, respectively) than those with the ε3ε4 genotype (median= -4.1 and 1.77, respectively; p=0.034 and 0.028, respectively). Conclusions Our study found no link between polymorphisms in APOE, p53, and p21 genes and POAG in Turkish patients, although a larger sample is required to elucidate the role of these polymorphisms in the pathogenesis and course of glaucoma

‘Institutions of governance are all corrupted’: anti-political collective identity of anti-lockdown protesters in digital and physical spaces

During the COVID-19 pandemic, loosely affiliated protesters came together around the slogan ‘freedom’ in the online and physical places of anti-lockdown protests. These protesters held shared grievances against official health advice and social distancing measures. Although the slogan freedom emotionally validated protesters, they articulated a diverse set of interrelated motivations, identifications, and beliefs with this slogan. This paper studies the ways the collective identity of the anti-lockdown protests in the UK was formed, relying on 33 go-along interviews and ethnographic observations in London anti-lockdown protests. The findings, first, show that protesters came together around an anti-political identity, which reflected a larger political alienation from the political system. Their strong emotions of anger and ressentiment towards official health advice and social distancing measures and their distrust towards elites, political institutions, and mainstream media created a shared sense of ‘we-ness’. Second, the paper uncovers how the feeling of solidarity amongst protesters in London did not only originate from online platforms despite the increase in Internet use during the pandemic, but it was also materialized in local neighbourhoods, which fed larger anti-lockdown protests in physical spaces and online publics

“Media is absolutely disgusting”: Emotions and affect towards political elites, information sources and conspiracy theories in anti-lockdown protests

Using a unique dataset collected through ethnographic observations and interviews at six anti-lockdown protest sites, this article examines concrete emotions across different stages of the anti-lockdown protests in London, shedding light on the broader affective anti-lockdown protest atmosphere. Our study contributes to a nuanced understanding of protest movements in times of emergency by demonstrating how the distinct feelings of “distrust” and “disillusionment” in reaction to political elites, information and news sources can mobilise and consolidate a social movement during a crisis. We identify these long-run emotions towards official sources as crucial in fuelling short-run emotions of anger and anxiety at the pandemic's outset, mobilising and uniting protesters around alternative sources of information and conspiracy theories. Moreover, our findings show that despite their distrust towards mainstream media, protesters felt trust in alternative media and each other, assisting them to sustain positive affect during the protests. Even in the tense context of the pandemic, positive emotions such as joy were also fostered through the shared feeling of distrust towards political and media elites, common conspiracy theories and activists' togetherness in protest spaces, which created an evolving anti-lockdown atmosphere.The authors would like to acknowledge that this research was made possible through funding from the Political Studies Association's Innovation and Research Fund and the British Academy's COVID-19 Recovery programme: Building Future Pandemic Preparedness and Understanding Citizen Engagement in the USA and UK [CRUSA210009]. Both grants were awarded to all authors. Author Bogdan Ianosev also acknowledges funding from the EU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V04-00707

‘Institutions of governance are all corrupted’: anti-political collective identity of anti-lockdown protesters in digital and physical spaces

Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). During the COVID-19 pandemic, loosely affiliated protesters came together around the slogan ‘freedom’ in the online and physical places of anti-lockdown protests. These protesters held shared grievances against official health advice and social distancing measures. Although the slogan freedom emotionally validated protesters, they articulated a diverse set of interrelated motivations, identifications, and beliefs with this slogan. This paper studies the ways the collective identity of the anti-lockdown protests in the UK was formed, relying on 33 go-along interviews and ethnographic observations in London anti-lockdown protests. The findings, first, show that protesters came together around an anti-political identity, which reflected a larger political alienation from the political system. Their strong emotions of anger and ressentiment towards official health advice and social distancing measures and their distrust towards elites, political institutions, and mainstream media created a shared sense of ‘we-ness’. Second, the paper uncovers how the feeling of solidarity amongst protesters in London did not only originate from online platforms despite the increase in Internet use during the pandemic, but it was also materialized in local neighbourhoods, which fed larger anti-lockdown protests in physical spaces and online publics.British Academy [CRUSA210009]; Political Studies Association

"Medicine is still against Black people": Mapping and visualising intersections of social inequalities, community mistrust, and vaccine hesitancy in online and physical spaces in the UK and US

Funded by the British Academy, this report is part of a research project entitled “Mapping and visualising intersections of social inequalities, community mistrust, and vaccine hesitancy in online and physical spaces in the UK and US”. The report investigates social, cultural, and political factors underlying vaccine hesitant beliefs and ideas among minoritised communities in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (US). The data is collected through interviews and focus groups with vaccine-hesitant individuals within various religiously, ethnically, and racially minoritised communities, interviews with medical practitioners, and through thematic analysis of vaccine communication in Twitter and Telegram during the COVID-19 pandemic