INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, cilt.15, sa.2, ss.983-1014, 2025 (ESCI)
New forms of communication created by communication
technologies and especially social media
necessitate are-evaluation of the
concept of public space within the framework of digitization. By focusing on
economic and political power relations
within social media,
this study argues
that new media
instruments are subject to
the free market-oriented capitalist
mode of production
and that monopolistic formations
are in direct relationship with the ownership structure of networks. As
a matter of
fact, multinational companies
and political decision-makers are
dominant actors inthe information
field produced by
new communication technologies in terms of ownership and manageability.
The main purpose of the study is to evaluate the debate on whether social media
can create a democratic public sphere through Elon Musk's acquisitionof Twitter
and rebrandit under the name X. In this regard, Elon Musk's effort to shape
online discourses on platformX
during US Presidential
Elections in 2024
was interpreted by analyzing 407 posts between October 30
-November 5. According to the results, the idea that social media creates a
democratic public space ignores the potential of these areas to reproduce power
relations in the capitalist social structure. As a result of applications such
as algorithm-based automation processes and target audience analysis, the
digital public space
has been put
into a frame
with certain concepts like "echo chamber" and
"filter bubble". For this reason, social media platforms are moving
away from one of the essential requirements of public sphere, namely the
function of bringing different ideas together. In light of Twitter, Musk's
acquisition of it has undermined the public sphere discourse that was put
forward in reference to social media platforms.vvvsrsrrgrgrgrgrjhyjyj
