THE SEEKING FOR TRUTH AND THE NEW MEDIA ORDER

Assoc. Prof. Selman Selim AKYÜZ / Selçuk University-Faculty of Communication

Communication is one of the areas most affected by innovations and changes in technology. With the emergence of the printing press, the concept of mass communication opened the door to a new world. The invention of radio and television brought globalization and the number of doors in the world of communication gradually increased. The Internet and Web 2.0, on the other hand, almost opened all the doors.

The tools we traditionally define, such as newspapers, television, magazines, books, were in the hands of certain professionals. There were "gatekeepers" who at these doors. Although there were negative examples in terms of ideological and political economy, in these tools, which had a corporate journalism culture from the point of view of the news media, gatekeeping did not allow the information flow process to be completely broken. Doors were closed when necessary.

The tools that we define as new media and mainly express social media platforms are the main actors in the communication process; caused the concepts of source, message, channel, target audience (recipient) and feedback to change and deform significantly. No longer just a resource cluster made up of managers and experts. The target audience, who receives the message, has moved from a passive position to an active position. Messages are not prepared according to certain news frames as they used to be. The number of channels, that is, the means of conveying the message to the audience, has increased tremendously. Now there are millions or even billions of news sources. The target audience has become a source and can deliver the message it produces to anyone they want through their own media. And very cheap, very fast and to many more people...

A person who writes a text on a video he recorded with his smartphone and shares it on his own social media account can reach tens of thousands of people in a few minutes, depending on the nature of the message.

 Media is an important tool for democracy. It has made significant contributions to the development of democracy, especially in the West. The process of increasing participation, monitoring of the governor by the governed, being informed, expressing opinions and being able to influence through the elections, has made the media the "4th Power".As we said at the beginning, there were problems such as monopolization and the use of the media by political economy in this process, and the new media gave the people the initiative to mediate the breaking of the dominance of the old media, that is, to put the democratic process back on track.

The Arab Spring was initially seen as a symbol of social media's contribution to democracy. It was shown that way. However, chaos, war and massacres remained in most of these geographies.

And the nearly 20-year process that has passed since the new media came into our lives has shown that, besides all its positive aspects, social media does not seem very close to contributing to democracy. One of the most important reasons for this is that the concept of "gatekeeper", identified by David M. White, has almost disappeared in social media. To be more clear, social media has become the media of freedom as well as of control.

While the “extreme” freedom of thought in this area contributed to democracy to a certain extent, malicious people, supporters of violence, hatred and terrorism, organizations, political organizations, ideological groups and intelligence organizations used this area so brutally that it caused the contribution to democracy to be overshadowed.

News reliability is one of the most talked about and worried issues in the world, both in academic circles, in government administrations and in the media. As the effectiveness of social media in the production and dissemination of news increases, trust in news decreases. Because fabricated, manipulated, decontextualized “information” can be easily produced and spread by malicious and criminals.

We are talking about a news space where fake news, false information and even sources can be produced, not just the message. At the point where the lack of control brought us, we started to talk about fake profiles, made-up texts, trolls, troll units established by intelligence organizations and finally the use of this contaminated news flow process as a tool to interfere in the elections.

All over the world, the production of false and fabricated messages before the election has become even more complicated through social media and unfortunately, with the guidance of professionals.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which have billions of members, are trying to take measures to reduce the negative effects of misinformation, fake news sources, and disinformation on elections and voters making healthy choices. In order to answer the question in our title, it was important to present the subject in every aspect. In fact, we have more or less given the answer. Although social media, which is thought to serve democracy more, removes the obstacles to freedom of opinion to a certain extent, the negativities brought by the uncontrolled information flow have started to pose a threat to democracy. People are exposed to both misinformation about the rulers and false information created by the rulers on social media, and they witness that the opinions of millions are formed without even having the opportunity to understand and check the accuracy of the messages they encounter.

Since the Gezi Events, Turkey has experienced many times what the wrong and deliberately malicious use of social media can lead to. Young people who do not want the trees to be cut down announced their actions via social media. While this contributed to democracy, the fake news produced destroyed the original good purpose, led to terrorism and violence getting ahead of this democratic attitude, and increased polarization.

Politicians have begun to insert false information and fake news into their discourse, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. From the so-called "whistling of the azan" to the so-called "they cut off the heads of innocent soldiers", the right, left and center of the political spectrum became the victims of this disease and infected the masses who supported them. Just like an epidemic...

After the coronavirus epidemic that affected the whole world, misinformation spread even faster than the epidemic in Turkey. Dozens of false and fabricated news were circulated, such as mass graves were prepared for the deceased, alcohol killed the virus, red beet defeated the virus, and while the virus was threatening health, these news caused great damage to people's ties with reality. The dangerous thing is that ideologically and politically strict believers even started to argue that lies and false information can be produced to reveal their own truths. While telling "lie" to the mistake of their opponent, there were sections that could say "sometimes it is necessary to deal with them" to the mistakes of their own front as if they were at war.

However, as Hamdi Akyol said, “Truth needs no lies. Every lie produced in the name of truth becomes a curtain to that truth. Truth itself is like pure, clean and clear water. That water does not need turbid water to prove its purity. A lie muddies the water”.