Fear of surveillance: Examining Turkish social media users’ perception of surveillance and willingness to express opinions on social media

ABSTRACT

In this study, we conducted an online survey (N = 447) to understand the impact of perceived surveillance on online political participation. Using the Spiral of Silence theory and surveillance culture as our theoretical frameworks, we explored how social media users’ perception of government surveillance impacts Turkish social media users’ willingness to express an opinion on social media. In addition, we examined whether perceived majority and online privacy skills moderate the relationship between perceived surveillance and willingness to express opinions on social media. The results suggested that perceived surveillance is negatively related to one’s willingness to express opinions. On the other hand, online privacy skills moderate the relationship between perceived surveillance and willingness to express opinions.

KEYWORDS:

• Surveillance
• social media
• political engagement
• spiral of silence

Authors’ note

A previous version of this manuscript was presented to the Communication and Technology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) at its annual conference in August 2021, where it received a second-place top faculty paper award.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Again, this study seeks to replicate a part of Stoycheff (2016) study in the context of a non-democratic country and uses a model (perceived majority as moderator) was created by Stoycheff (2016).

2. This model was created by another study (Stoycheff, 2016). We tested the same model in the context of Turkey.