New Media and National Identity: The Representatıon of Atatürk on Ngo’s November 10th Instagram Posts

Abstract

National symbols, traditions, and rituals emerge as the most influential signifiers of national identity and nationalism. These symbols and images that embody the basic concepts of nationalism, make them visible to the members of society, help to make abstract ideologies more socially concrete, strengthen the sense of national loyalty and strengthen the awareness of the community members that belong to the same nation. On the other hand, Atatürk appears as a symbol of both Turkey's modernization process and Turkish unity and solidarity. Focusing on the representations of Atatürk as one of the national symbols on the internet and social media, this research examines the symbolic construction of the national identity of NGOs that represent different social groups in Turkey through the "November 10th, Atatürk Commemoration Day”. In this context, the November 10, 2019, posts of 38 Non-Governmental Organizations, which operate in different fields, are the most followed and have social, cultural, and economic activity on the society, were analyzed on Instagram. Shared visuals were used to categorize with the help of various codes assigned to them. The thematization method was used to characterize the types of photos posted on Instagram with embedded coding. Then, by combining very close codes, they were also subjected to clustering analysis to see which symbols are frequently used together and which meaning patterns they form. The findings of the study show that social media, which is often depicted as the space of global identities and flows, is a space where national identities are eclectically reconstructed by subjects and social groups that make up the nation and circulated through symbols.