Government censorship of new media in Erdogan's Turkey

1 Abstract This bachelor thesis entitled "Government censorship of new media in Erdoğan's Turkey" researches the nature of new media landscape in Turkey between 2014 and 2016. It tries to answer the question whether the new media in Turkey are free and whether they are being in any way controlled by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) or by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. For the purpose of this research, the author first established the theoretical background and presents various forms of the relationships between media, democracy and democratic society. Also, the author examines this relationship from the perspective of new media and describes strategies that are being used by the AKP while using new media. The author elaborates by presenting examples of new technologies that are being used in Turkey in order to regulate the access to new media and social networks. He also describes various methods that can be used to remove unwanted content from these sites. He also presents examples of occasions when various sites and networks were made inaccessible in Turkey. He points out the possibilities of automated internet content monitoring and the risks of supervision of citizens' communication through state owned internet infrastructure