Socializing IR: Turkish IR Scholars and their Twitter Interactions

Abstract

Online social networking services (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) have altered
 the way we engage with individuals, groups, and communities by profoundly
 changing our everyday information and communication habits on a global scale.
 Today, social media has also grown into a massive data repository providing very
 detailed information on the opinions, beliefs, and communications of millions of
 individuals. Similarly, social media analysis has grown into an essential method
 for various fields, including political science and international relations. The
 purpose of this study is to undertake a nuanced social media analysis using Twitter
 data to contextualize and assess the context, scope, and impact of Turkish IR
 scholars’ interactions on Twitter. Within the scope of the paper, network analysis,
 topic modeling, descriptive statistics, and regression analysis approaches will
 be employed to draw meaningful interpretations about their Twitter interactions.
 Our basic premise is that among Turkish IR scholars, there is a collective network
 that connects them in terms of interactions, attitudes, and opinions, and that
 network may be found by analyzing their Twitter data. This working assumption
 is not supported by the findings.