ABSTRACT

The powerful transformative effect of new technologies affects and reshapes many socio-economic dynamics. Industrial relations are also affected by the reflections of new technologies. The spread of information-communication technologies and the popularization of social media in recent years have increased the speed of this effect. The concept of participatory culture is associated with the active participation of individuals in the productionconsumption processes of content in social media. In this context, how the presence of workers on social media affects unions in the context of participatory culture constitutes the general framework of this study. In this general framework, the main purpose of the study is; to compare the use of social media by public employee confederations and labor confederations in the context of participatory culture on the use of social media by trade unions, which are one of the fundamental elements of industrial relations. In addition to this main purpose, defining the online communication patterns of organizations, determining the social network relations and the structural features of these social networks are among the aims of the study. In this study, two confederations of public officials coming from different organizational cultures; Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions KESK and Confederation of Public Servants Trade Union MEMUR-SEN and two labor confederations; Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey DISK and The Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions TÜRK-İŞ official Twitter accounts were analyzed using social network analysis method. Analysis results were evaluated in the context of participant culture with the help of different measurement values and visual algorithm