SOCIAL MEDIA AS A NEWS SOURCE IN A CRISIS ENVIRONMENT; A REVIEW ON INSTAGRAM

With the developments in internet technologies, social media platforms have become important news distribution channels. Thanks to the opportunities offered by social media, while internet users living in different parts of the world can communicate with each other easily and quickly, the dissemination of news on the agenda takes place in a short time. In this research, it is aimed to reveal the news flow of social media in times of crisis and how citizens as users benefit from these platforms. Informing the citizens, bringing the demands and complaints of the citizens to the agenda, and interaction status of the news pages in the social media in crisis situations were examined and it is aimed to determine the methods of announcing the demands of the people to the public. In the study, the sharings made by six news sites in Isparta city through the Instagram network, which is used as a news distribution channel due to the power outage during the snowfall were examined. Content analysis, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The number of followers was also decisive in the selection of the sample in addition to being online news pages. The posts shared by SON32, ISPARTA32, AJANS32, BOMBA32, UYAN32 and HABER32 online news sites from their Instagram accounts between February 03, 2022 and February 17, 2022 were analyzed. Starting from the day the snowfall started in the city, the 15-day period in which the effects continued was analyzed. In the relevant process, the most sharing was on the 'agenda' (power outage due to snowfall, citizen demand, water shortage, etc. ). It has been determined that news pages on social media have an important function in terms of news sharing and information transfer in crisis environments, and that users are actively involved in the news flow with their sharings. It has been observed that the news pages do not respond to the comments of the citizens, but rather fulfill the role of informing the public by transmitting more information. Keywords: Social Media, Citizen Journalism, Crisis Journalism, News Page, Instagram.