Abstract:

With digitalization, today social media is the first of the tools that individuals and institutions are constantly facing in their communication use in almost every field of life. Civil society organizations are considered as important social platforms in terms of the transmission of demands from the public to local and general governments. NGOs, which are in the position of guarantee that local and general governments will serve under a strong democracy, continue to be the indispensable actors of society with their voluntary-based services. On the other hand, NGOs play an important role in the context of being able to communicate and be visible in society by individuals with poor culture, beliefs and opinions, which are part of society. In increasing their visibility, social media is an essential means of communication for NGOs as individuals and other institutions. In this study, it is believed that social media has played an important role in the construction of social-cultural identity, in addition to being the agencies they announce their activities for NGOs. In particular, NGOs that continue their cultural and religious activities find the opportunity to increase their visibility in society in this way. At this point in the study, KKTC Alevi Culture Center Association, which represents the Alevians from a socio-cultural point of view, and the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association’s social media sharing of NGOs were selected with the sample technique for the official Facebook pages and a one-year [1 July 2019-30 June 2020] content analysis for the share of the associations on the official Facebook pages was carried out. From here, it has been determined that through these sharing, the associations have contributed to the formation of social-cultural identity through social media use practices. In the particular Northern Cyprus, the involvement of limited studies related to NGOs is qualified to contribute to literature this work on Alevi associations that are important in terms of representation of a particular part of society in a cultural and religious perspective.