SOCIAL MEDIA-BASED PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF THE BUDGETING PROCESS IN Türkiye: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

This study aims to make a significant contribution to the literature in this field by ex- amining the participation of social media users in budgeting processes and how their per- ceptions of these processes are shaped. The main focal points of the study are the extent to which discussions on social media platforms can influence budgeting processes, their poten- tial to raise public awareness on these processes and how they shape users’ level of participa- tion. In this context, the study aims to discuss how the integration of digital communication tools into public decision-making mechanisms can contribute to strengthening participato- ry democracy. The study is qualitative research based on content analysis using MaxQDA software. While creating the social media content analysis, users’ messages were categorized into three main groups. These are government representatives, freelancers and citizens. The study was structured around two main code themes, ‘supportive’ and ‘critical’, with various sub-codes of the themes. This study aims to analyze the perceptions of social media users on budgeting processes and parliamentary debates within the framework of three different actor groups: government representatives, freelancers and citizens. This tripartite structure offers a multidimensional and holistic approach to analyze how discussions and interactions on social media shape both decision-making processes and public perceptions of these pro- cesses. Taking the budget process and parliamentary debates in Türkiye as an example, the study examines the effects of social media discussions on decision-making processes at the perceptual level. When the findings within the scope of the study are evaluated, it can be said that the themes of freelancers and citizens are mostly shaped around the critical code, while the messages belonging to the theme of government representatives consist entirely of sup- portive code. This situation reveals that there is a significant divergence in the attitudes and approaches of different user groups towards budgeting processes and shows that especially non-governmental actors have a critical perspective towards the processes.