Teacher perspective on internet censorship in Turkey

Abstract

There has been a rapid increase both in the number of users and the number of websites providing data since the invention of Internet; it has become the richest and most used source of information. However, several countries, including Turkey, resort to censorship owing to the fact that anybody can publish on the Internet with sometimes undesirable content. The main purpose of this study is to reveal how primary and secondary school teachers approach Internet censorship in Turkey. The study was conducted with a voluntary group of 2015 primary (855) and secondary (1160) school teachers who had social media accounts in Turkey during the 2013 – 2014 academic year in the spring semester. In the study, a survey was used. The study reveals that 59.4% of teachers think that it is necessary to resort censor the Internet from undesirable content like sexuality and gambling. On the other hand, the vast majority of the teachers (86.6%) do not approve the blocking of websites as they can be used as an educational tool. Moreover, 60.5% believe that blocking of certain Internet websites will not negatively affect education. © 2018 by authors, all rights reserved.