The equalization approach actually includes a fundamental romantic thought like the mobilization approach. Equalization is a belief that the Internet will make the power balance go in new and weak political actors’ favor with its opportunities instead of ruling out inequalities in terms of political actors. The Internet’s oppor-tunities can rule out inequalities in terms of political actors as in the citizen base (Yılmaz, 2008: 212). In his work, Norris (2003: 43) has examined the websites of 134 political parties in European Union (EU) countries and has determined that the Internet brings more ‘voice and visibility’ to parties that are small according to traditional media. In their research study, Larsson and Brown (2011) have reached a similar conclusion. It was shown in their research study that majority parties bear the trace of traditional communication when minority parties use new media platforms like Twitter.
The Internet is an integrated communication tool including traditional media and new media with its potentials. The Internet’s features support the equaliza-tion approach in the theoretical frame. This is because every political actor’s most important problem in the beginning is making people listen to them. Once the Internet is considered, it is not important for somebody to invest a large amount of money to make themselves heard. The new way of traditional media embedded in the Internet reveals that the Internet is an integrated media. The Internet waits for the ones who know how to use old or new communication tools and methods.
The low cost of Internet sites is a significant positive thing for small political movements. At the same time, the mainstream finds a place in media and can reach larger masses of people (Margolis et al., 2003: 58). When it is looked at from this side, the Internet can basically open any door in terms of financial costs.
Organizations that would normally cost large sums of money can be conducted almost freely on the Internet. Even just this sustains the equalization approach.
The most suitable and effective example for the equalization approach is Movi-mento 5 Stelle (Five Stars Movement), which was lead by comedian Beppe Grillo.
Labeled as ‘the most successful satirical banterer of our time’ by nobel winning writer Daria Fo, Grillo criticizes political, financial powers, and governments and bravely mentions death and sexuality during the monologs that he performs. At the start of the 2000s, he had created his personal blog with Gianroberto Casaleg-gio, a communication master that he knew. Being fifth in the Web Celeb list which included the most widely read and effective blogs of the world in 2009, Grillo is still Italy’s most popular blog (http://bianet.org/bianet/dunya/144514-5-yildizli-hareket-umutsuzlarin-umudu).
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Starting to publish his first political messages and exchanging ideas with Casaleg-gio on every text in every day, Beppe Grillo defends research about the environment and sticks up for people living in a fair and judicious country with multinational companies (http://bianet.org/bianet/dunya/144514-5-yildizli-hareketumutsuzlarin-umudu). Not having expressed himself as a conservatist or radical, Beppe Grillo still does not prefer to found a party (Ianelli & Giglietto, 2015: 1009). Although he does not want to found a party, he becomes more powerful in every election. Hav-ing used platforms like Youtube and Facebook incisively after the blog system, this movement (M5S) run the majority of its organization on the Internet.
The 2013 election results are a peak point rising success and interest levels. In this election, three main political formations were seen: the Organized Radical Coalition around the Democrat Party (PD) led by Pierluigi Bersani, the Conserva-tive Coalition (PDL) led by Silvio Berlusconi, and the new ‘Five Stars Movement’, a non-party movement of citizens who do not have political experience, intro-duced by Beppe Grillo (Ianelli ve Giglietto, 2015: 1009). The biggest surprise of the elections was that the Five Stars Movement took 25,5% of votes in total like in recent elections. Gaining 109 chairs in the House of Representatives and 54 in the Senate, Grillo, and his party Five Stars Movement, gained a critical position for possible coalition governments (http://politikaakademisi.org/2013/03/04/italya-genel-secimleri-ve-beppe-grillo/).
This party, which did not lose its independence, neutrality, and feature of being open to people, has gotten to where it is today by organizing only on the Internet.
It also gained new political actors to political life using the equalization approach and it activated citizens to support the mobilization approach.
The ‘New Democracy Movement’ that happened in the past and the ‘Gezi Movement’ looked to potentially become a political entity; however, they did not succeed in spite of the potential of being the local example to these movements.
The New Democracy Movement has ended without starting and the Gezi Move-ment has lost its main neutralism and reactional common moveMove-ment feature by being expressed as being from different points to different ideologies. Actually, the New Democracy Movement is closer to the reinforcement approach rather than the equalization approach. This is because it is already a structuring for the ones who are powerful and for the ones who make their voice heard in every platform.
Conclusion
Since the moment that the Internet got out of the lab and started to come into our lives, positive and negative views have been expressed about every topic related to it. The new politics perception and understanding is one of these topics. The
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concept of politics and the communication of politics have started to reshape with the Internet, whereby former pessimistic perspectives have turned into hopeful approaches. With resituated, changed structure and tools, politics is a field which dealt with two main perspectives. One of them is the citizen-based perspective and the other one is the political actor based perspective. These two perspectives include positive and negative approaches which are equivalent to each other.
These evaluations that are incompatible with each other in themselves and are equivalent with each other in the context of citizen and political actors, which are called Reinforcement-Mobilization and Normalization-Equalization, have been dealt with an evaluation as if any of them exist, another one cannot. Generally, the ones who defend the reinforcement approach object mobilization. In the same way, the ones who defend mobilization object to the reinforcement approach.
The contrast of evaluations made in the citizen aspect come into existence in the political actor aspect; the ones who accept the normalization approach object to equalization, and the ones who accept equalization object to the normalization approach. It looks as if it is obligatory to choose only one of them.
But, it has been seen that the Internet, especially with Web 2.0, has enabled us-ers to become interactive or a broadcaster, and has enabled them to select content easily, mark it, share it, and like it. Since this moment, rules have been required to be rewritten. Accepting one of these thoughts and ignoring others does not match up with today’s digital politics and digital human actions. Thanks to the Internet’s features, especially in some points, the powerful become more powerful. On the other hand, the citizen chain, which goes to the bottom, shows that people can express themselves from every aspect, can rule out negativity and lackings with the Internet’s opportunities, and can actively participate in politics. The situation is similar in terms of the political actor. Political parties and politicians who are already powerful and deep-rooted can broadcast their features easily, widely, and creatively thanks to the Internet. But on the other hand, people who never thought that they could be political actors who express themselves quietly using the Internet’s opportunities have come to positions to change something in a country’s politics.
In short, at the point where the Internet has come and brought the world to, the reinforcement–mobilization and normalization-equalization approaches are all true in terms of citizen and political actors because these online facts reflect the offline world in the online platform without contradictions and limits.
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