During the Gezi Park protests none of the big news channels showed a single report. The pressure of the government on the media, left people uninformed. That’s why the internet became the main source of news and the government declared war on internet by creating the new internet law. A law that allows authorities to erase any internet content within 4 hours and without a court order.

Radikal, one of the major newspapers of Turkey wanted to raise awareness about this subject. Yet we only had a few days to create a strong impact. So we decided to make readers experience the censored internet and we erased 100s of news on Radikal.com.tr and turned the website into a page of censorship.

Radikal, became the only press brand that raised its voice about such a hot topic. That’s why the brand created a great connection with its readers and common internet users.

Our target audience was the common internet users and people who believe that the internet should not be under the control of government and authorities.

That’s why making the target audience experience the censored internet and raise awareness about the law was the real goal. Yet we only had a few days to create a strong impact.

The campaign became a trending topic in Twitter in just an hour. People started to erase their tweets, videos, status updates and turned the Fading News Campaign into a social movement. Journalists, celebrities, politicians and bloggers all over the world supported the campaign.

With no media budget we reached over 32 million people and had a number of impressions over 104 million. And the real result; president Abdullah Gül heard the voice of people and revised the law. Now it’s necessary to have a court order to erase a content on the internet.

On February 18th we placed a countdown timer on 100s of news articles on Radikal.com.tr.

For 4 hours articles faded out slowly and at the end of their 4th hour they completely disappeared. We turned the website into a page of censorship. In the white blank page where the news used to be appeared our message. “This peace of news has been erased over the course of 4 hours. If the new internet law gets approved authorities will be able to block any kind of content within 4 hours without a court decision. 7 days left for Abdullah Gül to veto the law.” We turned the website into a page of censorship.

This way, readers saw how the internet would look like if the law passed.

Radikal is one of the major newspapers of Turkey. Radikal.com.tr is also one of the most visited news websites.

Since Radikal.com.tr is a web based news source, censorship on internet became something that they wanted to react to immediately.

Turkish internet users have been experiencing different levels of censorship and/or state interventions over the last few years. A big portion of users were getting used to it and somehow felt comfortable as long as they could bypass filters or limitations by easy tactics.

However the upcoming law was apparently the strictest and unacceptably the most restrictive one. So, there was a need to create awareness about the greater threat that all citizens were about to face. We centralized our strategy on this need and decided to develop a communication approach that will make the strongest impact.

Imagining the internet under the influence of such a strict law is something, but experiencing it is something else. Therefore, to point people the danger of the situation, we turned radikal.com.tr (main web-site of the newspaper) into a page where readers would unavoidably experience the censorship to come.