Bureaucratic Barriers, Economic Burdens, and Digital Participation without Activism: Education-Related Petitions on Change.org Türkiye

Educational problems in Türkiye are widely discussed in everyday life. Yet these concerns rarely turn into effective forms of collective political action. This study examines how such complaints appear when they move into digital petition platforms. It focuses on 206 education-related petitions launched on Change.org Türkiye in 2024 and analyzes their themes, initiators, locations, and signature counts. Two analytical distinctions guide the interpretation: bureaucratic barriers and economic burdens in education, and the tension between participation and activism. The findings point to a clear pattern. Digital participation operates largely in an individualized form. Nearly 90% of petitions are initiated by individuals. Most attract limited support. More than half remain below 100 signatures. Only 7 are marked as successful. This uneven distribution shows that while petition platforms make participation easy, they rarely create political or structural change. At the thematic level, petitions cluster around bureaucratic constraints, such as administrative rules and institutional procedures, and economic pressures, including transportation, housing, and education-related costs. Education appears here as a field shaped by both institutional regulation and everyday material conditions. As discussed in debates on slacktivism, connective action, and neoliberal individualization, the study argues that digital petition platforms make dissatisfaction more visible but limit its effects. Rather than producing organized activism, they tend to turn complaints into short-lived and individualized forms of participation. As a result, dissatisfaction becomes visible but remains politically weak, rarely turning into pressure capable of challenging the structural conditions of the education system.