The use of social media tools has gained significant power on the establishment the relations between the organizations and the target groups of that organizations whether the organizations are commercial or public. The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, TRT, is the public broadcasting organization of Türkiye. Therefore, the broadcasting decisions of TRT differ from the commercial broadcasting companies. One of these differentiations is realized through the foundation of the thematic channels, which do not put ratings above the other broadcasting decisions. The documentary television channel, which was founded in 2009, TRT Belgesel (TRT Documentary), is one of these thematic channels. The study aims to draw a profile on how the documentary program type, a type which aims to inform and educate, by revealing the ways of using Instagram. Within the scope of the study, two factors were decisive in the examination of TRT Belgesel's Instagram account. The first of these is that Instagram is the most used social media platform in Türkiye in 2023. The other reason is that parallel to the first, TRT Belgesel has the most followers on Instagram among its social media accounts. In the study, the Instagram usage patterns of the TRT Belgesel channel were evaluated within the framework of the public broadcasting approach and the informative/educational purpose of the documentary program type. In this context, the posts were analyzed in detail by using the quantitative content analysis method in the study. The analysis concluded that the TRT Belgesel channel shared the most video content in line with Instagram usage patterns, shared information about the program to be broadcast on the channel, and informed users by sharing information containing explanations.
Keywords: Social media, the effect of social media on traditional media, the documentary film audience, trt belgesel channel, instagram.