Relationship Between Privacy and Facebook Usage of Female Digital Immigrants
In today’s postmodern society, the social structure has really affected individualization, and electronic devices that bring about digital culture have enabled connections between people thorough social networks. Currently, it is seen as a necessity to belong to the electronic social environment. In the social network context, the culture of personal presentation and ‘inner self’ in public space is not only popular among adolescents and youths, but now includes female digital immigrants who tend to display as much as possible. However, the attitudes of digital immigrants are different because of differences in age as well as cultural and educational backgrounds. To reveal the relationship between Facebook usage and privacy, a semi-structured interview was conducted with eight people obtained through objective snowball sampling. A questionnaire containing 25 questions was prepared using the data from the interviews and distributed to 367 people in different regions of Turkey. The obtained data were analyzed in the SPSS package. The research findings indicate that
female digital immigrants share their personal information with a large number of people because of their direct communications through Facebook and thus tend to show their private lives to the public.
Kadın Dijital Göçmenlerin Facebook Kullanımı ve Mahremiyet İlişkisi
Günümüz postmodern olarak tanımlanan toplumsal yapısında bireyselleşme tüm gücüyle etkisini arttırırken dijital kültürü ortaya çıkaran elektronik cihazlar insanların artık ağlarla bir araya gelmelerine olanak sağlamıştır. Bugün insanoğlu için sosyal hayatı elektronik ortamda yaşamak artık bir tercih değil bir zorunluluk haline gelmiştir. Kişisel sunum kültürü ve ‘içsel benliği’ kamusal alanda sergileme dürtüsü bu sosyal ağ içinde yer almak ve popüler olmaya hevesli olmak yalnızca ergenlere ya da gençlere has bir istek değildir. Kamusal alanda kendini ifade etme ve olabildiğince sergileme kadın dijital göçmenlerin hayatında da önemli hale gelmiştir. Ancak yaşları itibariyle başka bir iklim ve bakış açısından gelmesi dijital göçmenlerin tutumlarını çeşitlendirmektedir. Kadın dijital göçmenlerin Facebook kullanımıyla mahremiyet algılarındaki ilişkiyi ortaya koymak amacıyla öncelikle, amaçlı/kartopu örneklem yoluyla elde edilen 8 kişilik örneklemle yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme yapılmıştır. Görüşmelerden elde edilen verilerden de yararlanarak 25 sorundan oluşan bir anket hazırlanmıştır. Bu anket formu amaçlı/kartopu örneklem yoluyla paylaşılmıştır. Anket formu Türkiye’nin farklı yerlerinde 367 kişi tarafından cevaplandırılmıştır. Elde edilen veriler SPSS paket programında analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma bulguları kadın dijital göçmenlerin Facebook aracılığıyla yüz yüze iletişimde olduğundan çok fazla sayıda kişiyle kişisel bilgilerini paylaştıklarını böylece özel yaşamlarını kamusal alana taşıdıklarını ve özel alan algılarını daralttıklarını ortaya koymuştur.
In today’s world, media is significantly transforming with the emergence of new communication technologies. The traditional media has lost its place to digital media, through which individuals can now access their contents and transmit to their own mass. While direct communication is important, indirect communication is becoming more prominent. Sharing of information through social sites is not only appealing to digital entrepreneurs who were born into social media, but also to digital immigrants who are over 40 years old and were born and grew up with the traditional media and encountered social media in their later years. Users who encountered Facebook and other social networking websites at an older age are producing their own contents in unimaginable numbers. Using Facebook, users express themselves, appreciate, see interests, and satisfy curiosity and the need for approval. The sharing of shared contents increases information sharing, and to increase popularity, more interesting content has to be uploaded. Information that has previously been hidden or not shared with others can thus be transmitted. The majority of social media users do not find it inconvenient to share their private concerns. Being that they are not significantly famous in the social media environment, they aim get popular in the media to protect their specific areas of interest, and in the process, they show off their private lives to ordinary people, oblivious of the consequent risks. The purpose of this research is to reveal whether the changes observed in the definition of privacy and private domain caused by Facebook shares in all users, are also present in users of this age group, (or not). This study focuses on female digital immigrants in Turkey. Previous research has indicated that in Turkey, there are approximately 16,670 female Facebook users aged 35–65 years. The survey technique enables the acquisition of the highest possible sampling within the study area and to determine the attitudes of female digital immigrants. To obtain more data, a semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted with eight female digital immigrants with different characteristics, and then a questionnaire of 25 questions was prepared. The questionnaire consists of questions aimed at revealing a certain attitude considering the focus of the study. The survey was completed by 367 users. According to the survey findings, female digital immigrants are represented on Facebook by contents related to their private lives. They do not see any disadvantage in sharing knowledge about their neighborhoods with their Facebook friends, who average 100–300. The reactions given to uploaded photographs of couples are very important, but more important is the amount of comments and likes on these photos. Research has shown that many female digital immigrants using social media are unaware that the personal information they share in public space narrows their private spaces. In addition, they are unaware of the dangers that could arise from social media such as Facebook, and as such, they are not conscious of the prescribed precautions and most importantly, how to function in these media.
