An Ethnographic Inquiry on Internet Cafés within the Context of Turkish Youth Culture

Mustafa Koc, Karen Ann Ferneding
793 207

Abstract


Contemporary studies have become interested in determining transformative effects of information and communication technologies on youngstersâ social and cultural identity developments. Internet cafés are techno-social spaces where people access to digital media and interact with global cultural flows. Such interactions are profound because they fundamentally challenge diverse locality and traditional values. In this paper, we reports the findings of ethnographic research study as a part graduate thesis project about Internet cafés in Turkey. Our purpose was to find out how Internet cafés are being used by Turkish youth and how these sites affect their social, cultural, and educational experiences. We conducted intensive observations in three Internet cafés and semi-structured interviews with four college students. The results show that Internet cafés are being used mostly by male youngsters mostly for entertainment and communication purposes. Internet café usage are closely related to the emergence of techno-consumerist youth culture or lifestyle. This suggests that technology is more than a simple and neutral instrument that constitutes complex social and cultural dimensions which may involve profound alterations for people lives.

Keywords


Internet cafés, Cyberspace, Global media, Youth development, Socialization

Full Text:

PDF

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2017 International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology

Web of Science (ESCI) Index                        

                                    

  

International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology (IJEMST) 
 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

ISSN: 2147-611X (Online)