Associate Professor Mehmet Emin Babacan, the Head of the Department of Media and Communications at Ibn Haldun University argues that it is hard to say social media is enhanching democracy while there is an ongoing debate about the meaning of democracy itself in his latest article published at Açık Görüş, the weekly opinion and debate platform of Star daily. Assoc. Prof. Babacan said, in the last 25 years the developments in technology, especially the widespread usage of social media, has changed every concept that belong to individuals and the society. "Everything that individuals are related from moral and psychological issues to socialization, freedoms and democracy have been transfered to new grounds" said Babacan. "That tranfer in social media which is the new form of communications technology, has opened new actual debates. Undoubtedly one of the most important titles of this debate is "big data" which is relatively new to us. Big data can be described as a digital data that is collected from all internet based platforms and the sum of the user experiences." he added.
Assoc. Prof. Babacan emphasized that there are serious problems about the digital data that the individuals and the society generates and that the social media platforms literarily steal the efforts and the privacy of individuals as a price. Assoc. Prof. Babacan continued; "We are expected to generate content with our opinions, emotions and decisions for social media. They usually demand this regardless of the individual needs. We are told that the content generated will make individuals more free, more independent, psychologically satisfied and will pave the way for individual rights." The article of Associate Professor Mehmet Emin Babacan can be read in Turkish following this link.
