Social and Cultural Identity Development of Turkish Youth in the Age of Technology and Globalization: A Study on Internet Cafes

282 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006.The results from regression analyses revealed that (a) spending more time at Internet cafes and frequent entertainment and communication-based activities led to an increase in affiliation with Western culture, (b) spending more time at Internet cafes and frequent entertainment-based online activities led to a decrease in the quality of social networks with both family and friends, and (c) frequent online communication activities led to an increase in the quality of social networks with friends. On the other hand, Internet cafe usage did not significantly impact pro-social attitudes, loneliness, and perceived educational achievement. Correlation analysis indicated no displacement effect of Internet cafe usage on other media and non-media activities. Three main themes emerged from the interviews: (a) misusage of the Internet cafes by youth, (b) perceived negative consequences of Internet cafes on children, and (c) precautions for effective and safe usage. Overall, this study suggests that that technology is far more than a neutral tool and has complex mediating effects on social and cultural life. It also indicates that technology affects people's relationships to time and space, which in turn, transforms the origins of identity construction from local to global contexualities. The results were discussed within the social and cultural context of technology adoption and recommendations were given for future research.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD