Selfie Motivations of Generation Y in Turkey within Visual Sharing Culture Context

Abstract

In recent years selfie has become an inevitable part of social networking sites (SNS). With the substantial growth of profile-based SNS, users communicate and represent themselves through photographs, particularly with selfies. A selfie is a self-representation tool, more intensely among younger generations. In this research, we focused on motivations of Y generation to express themselves through selfie in Turkey. We specified 4 main hypotheses; social media usage, showing and defining themselves, social acceptance, and narcissism. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we focused on college students who are active SNS users. Semi-structured interviews conducted to reach in-depth information about their tendencies and motivations. Our findings supported hypothesizes we identified.

As a result, participants have social networking accounts for a long time and are observed to be spending a long time each day on these platforms. Users utilize SNS to be present in the virtual world as well as to see the shares of other users. It has been observed that users take a selfie to share their social media identities, to be liked by other people, to show themselves better than they are in real life, to take the pleasure of continuous likes. When we examined the motivations of the users, we observed that there are some narcissistic tendencies. We have discussed our insights for the future research in line with such findings.   

Keywords

• Visual Communication,New Media,Self-portrait,Self-representation,Narcissism,Social Networking Sites

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