The power, freedom and morality in the digital age: A critical approach on new communication technologies

This study aims to pave the way for a critical understanding of technology in the context of the effects of new communication technologies on power, freedom and morality. The effects of new communication technologies on social change are widely studied subjects in the academia (mainly in sociology, political sciences and communication studies). However, there is a lack of conceptual instruments for understanding and concretizing the newly emerging moral patterns emanating from perceiving reality and the world around us via those technologies. Theoretically based on Martin Heidegger's philosophical perspectives on modern technology, the study develops a critical position by objectifying the continuities between modern technology and new communication technologies in terms of their common generative motivations and conceptual background. Accordingly, the opportunities and limitations provided by the new communication technologies for power practices, freedom and morality are sought to be revealed by analyzing the contemporary discoursive/ideological and sociological dimensions of social media, Web 2.0, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning etc., which form the basic features of digital age. Methodologically, this study is a theoretical research, which bases on the critical social science perspective. In this context, the researches, reports, articles and philosophical-sociological studies on the technological capacities and the existing or possible effects of new communication technologies on power, freedom and morality are examined systematically. As a result of the examination, the effects of those technologies, which are a form of power that instrumentalizes freedom, on morality have been clarified. Accordingly, a suggestive conceptual framework has been developed for how the concept of moral responsibility and the situations in which the new communication technologies mediate the presence of moral agency and the moral actions can be understood on an intellectual level.