Network society and self building in the context of the structural transformation of publicity: Second life world

Today, people who live publicity in the internet spend most of their time with the identities they create in the virtual environment. The newly created identities integrate with the selves and cause some mental and behavioral changes in people. The extent to which the unstable "multiple selves" of the postmodern period can express themselves in public spaces has become questionable. In our study, it was found that the self and publicity seen at different extremes affect each other, the virtual publicity is shaped by the virtual self, and the hollow real publicity functionalizes the virtual publicity. The Second Life (SL) world has been chosen to explore the relationship between the public, the network society and the self, which is an indispensable product of the public space. The self-esteem levels, inferiority complex levels, the use of self-presentation tactics, personality types and publicity functionality of SL users living in this world were measured. In order to personally collect data from the field, an avatar was created in the SL life world, actively been in this world for one (1) year, observation was made using the virtual ethnography method, and an online survey was made to 309 SL users with two different avatars. The data were analyzed by establishing a structural equation model with the AMOS statistical program. In this context, it has been determined that the inferiority complex, personality types and the level of self-esteem lead people to use some different self-presentation tactics, and people declare their public existence with these tactics used through various masks. It has been observed that the principles of publicity, sincerity, discursive equality, justification, reciprocity, independence from political and economic powers are more functional in the virtual world. It has been determined that physically disabled people, passive personality types and "other" gender groups have high functionality of virtual publicity. In addition, it has been evaluated that the complete replacement of virtuality with reality and excessive virtualization can lead to problems such as passivation and narcissism.