Social media and the culture of narcissism

Social media, which is one of internet applications, is one of the most popular communication platforms of these days. These platforms, which has come up thanks to the development of Web 2.0 technology, has reached the communication medium used most commonly and extensively nowadays. Applications, which are presented by Web 2.0, such as interaction, content production and sharing has provided that social media can accompany with social relations. Now, social media platforms have the qualification which constitues and improves social relations. In this thesis, social media is studied within this context. Narcissism is defined a cultural phenomenon besides a defect in character. In fact, narcissism has become a structure of personality faced rather commonly in the course of capitalism being modern social organization form and today's modern social conditions have led cultural narcissism to spread and to take root. As a matter of fact, while desires are suppressed at the beginning of capitalism, it is reppressed and full satisfaction of these desires are not possible in comsumptional capitalist system. Thus, narcissistic attitudes and behaviours are promoted in accordance with these circumstances. In this thesis, narcissism is studied as a cultural phenomenon and the reflections of these situation to the social media is examined. Moreover, it is deeply being questioned that through what kinds of communication experiences the perspectives of cultural narcissism exist in the social media. Within this context, an in-depth interview technique among methods of collecting qualitavite data has been applied and findings obtained from interviews have been interpreted by doing content analysis. As a result of the study, it is found out that features of social media and other various communication experiences in this area reproduced narcisstic culture. Keywords: Social Media, Internet, Narcissism, Culture, The Culture of Narcissism