Digital socialization in the sample of Youtube videos: Semiotic analysis of religious group representations

In the historical process, people have undergone a classical socialization process with the influence of family and environment. However, nowadays, there is talk of a new type of socialization provided by virtual media and technologies. The increasing trend of socialization towards the virtual has affected almost every institution, as well as the ways in which religious group representations express themselves. Thanks to Youtube, which offers the opportunity to reach many people in a short time, religious group representations change the level of traditional discourse in different ways and they give place to the language of the medium they are in. In this respect, the established order of the language of religion on the traditional axis paradoxically leaves its place to a more fluid and at the same time sharper discourse rhetoric. Our study focuses on the question of how religious group representations differ in the transition of religious language from physical reality to digital one in the historical process. The videos of religious group representations, which are taken as samples, have to be understood in terms of fiction, clothing, tone of voice, camera shooting techniques, symbols, the way colors are used must be understood through the spatial and temporal plane in which it sits. For this reason, Youtube videos of religious group representations, which are considered as samples, should be examined by taking these factors into account. Our study was handled within the framework of understanding sociology based on qualitative paradigm and analyzed with the semiotic method of Roland Barthes. Accordingly, considering the characteristics of communication and socialization, Youtube channels were scanned, eight videos that were compatible with the theoretical part and covering the years 2013-2021 were selected and analyzed with the semiotic method. There are some points that we pay attention to when choosing videos. First of these, videos of religious group representations that come to the forefront and have paradoxical discourses using YouTube were studied. Secondly, short videos that contain more material visually were preferred in order to provide economy and to be analyzed better. One of the most important results reached by the semiotic analysis of the videos, which are taken as samples, is that the contents of the religious group representations in the digital media actually contain both fluid and sharp discourse levels. Paradoxically, religious groups, which are fluid and determine their discourse based on daily reality, have included the references of the agenda while determining the topics. The analyzed contents highlight at a sharpened level of discourse by including hate speech, and were also discovered with projections resembling rejection.