Digital citizenship state of affairs: "Muğla-Menteşe sample"

Internet access and technological developments have led to a major transformation in our social life. As a result, in a world where everything has been digitized, new concepts are needed to understand social changes and relations. Therefore, the concept of digital citizenship is a result of this digitization. This concept can be seen as a reflection of the traditional concept of citizenship in the online environment, where Individuals have some rights and responsibilities in the digital environment, just as they do in real life. In line with this context, a digital citizen is a person who is aware of the possible dangers and while using the internet and technology, can easily access the information he/she wants, and can question, and as well as act in accordance with ethical principles in the online environment. The aim of this thesis research is to determine the digital citizenship levels of 275 participants, who are over the age of 18 and are residing in the Muğla-Menteşe District. Therefore, in the context of social media use and digital citizenship sub-dimensions (digital access, digital commerce, digital communication, digital literacy, digital ethics, digital law, digital rights and responsibilities, digital health and digital security) and demographic variables (age, gender, education level, occupation, number of social media tools used and time spent on social media) variables were analyzed to determine whether there are any significant differences. Meanwhile, data collection tools such as Personal Information Forms are used to obtain data on the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants; also, to obtain information about the digital citizenship behaviors of participants, a questionnaire named "Digital Citizenship: A case example of Muğla-Menteşe" was applied. Furthermore, in this research, all statistical analyses of data were carried out using the IBM SPSS 23 program. to analyze data, descriptive statistical methods, difference tests, exploratory factor analysis, and non-parametric tests were applied by looking at the skewness and kurtosis coefficients. Also "Man Whitney's U" test was applied to compare two groups, and the "Kruskal Wallis" test was applied to compare three or more groups. Finally, this research concludes that the average digital citizenship behavior of individuals is at a good level and there is a statistically significant difference (p<0.05) in some of the questions prepared on the 9 sub-dimensions of digital citizenship according to socio-demographic characteristics.