Examination of Facebook uses of digital natives in terms of their attitudes toward and behaviour related to political engagement

The digital native generation, which has an intense relationship with the new communication technologies, has stimulated curiosity and been investigated in terms of their attitudes and behaviors in the field of political engagement, especially in the social media.Social media offering a wide and free expression space also enables the public opinion and political engagement to change through new opportunities that contribute to the development of the culture of democracy and thus gains importance for the users to acquire some roles that both are affected and affects. The aim of the study is to reveal the attitudes and behaviors of the digital native generation to use social media as a means of engagement.In the line with this purpose, demographic characteristics, internet and social media use characteristics, political engagement levels and the political attitudes and behaviors expressed on Facebook by the participants has been tried to be determined in the scope of the research. The research has been carried out using survey model.the data has been collected interviewing with a total of 523 graduate student studying in Anadolu Univesityby a questionnaire consisting of 100 items and analysed in SPSS with help of several analysis techniques. According to the results of the research; participants' internet usage and their time spent in social media are high whilst their political activities and interest in politics are low. It has been seen that the use of Facebook for non-political issues and purposes are higher. Although participants find Facebook more free, faster and less costly than traditional media, they do not prefer to use it at a high rate in terms of political engagement.On the other hand, those who use it for political purposes perform instant and limited behaviours. Given the reasons for not preferring; inspite of the low level of interest in politics in general, there are concerns such as being subject to legal sanctions on any content, being involved in virtual data recording / being spied out or blacklisted. It has been determined that the participants' use of Facebook for political engagement has not provided significant contributon to the political order and democratic culture. Keywords: The Internet, social media, political engagement, digital native