Perceptions of art and experiences of education faculty students in social media: A phenomenological research

Social media, as one of the features of technological developments, has been introduced to our lives swiftly. Social media is a tool which targets variety of age groups. While it attracts the attention of people due to unlimited subjects, information, images, visuals, videos etc. it contains, it also significantly affects the fate of concepts such as art movements, socializing, being visible, popularity and consuming. In this context different needs arised such as utilizing the mentioned resources correctly, making sense out of them and consuming them in the most efficient way. Goal of this project is to investigate the approach an attitude of 3rd and 4th year art and social studies students regarding social media usage, learnings out of social media from artistic point of view and reflection of social media to their lives. In 2019-2020 Fall semester, during this research which takes approximately 14 weeks, phenomenological patterns is used as the research technique. In this research firstly, 93 participants subjected to a survey and their social media usages are investigated. Then, according the outcomes of the survey, extreme sample is chosen. This extreme sample group consists of 11 3rd 4th year art students from Fine Arts Education Department. Various data obtained from semi-structured interviews with the chosen participants resolved via descriptive content analysis. Obtained results formed 3 main themes, namely, "Social Media Usage", "Influence of Social Media to Lives of Individuals" and "Social Media-Art Relation". Keywords: art education, social media usage, consumption, visual and media literacy.