Representation of precariat class in participating culture in the context of class consciousness and network society with a class case: A research on freelance employees on the platform of the "Ofissizler"

The globalization process, which started to emerge since the 1980s and has accelerated, has rapidly transformed economical as well as political, social, technological and cultural fields. The neo-liberal world order, which is the architect of this transformation process, has also manifested itself in the "class" phenomenon, which has started to be handled along with the industrial revolution. The network society we still live in paved the way for the "precariat", which can be defined simply as precarious and / or informal workers, to gain a class character. Another outcome of the globalization process has been the rapid developments especially in the field of communication technologies. The concept of "participatory culture" has emerged as the internet wraps around the globe every day and eliminates the time-space barriers between individuals. As can be seen, the globalization process has revealed the concepts of "Precarious class" of the field of sociology and "participatory culture" of the field of communication. Both concepts have two different problematic issues that arise in network society. Looking at the precarious movement, it is seen that the Fordist period, representing the early times of modernism, did not represent the same characteristics as the "class consciousness" based movements that built the proletarian class. In other words, Precariat contains an ambiguity at its borders with its structure that contains different demographic social groups in accordance with the fragmented structure that rejects the meta theory of postmodern times. One of the sub-demographic classes of the precariat class consists of freelance employees. With each passing day, the number of freelancers working in a sub-demographic class of precariat and the research subject of this study is increasing. It is aimed that freelance employees should be selected as research subjects, and also contribute to the social sciences literature in order to interpret cultural data related to the precarious concept that has no sharp boundaries and points to a universal problem, and to understand its effects on participatory culture. The participatory culture and the opportunities it offers enable freelance employees to come together, to be aware of each other, to have experience and legal knowledge about different business lines, and thus to solidarity. The research universe that is configured to work starting from this premise, freelance workers living in Turkey without distinguishing workspace is limited by an independent online platform to bring together the members of "Ofissizler". The effect of the participatory culture phenomenon on the formation of class awareness in freelance employees and the effect of this phenomenon on the social interaction and communication of the precarious class was revealed by analyzing the Ofissizler platform created by freelance employees by netnographic method. The research has been an original study in terms of the contribution of the new media's cultural effects to the phenomenon of class, which is one of the main study subjects of sociology, by bringing together themes from different fields of study and approaching the subject from the perspective of communication science.