Individuals in the interpersonal communication of social media use effects on privacy perception: Example of Gümüşhane university

Social media, which emerged with the extraordinary development in communication technologies, has become an integral part of human life today. With the innovations it brings, unlike traditional media tools providing intercommunication opportunities, content production and opportunity to share has been effective in the widespread use of social media. In addition to the advantages it provides, social media has brought along some problems. Violation and transformation of privacy, which is an important value in terms of humanity, on social media is one of these problems. The content and information that users share on social media has become a violation of privacy limits. The items that are positioned as the privacy of the individual have been opened to public together with social media and became the subject of sharing. Therefore, social media has been the factor that transformed the individual's understanding of privacy. This study focuses on the role of social media tools on the individual's understanding of privacy and examines the transformation of privacy in this field within the framework of university students. It focuses on the representation of the user of the profile of social media and its position in the daily life of the individual, the understanding of the privacy of the individual, the threat of social media on privacy and the role of the individual on the understanding of privacy. In this sense, in the first part of the study, the concepts of public space and privacy, in the second part, the surveillance phenomenon that made it a threatening tool for social media and privacy was examined. The research focused especially on the transformation of the individual's perception of privacy through the use of social media. Thus, the main purpose of working supports the problem of work. The aim of the study is to reveal the subject in question. The findings obtained from the research are limited to privacy concerns in terms of privacy perceptions of university students, where the interviews are conducted, whether social media profiles represent themselves, whether they lead to transformation in the privacy of social media, and whether there is a threat to the privacy of social media. Accordingly, face-to-face interviews were held between 20 February 2020 and 5 March 2020 with an interview form consisting of demographic information and 6 research questions. No demographic limitation was made in sample selection and convenience sampling technique was used. Within the scope of the semi-structured interview, research questions were asked to 30 participants, 15 of whom were women and 15 of whom were men. The responses received from the participants were recorded and decoded with the help of a voice recorder. In the research, it was concluded that university students regard social media as an interpersonal communication tool. It was also determined that the social media profile represents university students. It was understood that the participants mostly associated privacy with the private area and the immediate environment. Considering the role of social media on privacy, the results of the participants' perceptions of privacy have been transformed by social media. It was also determined that the participants saw social media as a threat to their privacy. Keywords: Social Media, Privacy, Interpersonal Communication, Instagram