Digital violence against women in social media

The aim of this research is to identify the digital violence that active internet users women in Turkey are exposed to, to investigate the causes of digital violence and to examine how women struggle against and react this digital violence. In the scope of the study, after the literature review, an in-depth interview was conducted with 18 women. In semi-structured open-ended in-depth interviews; the questions of the study were tried to be answered in the light of the narrative and expressions, thoughts and evaluations of university students women; and the questions were prepared based on the literature review. A qualitative research was conducted using the descriptive research model. In the study, it has been determined that most of the women are growing up with and regularly use the social media who defined as digital indigenous, are exposed to digital violence and even those who are not exposed to violence live with the possibility of this violence. Unwanted messages sent by unrecognized people and interfering with the private sphere of people from the immediate environment and their way of expressing themselves is the digital violence cases that women were exposed to most were confronted with. It has been determined the most frequent response of the respondents to digital violence was the blocking of the person, ignoring the incoming messages and reactions and hiding their own accounts. It has been shown that all women do not rely on the law for progressive violence but still see it as an alternative while the disclosure of the violent is a valid and preferable method for women. This thesis provides/articulates a number of advices on this issue by providing many opportunities through an extensive literature review and a set of interviews, by unifying these cases over time and space, by revealing that social media is delivering a new scope of the violence with its increasing number of users owing to its easy and inexpensive access. Keywords: digital violence, social media, violence against women, patriarchal, network society.