The impacts of social media on political socialization: The case of undergraduate students

The level to which information technology has reached, can be understood by the use of mobile devices in every part of daily life. Mass communication and the media, are in process of transformation. In this transformation process the media began functioning on the internet and thus earned the distinction of being social. As the prevalence of the use of social media increases from day to day it is becoming an important part of daily life. At this point, with its potential to influence and transform social relationships and processes, it has started to become one of the most studied topics in recent times. Sociology is concerned with social relations, interactions and functioning processes. Even though, the essence of these processes are continuous the way in which they are realized can vary. In this context, the socialization of individuals and their ways of political adaptation in society is an ongoing process. In every period there are influential factors that determine this process. The subject of this study is the effects of social media on political socialization. As applied research, the first two sections of this study have been design as a theoretical framework. In the first section, social media and society and in the second section political socialization issues are discussed. In the third section, the method of research is described and the research itself and the review of findings is presented in the final section. A quantitative research has been designed for the applied section of the study. The fundamental data collection technique is the survey. The research has been carried out on college students as the most intensive users of social media. Reviewed findings from a sample group of 1195 undergraduate students along with the results of the research have been completed. In the results of the research, the main hypothesis was confirmed. The effects of political socialization from what is the still new phenomenon of social media are a necessary subject to be worked on with a wider range of applications in the future. Keywords : New media, social media, political socialization.