The Metaverse Universe in the context of the concept of social capital: An analysis on national news

The radical changes in communication processes, which started with the transfer of communication to the digital environment, are changing again with the metaverse technology today. After discussing the development process of digital communication, the research examines the concept of metaverse and the technologies that make it up. This study, which examines the form of communication established and to be established in the metaverse environment, which is expected to replace the Internet, takes its form of examination from the need for socialization underlying the communication need. For this reason, the need for socialization in the adventure of making sense of oneself and his environment has been handled within the scope of social capital, and the factors that are the source of social capital have been determined as guides. Qualitative content analysis was used in the research, and the news on the metaverse from the five most visited national newspaper websites in Turkey were examined. All the news with the keyword 'metaverse' in the period of 28.10.2021, when Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company had changed its name to 'Meta' and its vision to 'metaverse', and one year after that. The factors that are the source of the social capital announced by the World Bank were determined, these elements were searched in the metaverse news and the link between the metaverse and social capital was tried to be established. As a result of the research, it has been determined that the metaverse carries the elements that are the source of social capital, and therefore it will lead to certain transformations in the forms of socialization and communication, which are the most basic needs of human beings. Contrary to the digital communication we know so far, the most dominant element in the metaverse is that it eliminates the barrier of space, distance and time in communication and emphasizes the perception of presence. In addition, the metaverse environment is seen as a technology that will deeply affect our education, business models, shopping, marketing, gaming and entertainment experiences as well as our communication styles.