Reflections of in triathlon athletes on instagram

Today's society has being undergone a constant change, with the fact that information becoming the main means of production. This constant state of change has also affected the individual's life and relationship with the society and other individuals.In the nineteenth century, Marx introduced the concept of alienation to explain the processes that occurred in a similar process of change.One of the benefits of information technologies is social media tools. Individuals can now communicate and interact with each other regardless of time and physical space. This situation has changed the nature of interpersonal relationships. Individuals can now relate to others without being exposed to physical limits and the limitations of being together. All these show that adapting Goffman's self-presentations concept, which is an important concept in analyzing face-to-face relationships, to social media and examining whether there is a relationship between social media use and alienation may be important in understanding today's social relations. This study was carried out on Instagram because it emphasizes visuality and is the social media tool that has increased the number of its users at the most recently. The conceptual framework of the study consists of the concept of self-presentation, which emerges from Goffman's continuous construction of the self in the daily lives of individuals as if they were on a theater stage, and Marx's concept of alienation. Using participatory observation and indepth interview methods, this study examines the relationship between self-presentations and alienation of athletes over twenty-eight years of age who engage in triathlon sports. As a result of the study, it was revealed that individuals make self presentations on Instagram as well as in face-to-face relationships, their self-presentations have increased due to the virtual environment of Instagram, and that there is a relationship between Instagram usage and both addiction and alienation. Keywords: Alienation, Instagram, Self Presentation, Addicton, Triathlon