News follow-up practices in digital media in Türkiye: The example of religious officials

With the developments in communication technologies and the opportunities offered by the internet, traditional journalism has changed and internet journalism has emerged. First of all, the owners of the newspapers, who carried the contents of the newspapers directly to the Internet, then started to produce special content for the Internet, and at this point, they stopped the printed version of the newspapers and started to continue their publication life in the digital environment. While the media, that is, the vehicle, in which the news is presented with internet journalism, radical changes have been experienced in the finding, processing and distribution of the news. Accordingly, the news follow-up practices of the readers have also changed. In this research, it is aimed to determine the opinions, perceptions and thoughts of religious officials about internet journalism, their habits of following internet news and their level of trust towards internet news. In addition, it was aimed to examine the internet usage skills of the participants and the reasons for following the internet news and these reasons according to the socio-demographic variables. The research is a quantitative research and a relational survey model was used. In the research, convenience sampling method was used and it was carried out with the participation of 502 religious officials. As a result of the research, it was determined that religious officials frequently use the internet and internet tools, but as the age level increases, their ability to use the internet and internet tools decreases. In addition, it was found that as the age level of the participants increased, the time spent on internet sites also increased. On the other hand, it has been determined that independent internet news sites and Facebook are the leading platforms that male participants follow the internet news most, respectively, and Instagram and independent internet news sites are the leading platforms that female participants follow the internet news the most. In addition, in the study, the reasons for following the internet news of religious officials; It was concluded that "Relief and Reliable Information Source", "Ease and Interaction in Accessing the News", "Entertainment and Information", "Following News and Convenience", "Spending Time and Information Sharing".