New media and privacy: An research on the perspectives of Istanbul University Faculty of Communication students on Facebook

With the developments in internet technologies and the use of SixDegrees.com application, which we can consider as the first social networking site, a great change has occurred in our daily habits. Applications such as Ryze.com, Friendster and MySpace, which were developed after SixDegrees.com, have not only offered a more advanced experience but also changed the way of communication with the environment of the individual. Along with the applications made available, the communication established by the individual, which is a social entity, has begun to be replaced by various social media applications and communication made entirely through social networks. Especially the Facebook application developed in 2004 can be considered as a turning point in the transformation of face-to-face communication. The application, which was originally developed by Harvard University students communicating among themselves, soon gained popularity. After this success, Facebook was first made available to other university students and then made available to the world without any restrictions. With the new add-ons that are included in the application interface every day, Facebook has developed itself and has started to become an indispensable social media tool of daily lives. However, the transformation of interpersonal communication into communication via social networks has brought along problems such as violation of personal privacy limits. Both the fact that the limits of the social network communication are quite new and the limits of the states are not being fully known, and the new regulations of the states for social network communication cause these violations. In the study, a literature review was made on the historical development of the concept of new media and the concept of privacy; since it is a pioneer among social networks and has a wide range of users worldwide, the privacy principles of Facebook application are addressed and the relationship between personal privacy limits and social networks is tried to be revealed.