Experts point out that a social transformation process is taking place where every strategy is considered permissible to earn money quickly and achieve high positions, stating that its reflection in social media is the reckless production of sexist, racist, and abusive content to gain more subscribers, clicks, views, or ad revenue as a means to earn money and recognition. Sociologist Dr. Berat Dağ emphasized that social media, with its content focused on pleasure, entertainment, and emotional exploitation, is still a relatively new interaction area, and the moral boundaries here present an extremely superficial and slippery appearance. Dr. Dağ stated, “Unless social institutions and social media are simultaneously renewed within the framework of human values, it will be extremely difficult for moral boundaries to become clear.”
Üsküdar Üniversitesi Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology Research Assistant Dr. Berat Dağ evaluated some recent social media posts that transcend moral boundaries.
Sexist, Racist, and Abusive Content Recklessly Produced for Clicks
Dr. Berat Dağ pointed out that the relationship between social media content and society is not one-sided, stating, “In other words, the perpetuation of this type of social media content also indicates significant societal problems. Today, a social transformation process is occurring where every strategy is considered permissible to earn money quickly and achieve high positions. Its reflection in social media is the reckless production of sexist, racist, and abusive content to gain more subscribers, clicks, views, or ad revenue as a means to earn money and recognition. This means that individuals exposed to such content enter a greater moral crisis.”
Transformation of Institutions like Family, Education, Economy, Politics, and Religion is Vital
Emphasizing that it is vital to transform institutions of family, education, economy, politics, religion, and daily life in accordance with the values of equality, freedom, brotherhood, justice, and solidarity, both in thought and action, Dr. Dağ said, “Such a comprehensive transformation will cause social media content to adapt to it. In fact, as a result, social media content may even contribute to the widespread adoption and diversification of these aforementioned positive values.”
Swindlers, Gangs, Exhibitionists, Voyeurs Roam Freely on This Platform
Dr. Dağ noted that social media is still a relatively new interaction area, stating, “For this reason, the moral boundaries here present an extremely superficial and slippery appearance. Especially because social media offers anonymous and extremely rapid interaction, all kinds of hate and violence crimes can spread and accelerate in this area. It is known that in the context of the glorification of individualism, a serious social insensitivity towards such crimes has already begun to prevail. The lynchings of the poor, immigrants, and minorities carried out through trolls on social media are also a kind of public declaration of the obvious. Moreover, forms of thought and action disseminated by swindlers, gangs, exhibitionists, voyeurs, and stalkers freely circulate on this platform. As a result, the spread of a halo of social distrust, uneasiness, and fear is inevitable. Against this process, unless social institutions and social media are simultaneously renewed within the framework of human values, it will be extremely difficult for moral boundaries to become clear.”
Content is Produced Focusing on Pleasure, Entertainment, and Emotional Exploitation
Dr. Berat Dağ also explained that influencer content, as a concrete outcome of social problems, is generally effective in increasing and diversifying these problems, and continued:
“It is clear that content produced entirely with a focus on pleasure, entertainment, and emotional exploitation will have a negative impact on young people. Because today, a large majority of young people are unemployed, lonely, and poor. Moreover, young people constitute a segment that is constantly put in their place when it comes to expressing themselves. One of the consequences of this exploitation, oppression, and marginalization is related to young people turning to destructive actions against themselves and their environment. Today, young people constantly use many expressions containing ignorance, unseriousness, familiarity, indifference, and even profanity and insults on social media to become influencers or maintain their influencer status. All of this indicates that the social future is at serious risk.”
How to Create Awareness Against the Production of Such Content Should Be Addressed
Dr. Dağ noted that it is not possible for social media platforms to absolutely control the content produced, stating that a significant portion of these platforms’ revenues is tied to the continuous consumption of this content.
Therefore, Dr. Dağ also explained that elitist or popular content that provides regular advertising revenue must be produced for social media monopolies to increase their profits. He concluded by saying, “For this reason, the current political economic structure does not sufficiently utilize independent experts capable of evaluating elitist and popular content. In fact, due to the data paradox, it must be stated that even experts will ultimately not be sufficient in this monitoring process. Because it is evident that data of a magnitude exceeding human capabilities is constantly uploaded to social media. Therefore, it seems more meaningful to discuss how to create awareness against the production of such content, rather than merely monitoring social media content.”