İLETİŞİMİN MCDONALDLAŞMASI: SOSYAL MEDYA ÜZERİNE

Özet

Bu çalışma, sosyal medya olgusunu, sosyolog George Ritzer'in McDonaldlaşma teorisi bağlamında ele almaktadır. Ritzer'in teorisine göre McDonald's fast-food restoran zincirinin sistemini belirleyen beş temel öngörülebilirlik, denetim ve akılcılık çerçevesinde ortaya çıkan akıldışı pratiklerdir. Ritzer'e göre bu prensipler çağdaş toplumun bütün katmanlarına yayılmaktadır. Bu süreç McDonaldlaşma olarak ifade edilir. McDonaldlaşmanın toplumsal ve bireysel yaşamda ve kurumların gelişiminde birçok olumlu gelişmeyi beraberinde getirdiği ifade edilebilir. Ancak bunun yanında çoğu akıldışı pratiği içerisinde barındıran olumsuz sonuçlara da neden olmuştur. Ritzer, bu durumu McDonaldlaşmanın eleştirisi bağlamında ele almaktadır

Abstract

This work handles social media fact, in the context of sociolog George Ritzer’s McDonaldization theory. According to Ritzer, there are five main principles which determine McDonald restaurants chain system. These are; productivity, estimatebility, predictibility, control and irrational practices that emerge in the context of rationalism. This process is expressed as McDonaldization. McDonaldization can be said to bring lots of improvements in social and individual life and institutional developments. However, this also caused many negative results which host many irrational practices. McDonaldization, is becoming a widespread process in communication, in the way it is, where observed. This tendency which is seen inside traditional media, exposes itself most clearly at social media. Social media emergence and development, overlaps with McDonaldization process principles. Communication gradually becomes a simple and productive process with social media. However, communication is reduced to an computable level and at most times, serves a predictable environment and content. At social media, day by day, it’s observed that control and supervision. And irrational practices emerge in the context of ilusions which social media serves to its users. Principles which Ritzer handles in the context of McDonaldization can be summarized as this: According to Ritzer, one of the most typical qualities of McDonaldization is productivity principle. Ritzer defines productivity as this (2011a: 69): Productivity means to choose the optimum instruments for a specific purpose. “Optimum” in this definition, represents the effort for finding the best instruments possible, more. Ritzer, who expresses organization and productivity should be separated from each other, identifies productivity for the clients as receiving their necessities with less effort and more quickly and for the workers as doing their missions more quickly and in a more facilitated way. Productivity has 3 dimensions within. These are, fertilization of the process, simplification of the product and participation of the clients. Computability is an emphasize on quantification. McDonaldization emphasizes on computable, countable, quantifiable things. In fact, quantity tends to replace quality (Ritzer, 2011a: 100) According to Ritzer, this emphasize on quantity had many positive results and the most important of these is the ability to produce and receive sth. in large quantities and rapidly. One of the subjects that Ritzer gives importance among rationalization and McDonaldization tendencies is the predictability. Especially in industrialized social life, there are no rooms for surprises. It’s important that everything has the quality of predictability. Predictability, is much related to subjects like time, space, behavior patterns and taste. İletişimin Mcdonaldlaşması: Sosyal Medya Üzerine Bir İnceleme 391 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 10/2 Winter 2015 Accoding to Ritzer, the main source of uncertainty, impredictability and unproductivity is human; as either workers or the clients. Thus, efforts for increasing control aims generally person. McDonaldization contains search for instruments for settling increasing control on both workers and clients (Ritzer, 2011a: 153). From this point of view, replacement of manless technologies with human carries importance. Thus, indefinites can be removed. Acording to Ritzer rationalized system, at most times, causes emergence of unproductivities besides productivity. For example, that people have to spend long time sin front of cashoxes, decreases the desired and proposed speed level. At the other side, there is an illusion as much food for fewer wages. We can see social meda as spaces that resemble each other, have common qualities and share same base principles. From this point of view, while social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Vine, Google Plus, Myspace, LinkedIn, Xing have different qualities from each other, there are some properties that make these alike. In this study, social media concept is used as to participate at all platforms. Productivity, computability, predictability, control and irrationality practices that form the base structure of the process called McDonaldization, are handled one by one and McDonaldization practices that social media formed and sometimes developed, are evaluated. One of the main components of productivity is the maximum simplification of the process. One of the greatest opportunities that social media platforms provide with functioning of communication is, implementation of communication at the most possible simplest plane and that all the people who use social media can manage this process in the easiset way. Simplification is determinative on both emergence and sustainability of communication. The interfaces that social media serves to its users are easy and simple. It has a software that all the people from all ages can understand. For this reason, even while researches show that social media is generally used by young people, it’s known that middle and old aged people exist in social media. Besides it’s easy to use, with widespread usage of mobile devices, communication has become possible at every time and everywhere today. This facilitates the communication of the individual with others at any desired time and place and makes the contact with many people simultaneously possible. All these increases the productivity of communication. Besides this, during this process, to design the product, say, messages and posts are as easier as to share. Individuals, in the context of opportunities that social media, can at most times, share patternalized messages and posts. While the process contains the shortest time possible, it also imposes the simplest content possible. One of the key concepts of social media fertilization practices is concurrency. Person can cont