Analysis of Alienation in Informal Education: Media Skepticism and Spiral of Silence in the Network Society

Abstract

In the study, the alienation in the network society is investigated. Facebook, which is highly effective among network community applications, has been examined as an informal learning tool. In this context, the topic of learning is "political, social, religious, cultural contents that society is sensitive". The research was conducted with the participation of university students who are members of the network society. Spiral of silence (SoS) was taken into account as a sign of alienation. It has been examined whether the media skepticism is effective in solving the problem of alienation. In this context, the relationship between spiral of silence and media skepticism has been investigated. As a result of the research, it was understood that young adults who are university students are in the spiral of silence in sharing about "political, social, religious, cultural contents, society is sensitive" and therefore alienation exists. In the context of media skepticism, participants' skepticism to others' posts is high, skepticism to self posts is low. While there is a significant, negative and low level of correlation between spiral of silence and skepticism to others posts, there is no significant relationship between spiral of silence and skepticism to self posts. There is a potential for skepticism to others' posts to be effective in resolving alienation in network society.