İLETİŞİMİN MCDONALDLAŞMASI: SOSYAL MEDYA ÜZERİNE BİR İNCELEME

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 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 contact with many, without leaving his space. Reaching many people simultaneously, at one side provides a productivity such as sharing one message with many people, while many messages with many people at the same time. Computability is a concept which directly emphasizes on quantity. Today, just as it’s the case at McDonald’s restaurants, one of the main properties in the sphere of communication that express communicative value is that communication has a character which is reducible and computable. It can be said that this is apparently seen in social media. In social media, everything gains value quantitively. For example, one of the main measures of person’s sociality is the number of people in his network. Departing from Twitter example, everything in here is digitized: Number of people that the person follows, number of followers, number of tweets, retweets of his tweets, favorited tweets, number of mentions for the person etc. All these provide important information about how and to what extent is the person efficient through the network. And all represent a numerical value. Twitter, for this reason, is a sphere in which quantity and digitization is dominant and which as a symbolically high value. The same situation is valid for other social media platforms, even at different measures. One of the most apparent properties of the quantification depends on the principle “as rapid as possible and as much as possible”. For this reason, numerical values (multitude) do not have meaning alone; speed factor is also expected to take action. Social media enforces the limits of computability by providing contact with as many people as possible in an as rapid as possible way. In social media case, 140 characters limit is considered first. This application which also limits the contents of the messages in Twitter, exhibits the computable dimensions of communication. This situation is also important for the sake of functionality. From his point of view, computability and productivity has an important connection. The one that is raid and computable is also considered as productive naturally. Another important property of McDonaldization is predictability. The main components of predictability is the formation of a certain standard, independent from time and space. One of the main properties of social media and new media is that it can liberalize individuals from time and space. For contact with the person in social media, the location and time zone of the person is not important. Thus, the fact of “every time at everywhere” from the point of view of the individuals, can serve the prediction of reaching the individuals every time at everywhere. Another property of predictability is uniformity, monotony and standardization. In social media, as a result of that people, at most times, use the same platform, uniformity is observed in the content of communication. This situation functions as a pre-condition of a productive and computable communication. In the case of social media and communication, control means the control of person on another person. Niedzviecki (2010), explains the situation as proliferation of peeping culture. As Ritzer said, rationalization process is evaluated as a process which “dislocates human from humanity”. Niedzviecki explains the situation as this (2010: 38): “Peeping culture, is a distorted solution that is found for the problem of “human who is dislocated from humanity”. When we provide ourselves with observability, perhaps ironic, however, we become aware that we are individuals”. This situation is leakage of bureaucratic mind into social life. Control and surveillance practices are developed at an increasing rate inside social media and it’s normalized that the person İletişimin Mcdonaldlaşması: Sosyal Medya Üzerine Bir İnceleme 393 publicizes his own indefinites, mostly privacy and that he expects the others to act in the same way. Controlling and being controlled cases have two different dimensions; one of these is people’s control on each other and the other is patterns’ and capital groups” control over ordinary people. Thus, social media can be evaluated as a space where both panopticon and synopticon applications find place. At the roots of irrational practices that emerge inside social media, there are illusions that are served to users. Social media, while at one hand, fertilizes communication, at the other hand causes the communication to have a fetish character. At most times, it’s expressed that social media functions with a formula such as “communication for communicating”. For this reason, keeping in continuous touch via assigning a non-existing transcendency to communication, becomes one of the main purposes. Communication is fertilized, however, the length of time that is spent for communication is antagonistic with the mentality which rationalizes the process. Communication inside this process can be easier, more rapid and more efficient, however, that person spends most of his time with communicating, brings many unproductivities in social life. Communicating for communication also results with message’s importance loss gradually. Replacement of quantity with quality, from this point of view, causes an important irrational practice. One of the greatest illusions that social media serves to its users is the formula “the more posts, the better communication”. In fact, quantitative density of posts, at most times causes meaning conflicts or degradence of the posts. Social media is full of post masses, of which origin and post time are unknown and which lack their social and cultural contexts. Quantitative multitude of posts at Twitter which exhibits a relatively more public space quality, turns the platform into a sphere where the posts disappear in a chaos and most time lose their qualities. Social media, even it enables many possibilities for socialization, is one of the most discussed subjects. Because, there are many irrational applications and conflicts among the socialization practices that social media serves. Socialization which is materialized via social media, at most times comes to life in the isolated environment of the individual. This is the main conflict, however, individual slide into an illusion that he gets social in social media. “Every time at everywhere” formula provides a dramatic level of productivity. However, this also brings about a fact like “deterritorialization”.This “everywhere” fact that destroys person’s belonging feelings, identity representations, can cause deterritorialization of individuals who exist in social media. Another irrationality practice is seen in liberalization illusion. While the concern that social media provides freedom for individuals at a higher rate, these platforms can turn into spheres where people can be controlled much more easily. Control and surveillance, is a main source of motivation of social media for encouragement of individual use. However, another irrational property of this situation, perhaps the most important side is the volunteer participation of individuals into control and surveillance practices. Except for all these positive, good properties, social media prepares conditions for development of communication practices such as “relative/non-relative”, “well-timed/untimely”, “in place/inapposite”. Fertilization which is the main appearance of rationalization at communication sphere, while converts communication into a rapid and simple process, at the other hand turns social media into a proception for which much time is spent. This proception, at most times, causes illusion of socialization.