Özet:

This thesis have been written in order to uncover the motivation of elderly individuals in social media usage. In the first chapter, the communicational setting that changed together with Web 2.0 and the role of social media in shaping today’s communicational setting have been mentioned, also, information about types of social media have been brought up. At the same time, while the motivation towards usage was being measured, one of the most consulted approaches, Uses and Gratifications Theory has been laid emphasis on. In the second chapter, by drawing a general frame for being elder and getting old, the demographical view of old age around the world and in Turkey has been mentioned and how, to what degree did the elderly conduct their following media routines. The third chapter has the implementation procedure. The data collected by conducting questionnaires on 240 elderly individuals who are students in Tazelenme University have been analysed using SPSS 24 program. When the foundings acquired were subjected to factor analysis, the motivation of elderly individuals in social media usage have been observed to gather around these factors; socializing and interaction, acquiring knowledge, representation of self. Between these factors, acquirement of knowledge has been detected as the prominent factor as the one that provided most motivation. It has consequently been seen that there has been meaningful differences between these factors and usage of different social media types.

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