İlahiyat Fakültesi Öğrencilerinin Sosyal Medya Algısı
The Perception of Social Media Among Theology Faculty Students

Summary/Abstract: Digitalization is profoundly transforming established practices in the production, circulation, and representation of religious knowledge; accordingly, examining how theology students (among the most critical actors in this transformation) engage with these processes is particularly significant. Against this backdrop, the study aims to investigate, through a qualitative lens, students' social media use, perceptions of digital privacy, and evaluations of online religious representations at the Faculty of Theology, Ordu University. The research seeks to reveal how theology students position themselves along the axes of religious knowledge, authority, and privacy in social media environments, and what meaning-making strategies they develop in these domains. The study holds distinctive significance in that it analyzes the transformative impact of digitalization on religious life directly through the eyes of young people with theological training. Adopting a phenomenologically oriented qualitative research design, the study conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 12 students (6 female, 6 male) from the third and fourth years. Interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis, with findings organized into three main themes. The first theme addresses students' social media use habits, platform preferences, and the dilemmas posed by digital life. Findings indicate that students perceive social media as both an unavoidable communication space and a problematic medium in terms of control, visibility, and algorithmic manipulation. Students oscillate between the pressure to remain constantly connected on social media and the desire to distance themselves from this domain; while they effectively utilize the information and communication opportunities offered by platforms, they also clearly identify negative aspects such as algorithmic manipulation and time waste, and adopt a critical stance. The second theme examines the transformation of privacy in digital environments, revealing that students develop selective and restrictive strategies in response to exposure culture, popularity pressures, and identity management. Participants attempt to strike a delicate balance between protecting their private lives and being visible on social media; they carefully select their posts and prefer to remain within certain boundaries. The third theme highlights the issue of digital religious authority and representation; participants note that the limited social media presence of institutional religious structures and academic actors creates space for popular figures whose claims are academically questionable. It has been determined that participants criticize religious content on social media through the lens of “information pollution” and “superficiality”; they resist the consumption of religious knowledge detached from its context. The study demonstrates that theology students are not passive consumers of the digital religious sphere but rather develop critical awareness regarding the opportunities and risks this domain presents. The research confirms the need for qualitative studies to understand how digitalization generates new tensions for theology students concerning privacy, authority, and religious representation.

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