Social Media And Cultural Privacy Challenges In The Face Of Global Trends

Social media platforms have provided extensive communication channels, granting every individual in the information society the right to freedom of thought and opinion, as well as the right to express their identity, culture, and personality. Users now have the ability to define their culture not only for those close to them but for the entire world. However, simultaneously, users have become susceptible to various threats that compromise their cultural privacy. This privacy plays a crucial role in distinguishing between different community identities. If it erodes or is violated, the boundaries between communities blur, making them vulnerable to assimilation into other cultures. Preserving this privacy has become a formidable challenge, particularly in the virtual realm, which has significantly exacerbated and complicated this issue. Accordingly, it can be argued that the profound transformations reshaping the global communication landscape-particularly with the growing penetration of social media networks into the lives of individuals and communities-have strongly contributed to raising the issue of cultural specificity as one of the most pressing and contentious matters of our time. While the digital sphere offers vast opportunities for cultural expression and diversity, it simultaneously imposes new forms of dominance and homogenization that threaten to erode cultural differences between societies and to dissolve distinctive cultural identities into a dominant global culture. From this perspective, the present study seeks to explore these challenges by providing a theoretical description and examining their external interrelations, framed within the following research question: What are the challenges facing cultural specificity on social media networks in light of the global transformations shaping today's world?