A SURVEY ABOUT UNIVERSITY STUDENTS PERCEPTION OF POST-TRUTH ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to survey university students’ perception of post – truth on social media. The post-truth, which has been selected as the ‘Word of the Year’ by Oxford World Dictionaries in 2016, is a new technological era today. This new era especially effects students who have a habit of access information via social media. This survey is aimed to illustrate how university students evaluate the fake news appeared on social media and to reveal solutions about the possible negative effects of this era. The method involved in this survey is data collection from students, who represent the majority of social media users, with 5 Likert type scale questionnaires. Data has been collected from two-year degree, undergraduate, post graduate and doctoral university students who continue their studies in public and foundation universities in Turkey. There is not an existed scale to evaluate perception of post truth on social media. The existed scales are related to evaluate the technology addiction in psychology field. A standard scale has not been used and it is not aimed to develop a scale in this study.