An Ethnographic Inquiry on Internet Cafés within the Context of Turkish Youth Culture

Contemporary studies have become interested in determining transformative effects of information and
communication technologies on youngsters’ social and cultural identity developments. Internet cafés are technosocial spaces where people access to digital media and interact with global cultural flows. Such interactions are
profound because they fundamentally challenge diverse locality and traditional values. In this paper, we reports
the findings of ethnographic research study as a part graduate thesis project about Internet cafés in Turkey. Our
purpose was to find out how Internet cafés are being used by Turkish youth and how these sites affect their
social, cultural, and educational experiences. We conducted intensive observations in three Internet cafés and
semi-structured interviews with four college students. The results show that Internet cafés are being used mostly
by male youngsters mostly for entertainment and communication purposes. Internet café usage are closely
related to the emergence of techno-consumerist youth culture or lifestyle. This suggests that technology is more
than a simple and neutral instrument that constitutes complex social and cultural dimensions which may involve
profound alterations for people lives.