Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
BILIMNAME, cilt.41, sa.1, ss.413-442, 2020 (ESCI)
This study focuses on the virtualization of the marriage process that progresses based on religious references in conservative societies by bringing to digital media with reference to Jean Baudrillard's Simulation Theory. Baudrillard who was the most leading philosophers of the postmodern era, asserts that the truth has vanished never to return and that everything has become hyperreal and has been replaced by the truth citing the media as one of those responsible for the process of extinction. Media virtualizes every real thing and enables them to be perceived as real. This irresistible simulation ability of the media makes the change in traditional and conservative societies that are more resistant unavoidable. Conservative societies integrate the media into their lives because of both obligations arising from the needs and the change being unavoidable; and finally, they adopt this new reality style. Virtual reality that has started to pass through the capillaries of the societies via new media technologies isolates religious references, traditional institutions, and cultural norms and makes them a part of itself. Media environments that are designed for users who want to marry within Islamic rules are the most typical examples of related virtualization today. Cultural codes and religious references can be carried to virtual spaces by separating from the true context now; by this means, the religious drawback of conservative users, in spite of a hybrid form, is tried to be minimized. This study that is conducted by considering this reality aims to describe how marriages based on Islamic rules are realized on virtual platforms. Netnography that is a new generation research method was utilized; the data set was established by participant observation technique. When the findings were examined, it was observed how religious or cultural referential codes were carried into the virtual environment after mutation.