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New Media & Society, Vol. 8, No. 5, 801-823 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1461444806067589

Confession, revelation and storytelling: patterns of use on a popular Turkish website

Christine L. Ogan

Indiana University, USA

Kursat Cagiltay

Middle East Technical University, Turkey

This article reports a survey of 4531 users of Itiraf.com (‘Confession.com’), a confessional website based in Istanbul, Turkey, where people make personal confessions, tell stories and establish online and offline relationships with other users. Adopting a uses and gratifications approach to the web-based survey, to determine why the contributors to this website return so regularly and what uses they make of the site, the study adds to the limited information available on Turkish internet users. The major finding of the study is that diversion drives most reading on the site, but social interaction provides the largest gratification to those who participate through writing confessions, commenting on others’ confessions and meeting people offline. Some differences in use patterns were found among Turkish respondents who lived in other countries. A rapidly changing social environment in the country provides a partial explanation of website activity.

Key Words: confession • diversion • internet • social interaction • Turkey • uses and gratifications


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