DEEP METAPHORS OF SOCIAL MEDIA CONSUMERS: A ZMET STUDY ON SOCIAL MEDIA Sibel Onursoy 1 Abstract Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, and wikis are among the different types of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Wikipedia, LinkedIn are some prominent examples of social media. Social media is becoming an integral part of life online as social websites and applications proliferate. According to statistics, 42 million of Internet users are actively involved in social media in Turkey and they daily use an average of 2 hours and 32 minutes via any device in social media. Assessing consumers’ reasons to engage in social media is thus relevant for communication. Most traditional online media include social components, such as comment fields for users. Also, it is used to market products, promote brands, connect to current customers and foster new business. Motives are subconscious elements of the minds of the users/consumers. They exist on an implicit level, which cannot be readily accessed when asked about explicitly. They are so abstract that it is difficult to articulate them. This study focuses on unconscious deep metaphors relating social media such as users’ thoughts, feelings, and knowledge structures. As deep metaphors explain user/customer behavior based on their often-subconscious values and attitudes, these metaphors reflect rather stable and long-lasting structures of attitude formation and behavior instead of superficial motives in concrete usage situations. To retrieve metaphors for engaging in social media, the study uses the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET). ZMET is based on one-on-one in-depth interview. Interviews are conducted with students who take courses in Photoshop applications at the faculty of communication sciences. Participants are collect 4-6 images that represented their thoughts and feelings about and presented with homework approximately one week prior to their scheduled interviews. Subconscious metaphors are able to unveil users' thoughts, feelings and knowledge about social media and then permit focused strategy formation for social media activities. Keywords: Social media, metaphors, Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET). SOSYAL MEDYA TÜKETİCİLERİNİN DERİN METAFORLARI: SOSYAL MEDYA ÜZERİNE BİR ZMET ÇALIŞMASI Özet Sosyal medya, topluluk temelli girdi, etkileşim, içerik paylaşımı ve iş birliğine ithaf olunan çevrimiçi iletişim kanallarının topluluğudur. Forumlara adanmış web siteleri ve uygulamaları, blog yazarlığı, sosyal ağ oluşturma, sosyal imleme ve wikiler sosyal medyanın farklı türleri arasındadır. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Wikipedia, Linkedin sosyal medyanın önde gelen bazı örnekleridir. Sosyal medya, sosyal web siteleri ve uygulamalar yaygınlaştıkça çevrimiçi hayatın ayrılmaz bir parçası haline gelmektedir. İstatistiklere göre, 42 milyon İnternet kullanıcısı Türkiye'de sosyal medyada aktif olarak yer almakta ve sosyal medyadaki herhangi bir aygıttan günlük olarak ortalama 2 saat 32 dakika kullanılmaktadır. Bu nedenle tüketicilerin sosyal medyaya girme nedenlerini değerlendirmek iletişim için önemlidir. Çoğu geleneksel medya, kullanıcıları için yorum alanları olarak bu online sosyal bileşenleri kullanmaktadır. Ayrıca, ürün pazarlamak, marka tanıtmak, mevcut müşterilere bağlanmak ve yeni işler geliştirmek için de bu ortamlar kullanılmaktadır. 1 Assoc. Prof. Anadolu University, Communication sciences Faculty, 26470 Eskisehir, E-mail: sonursoy@anadolu.edu.tr