İnternetteki Şirince: Siber Dünyanın “Gerçekliği”

Beyond being a written and oral information source, the most important feature of Internet is its powerful, fast and wide communication network. In addition to increasing the speed of communication, it is possible to visit, meet and to do business through Internet. It is also a necessary communication and business resource for tourism. Now it is possible to plan a visit, to make reservations and to buy tickets without the mediation of tourism agencies. Websites in many languages increase the communication and touristic activities. Many websites create pre-opinions and preconceptions about touristic places with their visual and written information. But these preconceptions can change, develop or be renewed in positive or negative ways after the visits. The basic question of this paper is “how and from which factors does the cyber world reflect “the reality” and what is distinctive about tourism in this context ?” And this question is explored through a fieldwork in Sirince (Selcuk, Izmir) which is introduced as a touristic village. In the first stage of the research nine sampled web sites were examined. Later, written and visual information on the landscape of the village, village life, relationship between village life and nature etc. in the websites were compared and some interviews were done in this context. In this paper, the images of Şirince in cyber world and perceptions of Sirince village as a “real world” are both compared. We can see that “the real world” defines the content of the cyber images, and also the photo of the cyber and “real world” duality are revealed. But all of the determinations are developed in the basis of village and tourism contexts.