Virtuel Flaneuseasa New Consumer Identity: A Qualitative Research on Pinterest

Cultural dimensions of products have virtually the same prominence as their functionality in network society. Nowadays, new consumer identities are also worthy being analyzed. The aim of this study is to focus on urbanization, a symbol of modernization, evolution of the observer, and explorer characters of themodern individual in initial periods into flâneur from the point of view consumption culture on the basis of postmodern reflections in social media. The evolution of flaneur, as an emphasis towards masculine nature of modern urban individual into flaenuse that is a victory won against sexism policy is a metaphor of cultural evolution. Therefore, the process of virtual flaneuse provides a considerable amount of descriptive material to have a sight of new consumer identity. This study aims to follow virtual flâneuse within the context of Pinterest whose over 80 % users consist of women. In this regard, this study employed semi structured interview method, one of qualitative research methods and also netnographic observation. Interviews with 13 women users from all Turkey and findings that were obtained via observations of researchers/participants in the field were analyzed. Thus, this provided opportunity to question existence and motivations of flaneur mentality as a consumer identity specific to virtual flaneuse. This study aims to make a theorical contribution to establishing a relationship between virtualflâneuse phenemonen and consumption culture as there is no research regarding pinterest in communication field in Turkey.

The paradox of Flâneuris that he both wants to isolate himself from population and desires to be a part of that population. He both likes rthyme, dynamism and liveliness of city and regrets time's flying. He both wants to see and observe everything and be invisible. Outside is a space of freedom, freedom of observing without being observed (Tseng, 2006: 225;Ivanchikova, 2007). Cartopgraphic view provided by system enables virtual flâneurto freely travel on streets, boulevards and visit any exotic and iconic corner in the world without living computer screen (Featherstone, 2006:922). This situation leads to a new debate regarding being visible of flâneurby changing his visibility status in the crowd and observing crowds from outside. Flâneurhas more difficulty being a productive, free and authentic individual in a consumption society where what we see encourages individuals to be a passive consumer.
In fact, in our today's network society, analysis of how presentation of identified content to user influences meta culture leads to debate regarding production of aesthetic practices

VirtualFlâneuse as a New Consumer Identity
The main problem about existence of Flâneusethat was first discussed against masculine identity of flâneurin the 19 th centurylies in the fact that flâneur himself does not have freedom of being invisible whil seeing, following everybody (Russell, 2000: 1-15). Because woman is object of man's gaze. In today's network society, existence of flâneuse has a different significance because her observations about daily life provide a great deal of data for cultural studies of production and consumption habits in a feminine way (Frisby, 1985;Gleber, 1997: 78-79). Everyday life was transfigured by "social multipication of images". In this new visual culture, mobilized and virtual view of flaneuse is shaped by fashion, advertisements, experiences and memories formed in the center of photograph (Freidberg, 1993:15-41).

Pinterest as Virtual Data Space
In this part we studied on, social network pinterestas establisment in 2010, according to differntresearchs statistic info and netrografic dates that we assembled.Pinterest is presented in a way unlike other social media platforms and provides users with a different social media experience. The site works as a virtual scrapbook on which users (called pinners) save images into a virtual folder called a pin board. Users pin images, along with short notes about the image, onto pin boards that are generally based on a particular theme that matches the user's interest. Users can also simply like another user's image to indicate their interest or if they do not have a pin board they want to pin the image to. Content is originally pinned from a website other than Pinterest. In creating their own Pinterest page users can either pin original content from another website or repin other users' content onto their own boards. The image show ultimate attention to ensuring that the themes which they are interested in reflect their intellectual identities.
When we look at the assessment of the research, observations and experiences of the virtual flaneur/flaneuse have guided us in today's network society by taking the ethnographic value of the flaneurship as reference in the urban culture where the consumption culture developing in parallel with the modernism has grown. Therefore, the motivation of the flaneuse, feminine version of postmodern flaneur, was chased up in the specific case of Pinterest. The fact that there is no study in the literature hunting for the virtual flaneuse in the case of Pinterest which has become the third biggest social networking site of the world and that no study has been conducted on Pinterest in Turkey so far serves as the indicator of the contribution of this descriptive research to the field. We hope that this research will shed light on the future research to be conducted particularly on Pinterest and for assessing the motivation of the new consumers.