A perspective from Turkey on construction of the new digital world: analysis of emotions and future expectations regarding Metaverse on Twitter

The study investigates public sentiments and future expectations regarding the Metaverse in Turkey, focusing on discourse that surged after Facebook/Meta’s announcements and a nationally broadcast science program (“Teke Tek Bilim”). The Metaverse is presented as an evolving, persistent, online 3D environment integrating VR/AR, AI, blockchain, and related technologies, with roots in earlier virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) and contemporary platforms (e.g., Fortnite events, Roblox). The research aims to explore: RQ1—what sentiments Turkish Twitter users express about the Metaverse; and RQ2—what future expectations they hold. Understanding these perceptions is important for anticipating social, cultural, and economic implications, informing design, governance, and policy for emerging virtual ecosystems.

The paper situates the Metaverse within a historical and technological lineage (from Stephenson’s Snow Crash to Second Life, Oculus/Meta, and gaming-based economies) and summarizes its potential to enable socialization, work, and production. In Turkey, rapid popularization included high-profile metaverse land purchases, municipal showcases (e.g., Ankara in Metaverse), and sectoral experimentation (health, education, marketing). From a sociology of expectations perspective, hype and anticipations can shape investments, innovation trajectories, and social norms, but also raise concerns about privacy, security, data ownership, and ethical regulation. Social media scholarship highlights sentiment analysis as a tool to gauge user experience, detect harms (e.g., cyberbullying), improve design, and tailor marketing. COVID-19 accelerated digital reliance, potentially intensifying emotional responses to immersive platforms. Prior studies report mixed perceptions—opportunities for convenience, engagement, and economic activity alongside fears of addiction, detachment from reality, ethical violations, and inequity.

Design: Qualitative study using sentiment analysis of Twitter data to explore emotions and future expectations about the Metaverse. Data collection: Tweets in Turkish posted from Turkey using the hashtag “metaverse” between 01/10/2022 and 01/17/2022 (one week following the Teke Tek Bilim TV program). A total of 10,437 tweets were collected. Advertorial tweets were excluded; replies were included; retweets were excluded. Tool: MAXQDA 2022 was used to access, manage, and analyze the tweets, including associated visuals (photos/videos). Pre-processing: The text data were not preprocessed to remove noise (e.g., stop words, punctuation, special characters), as stated by the authors. Feature extraction and classification: Word frequencies and parts-of-speech fragments informed coding. Researchers conducted free coding, reading tweets one-by-one, categorizing by content and subject (date, time, hashtag, tweet text, and relevant visuals). Discourses pertinent to emotions and expectations were coded; some metaphorical expressions were analyzed. An importance score (weight) was assigned to content deemed essential. Theming and visualization: Related categories were aggregated into themes via inductive analysis. The final code system comprised nine themes and 18 categories; a code–subcode map was prepared. Validity and reliability: Experienced qualitative researchers conducted analysis; triangulation and external review were employed. Intercoder reliability was calculated using Miles & Huberman’s formula, achieving 82% agreement (12 agreements, 3 disagreements), exceeding the 80% threshold.

- Dataset: 10,437 Turkish tweets (01/10/2022–01/17/2022); retweets excluded; replies included. - Analysis structure: Nine themes and 18 categories; intercoder reliability 82%. - Emotions (RQ1): Predominant emotions expressed were curiosity, anger, helplessness/desperation in real life, dissatisfaction, worries/anxiety, and fear. Specific concerns included: • Exploitation/fraud risks (e.g., virtual land sales likened to historical scams). • Dangers to users (cyberbullying/harassment), potential health problems, and economic harms. • Fear of national/individual lateness to developments and being left behind. • Ethical/code irregularities and lack of regulation; calls for governmental rules. • Unpreparedness for rapid technological shifts; disorientation and loss of reality. • Risk of media/virtual-world addiction and material loss through virtual spending. • Anger toward hype and exclusion due to knowledge or economic gaps. • Attraction/curiosity driven by novelty and unknowns. - Future expectations (RQ2): • Growth trajectory: Many expect Metaverse importance to increase, becoming more realistic with broader sectoral adoption, new services/markets, and rising corporate investments. • Utility: Anticipated applications to make life easier (shopping, entertainment, public services, education, training). • Counterview: Others expect decline over time due to limited functionality, infrastructural constraints, misuse, or high content production costs (analogy to 3D movies). • Uncertainties: Concerns about service efficiency, dependency on infrastructure (e.g., power/internet), legal/regulatory gaps, and rapid version turnover confusing users. • Virtual life expectations: Possibility to realize otherwise impossible experiences; altered moral judgments and potential moral collapse; new forms of digital intimacy and crime; discrimination could both diminish (identity freedom, reduced bias) and reconfigure (class-based access); games as drivers; conservative groups may be challenged by decentralization. Overall, users anticipate increased technological investments and emergence of new services/products/markets, but also foresee ethical/regulatory gaps, societal unpreparedness, and addiction risks.

The findings address RQ1 by showing a spectrum of emotions—curiosity, fear, anxiety, anger, dissatisfaction, and desperation—rooted in perceived risks (exploitation, ethical voids, cyber harms, health/economic threats) and allure (novelty, imagined possibilities). This emotional ambivalence mirrors literature noting both empowering and dystopian potentials of immersive virtual worlds. For RQ2, tweets project bifurcated futures: one of expansion (greater realism, cross-sector growth, convenience) and one of attenuation (infrastructural limits, content costs, misalignment with needs). Uncertainties about governance, legal frameworks, and infrastructural dependencies underscore calls for regulation and design considerations. The interplay between expectations and hype suggests that social discourse may influence investment, adoption, and policy trajectories in Turkey, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines, digital literacy, and inclusive access.

Twitter discourse in Turkey reveals mixed emotions toward the Metaverse—anxiety, fear, curiosity, uncertainty, dissatisfaction, and helplessness—alongside divergent expectations: some foresee widespread adoption and transformative services; others predict loss of relevance over time. The study highlights anticipated increases in technological investments and new markets, juxtaposed with ethical/regulatory concerns, societal unpreparedness, and addiction risks. Future research should analyze longer time horizons beyond a single week and incorporate user characteristics to contextualize sentiments; mixed-methods designs and cross-platform analyses could deepen understanding and inform policy and design for safer, equitable virtual ecosystems.

- Temporal scope restricted to one week (01/10/2022–01/17/2022) following a specific TV program, potentially capturing a hype-influenced snapshot rather than stable attitudes. - Lack of sociodemographic data for Twitter users limits interpretation and generalizability of sentiment patterns across population subgroups. - Advertorial detection and exclusion, and the absence of text preprocessing, may influence coding granularity and noise levels in qualitative sentiment categorization.