Jekyll & Hyde Online: A Critical Analysis on Consumption of the Self Through Advertisements Promoting Transhumanism

• Main Author: Sinem Güdüm
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Akademik Bilişim Araştırmaları Derneği 2021-02-01
• Series: Online Academic Journal of Information Technology
• Subjects: transhumanizm; reklam; i̇nsan; teknoloji; dijital; sosyal medya; transhumanism; advertising; human; technology; digital; social media
• Online Access: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ajit-e/issue/60302/869503

R. Louis Stevenson’s famous book called “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” is an 1886 novel about a legal worker in London, who investigates the unprecedented events happening between his friend Dr Jekyll, and the evil counterpart Mr. Hyde. This story's impact has been such that the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" still keeps coming up in conversations even today; referring to persons with an unpredictably dual nature. In order to understand the underlying reasons for the dualistic behavior amongst the humans, and their desperate search for perfection, 7 types of "Jakyll and Hyde" traits proposed by B.Engel will be discussed and analyzed through observing their appearances on advertisements, and how they lead to the consumption of the self in the era of transhumanism today. Qualitative methods, namely content analysis with semiotic undertones, will be applied on the chosen advertisement (Verizon, HTC Droid DNA) to make the necessary analysis on the topic together with a complimentary datamining sentiment analysis on ‘Transhumanism’ hashtag. To analyze the common public opinion on “transhumanism”. Tweets under this hashtag between the 19th of January 2020 – 27th of January 2020 have been gathered by using ‘Seobots’ application, and then the collected data which held 108 tweets on the mentioned hashtag were analyzed by using the NVIVO program for sentiment analysis.