https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4205-8430
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Abstract
This study explores how opposition political candidates strategically use Instagram images for their election campaigns in a competitive authoritarian regime. The article focuses on Turkey’s 2019 mayoral elections and reports findings from 452 Instagram posts by the winning candidates in the three biggest cities (İzmir, Ankara, and İstanbul), all of whom are from the opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The results from a quantitative content analysis show that all elected mayors mainly applied their traditional media strategies directly to Instagram as part of broadcasting purposes. They rarely extended their campaigning to other media platforms as part of a hybrid campaign strategy. Implications of the role of Instagram in challenging incumbent parties in competitive authoritarian regimes are discussed.
Notes
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2023.2269062).
Notes
1 Bogaards (Citation2009) uses the term “competitive authoritarianism” to define regimes that are neither “democratic” nor “authoritarian.”
2 Seymour-Ure (Citation1974) originally conceptualized press-party parallelism to describe the level of partisanship in media.
3 Hallin and Mancini (Citation2004) identify a polarized/pluralist media system as one where the state directly and indirectly influences the media, leading to a high level of political parallelism. Recent research on the Turkish media demonstrates a deepened polarization in news coverage whereby news outlets cluster into specific sociopolitical camps (e.g., Melek & İşeri, Citation2021).
4 Sartori (Citation1976, p. 196) defines the predominant-party system as one “where a single party is consistently supported by a winning majority of voters … and thus is able to monopolize power.”
5 According to Konda’s Barometer report (Citation2019c, p. 13) regarding the 2019 mayoral elections, the cities where leading CHP candidates were elected have a secular, urban, metropolitan lifestyle, unlike cities that elected AKP candidates.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gizem Melek
Dr. Gizem Melek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radio Television and Cinema at Yaşar University. She also chairs the ECREA Women’s Network. Her research focuses on media’s intersection with politics, particularly media effects, journalism, political and climate change communication. Her work appears in peer-reviewed national and international journals, including Visual Studies, Visual Communication, and Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research. With a six-year background as a journalist in Türkiye and the UK, Dr. Melek brings a wealth of practical experience to her academic pursuits.
E-mail: [email protected]