Investigation of the Twitter Content of the Candidates from the Perspective of Political Communication in Istanbul Metropolitan Mayoralty Elections

Abstract

As with all disciplines, political communication discipline has entered into a change and transformation with the developing communication technologies. The fact that parties and politicians carry their political communication to the digital environment and direct communication with the target group auditions in this environment brings many issues that need to be examined. This study aims to analyze Twitter contents of repeated by the Supreme Election Board (SEB) on June 23, 2019 Istanbul Metropolitan Mayoralty (IMM) Public Alliance Justice and Development Party (JDP) candidate Binali Yıldırım and the National Alliance Republican People's Party (RPP) candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. The content that the candidates shared on their official Twitter accounts between 9 May-22 June 2019 during the election campaign period was collected through Maxqda qualitative data analysis program and analyzed and examined by content analysis technique. Tweets in the research was classified by location and activity, election campaign communication, personal message, information and explanation, interpersonal dialogue, communication with selected and appointed persons, and other/unknown categories. In addition, the most frequently used hashtags were determined by the candidates, the relationship between hashtags and tweet categories was examined and the word frequency analyzes of the candidates were done. As a result, it can be said that candidates use Twitter more for location and activity, election campaign communication, personal message and information and explanation. In the study, it was revealed that the candidates did not much attention to the interaction feature which is one of the most important benefits of social media.