Research Information System
Ankara Üniversitesi İLEF Dergisi, vol.9, no.2, pp.344-371, 2022 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
Although political advertising in newspapers in Turkey dates back to the late 1970s, the systematic study of this phenomenon remains in its infancy. In an effort to contribute to a deeper understanding of Turkish political culture, this study uses qualitative content analysis to examine political advertising in newspa- pers in Turkey during eight general elections between 1977 and 2007. It explores the main characteristics of newspaper political advertising during this four-decade period, covering a total of 434 political ads collected from the online archive of Milliyet, which it classifies according to categories widely used in the scholarly literature. The results of this study indicate that Turkish newspaper political ads are (1) positive; (2) issue oriented, though there is an upward trend in the rate of images; (3) not entirely evidence based; (4) generally concerned with economic issues; and (5) mostly aimed at the youth when it comes to a specific voter segment.