As an contributive instrument to the process of the democratization, the level of the local press to inform the public opinion in the context of tho local governance councils (in the sampling of the Sakarya and İstikbal newspapers of Eskişehir)

In this work, historically the oldest and most widely-circulated newspapers of the city of Eskisehir which are Sakarya and Istiklal have been studied through the qualitative content analyzes in order to find out how the concept of democratization in the context of the local governances at Eskisehir is evaluated and what kind of contributions have been done by the local newspapers for the creation of this situation. The putting in evidence of the effects in the local environments of the relationship between the concepts of the local governances, the mass media and the democratization evaluated in the theoretical chapter and the creation of the democratization and the social conscience of the local newspapers by the front-page news and the columnists have constituted the principal structure of this work. It is very clear that a social transformation is inevitable while the fact of globalization influences all over the world. Turkey is in the position of a country that is sufficiently affected by these changes. The funds created by the global capital markets and the technological developments done immediately after have formed new fields of questioning on from the science to the ethics and from the notion of the human rights to the urban life. One of these fields of questioning is the democratization. In the societies administrated by the representative democracy, the effective dynamics discuss on how the democracy can be more operative more than its traditional structure and how the more liberty and more prosperity can take place in. The unavoidable increase of the requests of democratization has necessitated the reorganization of the administration and has aimed to develop the models of the more effective roles that the citizens undertake. According to the social scientists, against the globalization, the localization which is able to create the human and livable environments, -where historical, cultural and social reproductions that could be easily done-, constitutes a favorable base for the democratization. Therefore, new improvements occur from the centered administration to the strong local governances and from the representative democracy to the participatory democracy. The norms in the universal and national qualities have been formed in accordance with this view. In fact, as the findings of this work, it is evaluated that the important improvements have been done within the context of the local governances and regulations related to the participatory activities have been realized in Turkey during its entrance process to European Union. The existence of the democracy envisages the political participation. Although the political participation necessitates a social conscience, it considers as a prerequisite condition the free flow of information in the constitution of the conscience of the participation. In this context, the local media undertakes important duties. Eskisehir with its educational, cultural and social environments is a city that has all necessary dynamics for the participatory democracy. The local governance authorities and the local newspapers can only activate these dynamics. In this work; the findings have been obtained such as that; - The local newspapers and the local governance authorities are not worried about ?the development of the social conscience? that can be considered as democratic virtue. - While the local politicians are more worried about ?their re-elections, the bureaucrats are about remaining in office for another term. - The local press focuses more on increasing its circulation, without doing strong efforts for the effective citizen model that constitutes the basic of the democratization