Animation as an election study for young voters - the case of Turkey 2018 General and Presidential Elections

The innovations brought by technology to our lives have also changed the political communication activities and allowed political parties to conduct their election activities in different fields. Internet technology has carried some of the election campaigns to new media tools. Within the scope of the study, the changing practices of political communication with the internet were examined, and new studies by political parties were explained. The new studies show that the new media's can give the opportunities to political parties which can direct their election studies to the masses with certain features. Thanks to this technology, young people can be biggest target especially in countries where young people constitute the biggest electorate such as Turkey because they use social media tools more than traditional tools. Therefore, political communication practices targeting young people have started to be made in digital platforms. Political parties wanted to stay one step ahead of their competitors and give their work to young people more effectively in digital platforms. Because of that they tried to finds way making their political work different towards young people on digital platforms. For this purpose, political parties have prepared political election animations for young people by making use of animation technology, which has been used in many fields in recent years and is popular among young people. In this study, by examining this orientation; properties of animation, its historical development process in the world and Turkey and the its relationship with politics evaluated. Moreover, Animations used by the three political parties in the 2018 Turkey election has been analyzed that what kind of content they have, how they are given to audiences and how political party be represented in animation by using semiotic analysis method. Keywords: Political Communication, New Media, Digital Campaign, Animation, Political Animation