Reflection of Turkish folk culture on advertisements

Today, mass media are not limited to information transmission or product promotion; they are also carriers of cultural values, social norms and identity configurations. In this context, advertisements go beyond consumption-oriented messages and serve as a powerful transfer medium through which cultural codes, social values and traditional symbols are reproduced. In particular, advertisements published on television and digital platforms provide important contributions to the continuity of cultural memory thanks to their hosting of elements belonging to public culture; traditional motifs, oral culture elements and folkloric elements are reinterpreted through the language of advertising and are constantly used in both cultural and cultural services. The main aim of the study is to analyze how elements specific to Turkish folk culture are reflected in advertising content and the functions of these reflections in the context of social memory, identity construction and cultural transfer with a public science perspective. In this direction, advertising contents were discussed with a multi-layered approach; meanings, ideological reflections and cultural references at textual, visual and symbolic levels were evaluated as a whole. While creating the universe of the study in television and digital platforms in Turkey; its sample is limited to advertisements with folkloric elements. Within the scope of this study, thirty television commercials published in Turkey in the last twenty-five years were selected by scanning method and examined using qualitative content analysis technique. How folklore elements are represented in advertisements during the analysis process is addressed with a holistic approach. In addition, quantitative data were collected with the survey method in order to increase the reliability of qualitative analysis and through this data, the perceptions of the audience about cultural representations in the advertisements were measured. The findings suggest that advertisements not only reflect folk culture; they also reformat it, making significant contributions to the retention of social memory and the sustainability of cultural identity.