A study on the official Instagram account of the Gendarmarie General Command

The presence of the Gendarmerie General Command on social media platforms and the communication strategies it carries out through these platforms is a remarkable area of research. Gendarmerie General Command, which operates with a wide range of duties such as providing security in rural areas and intervening in social incidents among the law enforcement forces in Turkey, utilises various tools in its communication with the public. This study examines the communication activities of the Gendarmerie General Command through its official Instagram account between 1 October 2024 and 31 March 2025 within the framework of Grunig and Hunt's Four Public Relations Models. A total of 500 posts were analysed by content analysis method, and the posts were thematically classified under five main themes and 18 sub-codes. As a result of the research, informative (50.4%), operational (20.8%) and community-related (15.2%) posts were the most frequently shared content. The vast majority of the posts (91.2%) had one-way communication characteristics, while only 8.8% had two-way interaction. In terms of interaction level, 53% of the posts received medium, 32.8% low and 14.2% high levels of interaction. In terms of Grunig and Hunt models, the most dominant model was the Public Information Model (45.6%), followed by the Press Agency Model (31.4%), the Two-Way Asymmetric Model (17%) and the Two-Way Symmetric Model (6%). In terms of public relations practices, the most commonly used method is 'publicity' (49.6%), followed by 'corporate social responsibility' (22.4%), 'crisis communication' (15.4%) and 'internal communication' (12.6%).