Political Party Leaders’ Use of Social Media in North Cyprus During Parliamentary Elections 2018

Social media is an important arena in political communication especially in electoral campaigns. This study aims to find about politicians’ use of social media as a means of political communication during the general election campaign in 2018, in North Cyprus. In this study, content analysis used as a reseach method. Leaders of six political parties’ Facebook and Twitter posts were analyzed over a month and a half period, starting from 07.12.2017 until 22.01.208, covering the period of a month earlier to the election day (07.01.2018) and two weeks after the election day. A coding sheet was used to analyze, and its reliability was .75 according to Cohen’s formula. This study was conducted to answer three questions. (1) How did political party leaders use social networking sites (Facebook or Twitter) during the election campaign?, (2) What were the main themes in their SNSs’ posts? and (3) Is there any difference within the politicians’ use of SNSs in pre-election and post-election periods? The findings of the study show that utilization of social media as a means for political communication in election campaigns with a professional sense is not a main issue in North Cyprus. Alongside of using social media to reach voters, politics still rely mostly on traditional ways such as campaign trail visits throught the country in order to have face-to-face relationship with voters. Keywords: Political Communication, Election Campaigns, Facebook, North Cyprus