New persuasion strategies in election campaigns: the use of Twitter in 2019 Istanbul and Ankara mayoral election campaigns

Election campaigns, which have become one of the basic rituals of modern democratic societies, carried out by political actors are based on having social impact on the voting behavior with a series of persuasive practices shaped on various strategies. In this context, the design of election campaigns focuses on the dissemination of the political message structured to persuade in all areas of contact, ranging from interpersonal communication to mass communication with the electorate, initiation and development of dialogue with a comprehensive analysis of social values and norms, and a deep understanding of voter attitudes and behaviors. Owing to the widespread use of internet technologies, the rapid integration of the innovations brought by digitalization to the social life and the possibility of a public space, political actors use social media platforms with low or high performance in their election campaigns and develop various persuasion strategies by means of them. In the light of all the facts mentioned above, the present study aims to examine the strategies developed to persuade in election campaigns with the use of Twitter, one of the social media platforms that political actors use actively.