Use of social media in local elections in the context of political marketing: The example of Istanbul elections

With the developing information and communication technologies, a change and transformation has been experienced in the field of political marketing, which combines the disciplines of politics and marketing, and its importance has started to increase. Parties and political actors engage in various political marketing activities in order to reach the voters, to communicate directly with the voters and to achieve success as a result of the election. Considering the basic characteristics of social media such as mutual interaction, participation, depersonalization and asynchrony, it emerges as an indispensable medium in the context of political marketing. Due to the increasing number of internet and social media users in the world and in our country, its ease of use and its cost-free structure, it is seen that social media these channels are frequently used by political actors especially during election periods. The aim of this study is firstly to examinate of the link between the posts of Cumhur İttifakı Candidate Binali Yıldırım and Millet İttifakı Candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu on their social media accounts with the strategies they followed while using social media and the voting rates they received in the election results during the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality elections. Besides, because of the repeat election between the two candidates unlike the studies conducted so far in the literature, it is aimed to examine; whether there is a difference between the two elections according to the subject distribution, which issues are given more weight in which election, what are the issues highlighted. The posts of candidates on their Twitter accounts were examined and evaluated with content analysis both of first election on 31 March 2019 and repeat election on 23 June 2019. In the first election, the posts of the candidates in 27 days between 03 March 2019 and 30 March 2019, and in the repeat election, within 47 days between 07 May 2019 and 22 June 2019, were included in the analysis. This study covers only the Twitter posts that the candidates use effectively because of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts are the same. The candidates' Twitter posts between the specified dates were transferred to the Nvivo qualitative data analysis program with Ncapture and coded under 17 categories. In the study, the data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by frequency analysis in terms of numerical and percentage frequencies, and by categorical analysis in terms of subjects. As a result, the candidates actively use social media in their political campaigns but do not benefit from the two-way communication opportunities of social media. It can be said that the candidates generally use social media to share their projects and promises, to announce their activities and to inform the voters about the activities to be held, to their activities and to share the activities that will mobilize the voters. In addition, it is observed that there is no significant difference between the social media usage practices of the candidates, the content of their posts and the rate of votes obtained as a result of the election. According to the result of the study, it can be said that the successful use of social media as a political marketing tool is not sufficient in winning the election, but may have a positive effect.