Semiotic analysis of local election posters in the context of political advertising: 2019 İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality elections

Political marketing and political advertising are concepts with high added value and indispensable competence gains in today's election campaigns. In political actions, political parties or candidates shape their programs with a product perception as it should be in traditional marketing, and make an effort in the pre- and post-election processes so that the voters prefer this product. Within the scope of these pre- and post-election processes, which are kept in focus by political parties or candidates, 'votes' corresponding to the product are requested within the framework of political marketing. For this, mass media are used for strategic success for voters. The aim of the study is to examine how the perception of the voters who are buyers in the election processes is shaped through posters and posters, which are the practice of the concept of advertising in political marketing, and to analyze the effects of the indicators used in the posters on the voter's decision, how the voters' decisions, which are influenced by these methods, affect the social mobility and the cause-effect relationship of the election results. To explain by research method. Within the scope of political advertising, election posters aim to convince the voters, criticize and weaken the opposing views by creating an impact on the electorate to choose among the parties participating in the elections. One of the striking results of the study is that semiotics deals with the meaningful unity in social life in the sign relationship that shows in art, in space, in almost every area of life, and makes it easier for people to communicate with each other. In this thesis, the semiotic analysis of the election posters used in the June 23, 2019 Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality elections was examined with the denotation and connotation technique based on the approach of Roland Barthes.