Political advertising strategies at local election campaigns: A research study of the political ads used at 2004, 2009 and 2014 local elections in Eskişehir

The body of literature related to politics asserts that political party and the candidates can be more successful, they can come into power and remain in power for a long time by means of planned message strategies. The main purpose of this study was to determine how the message strategies were used by analyzing political advertisements published at local newspapers of Eskişehir during local electoral period in 2004, 2009, and 2014. In this research, 369 political advertisements published in local newspapers of Eskişehir during 2004, 2009 and 2014 local electoral period were chosen as sample. A content analysis was carried out on the attractiveness used at political ads in 2004, 2009 and 2014, the prominent topics in the advertisement, the type of political advertising by customizing an existing coding scale. In the light of this information, political advertisements of political parties, such as AKP, CHP, MHP and DSP in the sample local newspapers were analysed. Within this framework, the advertisements that were published by the sample parties in local newspapers were analysed one by one and seeked answers to four questions of the study. In this direction, the political parties taking part in three significant election periods in Turkey and the characteristics and the structure of the advertising messages they used were analysed by use of coding scale.