ABSTRACT

From the early 1980s on, when political communication began to be widely used across the country, studies regarding this issue focused particularly on election periods. Up till 2002, there was no such work as to how political communication actors made use of the local media. Therefore, being the first in its field, this research also aims to improvise and shed light on future studies. The study examines political marketing strategies followed by political communication actors, political parties, and parliamentary candidates intending to take advantage of Edirne’s local newspapers in 2002 general elections. It also scrutinizes the relationship between the political communication system and newspapers in order to reveal the transformations in this field; thus determining the attitude of newspapers with regard to political communication. The aim of the study is to determine the transformations experienced in this field in 2002 and to scrutinize how politics was performed and how political marketing was utilized by political parties in terms of political communication with an investigation of the news stories published prior to 2002 November elections in local Edirne newspapers Hudut, Sonhaber, Edirne, Edirne Haber and Vatandaş. In the study, the aim was to lay out how political parties were presented in local newspapers of Edirne city center and the corresponding attitudes of those newspapers in November 3rd, 2002 General Elections. News, editorials, columns, published pictures, announcements, and general information on research findings related to advertisements concerning the elections within Edirne Province were included. Five local newspapers in the study were assessed with content analysis between October 1st and October 2nd, 2002. The study proceeds on the assumption that politics is built and presented through the connections in the triangle of media, politics, and capital. Results of the research show that local newspapers in Edirne were biased and far from being objective. They failed to maintain a balanced communication between the political actors and the voters in the elections; nonetheless, the local newspapers manipulated by political actors did not seem to have any effect on the voters. In the research, it was seen that beginning from the 1990s, voters in Turkey exhibit greatly varying attitudes and they were likely to be influenced by the national media; as such, Edirne voters appeared to have a disregard for local news agencies.