WEBSITES AS A POLITICAL COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: 2007 GENERAL ELECTION IN TURKEY
International Symposium: Communication in the Millennium, Turkey, 1 - 04 July 2010, vol.8, no.8, pp.144-161, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Volume: 8
- Country: Turkey
- Page Numbers: pp.144-161
- Akdeniz University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
This research has been conducted to reveal how effective the use of websites belonging political parties in Turkish General Elections held on 22nd July 2007 and what kind of opportunities internet offers for parties in terms of competition in politics. Moreover, in this study it is aimed to explore attitudes of students in Akdeniz University, Faculty of Communication toward websites of political parties and to reveal the possible relation between the given attitudes and opinion of students about parties. With this purpose, first, websites of parties in Turkish General Elections held on 22nd July 2007 have been analyzed in terms of their content and design features. The second, the survey has been conducted to measure attitudes of students toward content and design features of websites and opinions about political parties.
Thus, websites of major parties have been found to be superior to websites of small parties in terms of their content and design; however, websites of some small parties have been observed that they are close to the websites of major parties’ in terms of content and design. Findings revealed that Turkish political parties use internet as a supportive means of election campaigns and internet is not yet in effective position for these campaigns. Also search on websites showed that in Turkey web sites of political parties are insufficient in terms of the two-way symetrical communication flow and mostly used for one-way information flow. Generally, findings obtained from content analysis and survey have partially supported normalisation and engagement scenarios.