The Role of Social Media in Political Marketing: 2014 Local Elections of Turkey

Abstract

The field “political marketing”, although relatively new, has grown quickly over the last decade. Nowadays, it attracts scholars from a number of disciplines outside the mainstream marketing field. Political parties started to use the marketing instruments as part of their electoral campaign activities. The term “Political marketing” includes these activities made by political parties to affect voters and is focused on influencing the individuals regarding political candidates to reach the maximum number of vote. One of the marketing instruments that political parties use to reach the voters is the magic of social media. Since the rise of the internet in the early 1990s, the world’s networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions. Over the same period, social media have become a fact of life for civil society worldwide. As the communications landscape gets more complex, and more participatory, the networked population is getting much more importance and gaining greater power since social media gives people, the opportunity to access information much more easily, and it also gives more opportunities to engage in public speech. As a result, it enhances the ability of people to undertake collective action. This paper examines the effects of political marketing and especially using social media on voters of the 30 March 2014 local elections in Turkey. Firstly, it reviews the theory of marketing in broad terms and political marketing as part of it. And then, the new and popular social media channels were identified. Political marketing activities done via these social media channels during 30 March campaign period were investigated and the effects of political marketing and especially social media usage of parties on the results of elections have been examined in this respect.

Keywords: Political marketing, social media, Turkey’s local elections in 2014