TITLE:
Evaluating the Role of Media during Elections: The Case of Local Elections of 31st March 2019 in Turkey
AUTHORS:
Ayşe Fulya Şen
KEYWORDS:
Media and Democracy, Media Diversity, Media Pluralism, Political Communication, Election Coverage
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.12 No.4,
April
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: This article attempts to discuss the importance of pluralist perspective
on the basis of the election coverage and aims to understand how elections are
reported and whether election news includes policy debates in a democratic
public sphere. It also assesses the political news during election times according to its democratic
values and compares differences and similarities in commercial news media over
the case of local elections dated 31st March 2019 in Turkey. The findings have
shown that the election news coverage was not included any critical and pluralist
debate on policy issues, instead, concentrated on the polling data, polemics,
and campaign tactics. In conclusion, it has been seen that the digital-born
news site also has similar mainstream attitudes and the commercial media has
been in line with media logic by disregarding critical debates.