Research Information System
ILEF DERGISI, vol.11, no.1, pp.79-110, 2024 (ESCI)
The study of political communication is an essential interdisciplinary field in the social sciences that lies at the intersection of political science, communication, and media studies. The field of political communication has been integral to the institutionalization of communication as an academic field both in Turkey and abroad. Recent international research has diagnosed a "crisis of public communication" in the field and pointed to the challenges this crisis poses to political communication research. However, because there is no study that summarizes and discusses the field's current state and trends in Turkey, it is it impossible to assess whether the suggested "crisis of public communication" applies there as well. To remedy this, the present study employs both manual and automatic content-analysis methods to analyze 254 Turkish articles collected from the Dergipark and TrDizin databases that contain the term "political communication" in their titles, abstracts, or keywords. This investigation reveals the following: (1) The most commonly used methodologies are text analysis; (2) in general, the research focuses on election campaigns and advertisements; (3) the preferred medium is social media, particularly Twitter; (4) there is a substantial lack of theory; (5) the field has very limited international scope; and (6) the field has a disciplinary profile dominated by researchers in the fields of communication and public relations. The fact that the field has become predominantly focused on political advertising and marketing suggests that the role of political communication in pluralistic democracies and the mission of political communication research should be re-evaluated in the Turkish context.