Özet:

Elections that transfer citizens’ opinions and opinions to the political sphere and allow representatives to come to power are one of the most important elements of democratic political order. Affecting voters’ political preferences and ensuring their sustainability is associated with the existence of an effective political communication process. The political communication process, which covers the advertising, propaganda and public relations techniques that political actors use to promote themselves to the voting crowd and gain public support, has gained a new and different dimension with the emergence of new communication technologies. Political parties and candidates are actively using the platforms provided by new communication technologies not only to conduct electoral campaigns that include their promises to voters, but to interact with them through direct dialogue, especially during the election period, in order to inform voters at the time and in the form they want, and to get quick feedback from them. In particular, the only medium that independent candidates who do not have political party support and cannot find their place in conventional media can reach the voters is the social media that emerges especially with the Web 2.0 period. This study aims to reveal how the social network site Facebook is used by independent mayor candidates who are not available in traditional media in the conduct of election campaigns. The universe of the study, the independent presidential candidates of the 30 metropolitan municipalities in Turkey in the 2019 Local Administrations Election, forms the sample of the 8 metropolitan municipalities candidates, which are determined by the multi-stage sample method. The last month in which the election campaigns gained intensity and a day after the election (3 March - 1 April 2019) the posts that the candidates made on Facebook were studied by the method of frequency and categorical analysis from the content analysis techniques.