Abstract

This study explores how opposition political candidates strategically use Instagram images for their election campaigns in a competitive authoritarian regime. The article focuses on Turkey’s 2019 mayoral elections and reports findings from 452 Instagram posts by the winning candidates in the three biggest cities (İzmir, Ankara, and İstanbul), all of whom are from the opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The results from a quantitative content analysis show that all elected mayors mainly applied their traditional media strategies directly to Instagram as part of broadcasting purposes. They rarely extended their campaigning to other media platforms as part of a hybrid campaign strategy. Implications of the role of Instagram in challenging incumbent parties in competitive authoritarian regimes are discussed.

摘要

这项研究探讨了反对派政治候选人如何在竞争性的独裁政权中战略性地使用 Instagram 图片进行竞选活动。本文重点关注土耳其 2019 年市长选举，并报告了三个最大城市（伊兹密尔、安卡拉和伊斯坦布尔）获胜候选人在 452 条 Instagram 帖子中发布的结果，这些候选人均来自反对党共和人民党 (CHP)。定量内容分析的结果显示，所有当选市长主要将其传统媒体策略直接应用于 Instagram，作为广播目的的一部分。他们很少将竞选活动扩展到其他媒体平台，作为混合的一部分竞选策略。讨论了 Instagram 在竞争性威权政权中挑战现任政党的作用的影响。