The Social Media Use by Political Parties in the Times of Crisis: The Case of the COVID-19 Pandemic Period

Abstract

Societies experience various turning points in the historical process. These turning points often emerge as crises. Although crises are not always financial, each crisis affects populations in socio-economic terms. The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest crisis experienced today. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has directly affected Turkey as well as the entire world since March 2020. In this arduous process, the government has taken precautions to keep public health under control in Turkey, like in all other countries. Besides the government in Turkey, political parties as influential opinion leaders have also taken an active role in the pandemic process and tried to benefit the people segments they address. In this study, the use of social media and websites by political parties in Turkey during COVID-19, which is a crisis period, was evaluated by comparative analysis method, and also the shared contents were subjected to discourse analysis method. The study has concluded that AK Parti and MHP exert an effort to announce the strategies created to the public and other parties represent a critical attitude towards the ruling party, bringing the issues that citizens suffer during the pandemic to the fore.