Media as the Incentive or Mediator of Populism: A Research on the Media Populism Strategies and Factors of Political Power in Turkey

Abstract

Social sciences positioned populism as a strategy to secure power/strength, a genuine political way, but besides it is positioned as an ideology, which divides society into two homogenous, antagonistic groups, brings society and elites face to face. Furthermore it is defined, as an ideology that wants politics to represent the society's general will.It is accepted that media and its production "logic" provides appropriate tools for populism development. In Turkey, which is governed by neoconservative and neo-liberal power, media populism has been the most used political communication strategy in recent years. Communication strategies, when there is a need to arouse and direct interest of the public opinion and for agenda setting processes; complexity, reduction, personalization, accusation, sentimentalizing, targeting, dramatization, alienation and creation of pseudo events, are frequently used. Most of the political actors appeal to media populism when they need to lean on to the society, disseminate the charismatic leader discourse, reduce the value of the discourses belonging to opponents, prove that they are representing the common goods and benefits. This study relates to direct-indirect practices of government's populism strategies.Within this context, creating legitimacy on political power by media populism in Turkey is assumed to be the most powerful method.Keywords: populism, media populism, political communication IntroductionSocial sciences positioned populism as a strategy to secure the power/strength, in other words as a genuine political way, but besides, it is positioned as an ideology, which divides society into two homogenous, antagonistic groups, brings society and degenerated elites face to face. Furthermore it is defined, as an ideology that wants politics to represent the society's general will. Researches refer to this concept's ideological, organizational and communicational extents, whereas it is accepted that media and its production "logic" provides appropriate tools for the development of populism. In terms of political communication, the relationship between media communication styles and populism's conditions, rules and logic is an attractive research area.The most vital questions/problems here are whether media is the tool of populism or the incentive of populism In contemporary world, populism is more and more present in party's political discourse while they are attempting to achieve their goals regardless of their ideological orientation or heritage. This transformation of political actors are also transforming the concept of populism from ideological level to a mean for a massive winning of votes and support in political-electoral campaigns. The growth of the relevance of global politics, state's reshuffled concepts and increased frequencies of transcendent political processes are shaping other kinds of grounds and scopes for the massive rhetoric policies in the 21st century (Latifi, 2015). Populism appears as an ideology, which shapes democracy and democracy practices of govern...