March 31, 2019 Local Elections and the Media

Intoduction

Social practices are shaped by the teachings of the modern world and universal values and criteria try to adapt to the changes that the world is going through. In addition to the changes experienced by the society in many areas, changes in fundamental values and rituals are also observed. The individual who needs to see various differences in the postmodern era has to adapt to the differences in today's age, which is digitalized every day. In our modern world today, we sometimes criticize the social order and sometimes exalt it based on its well-accepted practices. However, it is always imagined to reach a better world and a fairer society. Collective living spaces and practices are directly related to how individuals, who comprise the society, are located and represented. Democracy is essential for countries and societies. Democracy is essentially a return to collective life and an indispensable argument of existence. Democracy, which includes individuals into political decision-making processes and is against the dictatorships, in fact, aims the development of civil society. Because of this, discussions on democracy are based on the idea of civil society, and the concepts of democracy and civil society are interpreted in a way that they are intertwined. Civil society is seen as a sociological counterpart and even as a subset of democracy in the political sphere. In democracies, elections, during which voters participate in the process by voting, are popular discussion topics in many parts of the world. Discussions, allegations, campaigns, and political conflicts about local or general elections are the routine of these periods. It is because the elections are important for both voters and parties/political actors (Becker, 2016; Calvert and Burnell, 2004).

There are some controversial situations in the functioning of democracy, which accepts elections as an important element. For example, discontent is caused by corporate deficiency, which prevents accountability and good governance (Diamond, 2001). According to Diamond (2001), systems of the party and campaign finance are deeply defective in many democracies (old and new). Citizens are considered as powerless to change the system, however, the media is not the same, since it can reveal it. In fact, media has a mediating role in the development of democracy. Therefore, the role and the attitude of the media, which is observed to be undergoing a structural transformation based on new media today, is very important in democratic processes. So, in this study, the contribution of the media in terms of providing information about politics before the local elections held in Turkey on March 31, 2019 will be examined. In this context, news and public opinion polls about the mentioned elections will be discussed in the light of the hermeneutics approach. The media outlets were selected through verdictive sampling. The reason for this preference was the ideological stances of the media organizations (Sabah, Sözcü, Yeni Çağ Newspapers). Sabah is a newspaper close to the government, while the Sözcü is a newspaper opposing the government. Yeni Çağ is a nationalist newspaper. Therefore, the diversity of the sample is obvious and important for the access and interpretation of comparable data. Accessing and interpreting comparable data enables analysis of different approaches.