Author(s)

Ayşe Fulya Şen

Faculty of Communication, Firat University, Elazig, Turkey.

This article attempts to discuss the importance of pluralist perspective on the basis of the election coverage and aims to understand how elections are reported and whether election news includes policy debates in a democratic public sphere. It also assesses the political news during election times according to its democratic values and compares differences and similarities in commercial news media over the case of local elections dated 31st March 2019 in Turkey. The findings have shown that the election news coverage was not included any critical and pluralist debate on policy issues, instead, concentrated on the polling data, polemics, and campaign tactics. In conclusion, it has been seen that the digital-born news site also has similar mainstream attitudes and the commercial media has been in line with media logic by disregarding critical debates.

Media and Democracy, Media Diversity, Media Pluralism, Political Communication, Election Coverage

Şen, A. (2022) Evaluating the Role of Media during Elections: The Case of Local Elections of 31st March 2019 in Turkey. Advances in Applied Sociology, 12, 112-126. doi: 10.4236/aasoci.2022.124011.