An Investigation of Candidate Leaders’ Tweet Campaigns Prior to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipal Elections Using Big Data Text Mining

Özet

Social media provide platforms where individuals share their knowledge, ideas, and experiences and then transfer them to others. Political actors are also working to increase their access to the electoral masses and to participate in politics on these platforms as the target groups are included in these channels. Younger generations’ use of social media rather than traditional media such as television and newspapers make social networks more important for political actors. Using text mining, it is possible to analyze and make sense of a large amount of data in different formats in these environments. In this study, their leadership characteristics of two political candidates, Binali Yıldırım and Ekrem İmamoğlu, who were the leaders of the Istanbul Metropolitan 23 June 2019 elections, were determined by examining their discourses on Twitter. The leadership features of the discourse strategy followed by the successful leader and their political supporters were analyzed. The study deployed a descriptive research model (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2018, p. 239) and a comparative method. A mixed research design was used which included both qualitative and quantitative methods. At the same time, discourse and emotion analyzes were conducted using text mining methods on the tweets of both candidates. The result of the “assertiveness-sensitivity measurement” indicated that Binali Yıldırım demonstrated “successoriented leadership” features, and Ekrem İmamoğlu demonstrated “supportive leadership” features. The result of the “assertiveness-sensitivity measurement” made based on the leaders’ Twitter feed indicated that Ekrem İmamoğlu was both more assertive and sensitive than Binali Yıldırım. There was no significant difference in the dictionary-based analysis of the emotions expressed by leaders.