Politicians’ Strategies Regarding Their Visual Representations in Media: June 2015 Turkish General Elections

This study examines how photographic depictions of political candidates published prior to the elections are utilized. Photographic representations of political candidates, involve descriptive characteristics such as posture, posing, facial expressions and clothing style. At the same time, non-verbal clues such as smiling and raising eyebrows, which often have positive effect, are some of the factors affecting their physical attractions. Such characteristics are essential when individuals’ perceptions are considered, and they are significant components of political communication. This study examines, how visual clues and composition elements in politicians’ images, readers interpret and evaluates the findings and conclusions accordingly. Objective and intuitive interpretations of four political party leaders – who were represented through 121 photographs published on three high-circulation newspapers in Turkey for three weeks prior to June 7th 2015 Turkish General Elections-were sought by using Q-sort and qualitative interview techniques. The research question of the study is as follows: How do readers interpret composition elements of politicians’ representations and evaluate them?