Öz
Humor is accepted one of the important aspects of social life. Because humor is nourished by social life in general. Humor magazines, as a medium by which humor can express itself, observe the society with their perspective, analyze the events, and caricature them. Social events and phenomena find themselves a place in these magazines in some way. In this regard, humor magazines are the mirrors where the social events reflect. It is an issue of concern what kind of results occur when just the magazines are monitored without observing the society. Rather than social agenda’s reflection in humor magazines, results which can be deduced are worthwhile phenomena when humor magazines are accepted as the data. This research with the title Humor, Sociology and Social Agenda aims at determining the social agenda in magazines Penguen and Cafcaf between the years 2009-2011 by discussing their cover pages. First, sociological aspect of humor is discussed for this purpose. Institutional frame of the research is described by explaining on what grounds humor can be a subject for sociology whereas it seems like an individual act. Institutional frame of the research is established by agenda setting theory which is used in communication sciences. Data in this nonreactive designed research are acquired by systematic and descriptive analyze of the cover pages’ contents of Penguen and Cafcaf magazines published between the years 2009-2011. Cover pages are classified by their subjects. As a result of the created themes how and on which topics the magazines attach importance is determined by applying frequency analysis. Hence, the topic similarities and differences of the magazines in their cover pages which are designed with respect to social events are put forward. With reference to the gathered data it is determined that both magazines reflect the ideologies of their writers/illustrators in general. It is understood that while these magazines points the problems related to social life and are strictly concerned with domestic politics on one hand, they do not cover enough the sociological and environmental problems on global scale in their cover page. It is gathered that these magazines are not uninterested with the social agenda and at the same time they create their own agenda. This situation shows that social agenda can be followed just by studying to the covers of magazines. In this regard it is monitored that humor magazines can give information about the social life, therefore, they can be used as data provider materials in an sociological research.