Political Public Relations 2.0 and the use of Twitter of Political Leaders in Turkey

Political public relations is a tool of transmission of messages for political parties to their voters. One of the conditions of symmetrical communication is feedback. Dialogical approach requires the change on policies according to public demand and aims manufacturing consent within two way concessions. Within public relations 2.0, the communication process between political sources and their target audience has been facilitated. This paper will be analyzing the effective usage of Twitter, by the political party leaders who have been represented in TBMM (Grand National Assembly of Turkey) and also Abdullah Gül; the president of the Republic of Turkey. Leaders’ Twitter accounts will be followed between 1- 29 February and will be examined in terms of messages for the media agenda, messages for the trend topics, and messages for replying to followers, retweets and the frequency of using twitter. According to the findings, the effective use of Twitter is provided only by two leaders, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Selahattin Demirtaş. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan often uses Twitter effectively but he also has to follow people for dialogical communication. Abdullah Gül is a less effective Twitter user but with his number of followers, he’s the most fancied leader. And finally, Devlet Bahçeli is the most unused of Twitter.