The Evaluation of Political Party Leaders' Persuasion and Confidence Levels by their Followers on Twitter: The Case of Düzce

ABSTRACT

Twitter is one of the most popular social media channels and, due to its structure, it is more suitable for information sharing, persuasion, and the use of public relations methods than the other frequently used social media channels (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok). Twitter is one of the most used channels by political parties and party leaders in Turkey and in the world. In this study, the confidence and persuasion levels of the Twitter accounts of the leaders of the political parties in the Turkish Grand National Assembly were evaluated in line with the views of the Twitter followers living in Düzce. Within the scope of the research, the 'Confidence and Persuasion Scale in Interpersonal Communication' developed by Karadoğan (2003), was applied to 400 Twitter users over the age of 18 living in Düzce. To check the reliability of the scale, the Cronbach Alpha test was applied, and the alpha value was obtained as 0.9086 (Karadoğan, 2003, p. 240). The data obtained were analyzed with the SPSS package program and the findings and detailed explanations were given. As a result of the collected opinions, it was revealed to what extent the leaders of the political parties were perceived as reliable and persuasive, and the reasons were examined. In addition, the differences between being reliable and persuasive in social media and being reliable and persuasive in interpersonal communication were evaluated. As a result of the research, recommendations were made for social media influencers to create reliable and persuasive profiles. It is thought that these recommendations will be beneficial to individuals and institutions who actively use social media in public relations, such as companies, advertisers and artists, especially political parties, and their leaders.