SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL CARTOONS ON NEWSPAPERS: CASE OF GENERAL ELECTIONS 2011

Interpreting the daily political situation in the heat of the movement, political cartoons on newspapers serve as political communication media between the political institution and the public opinion. political cartoons have a more subjective and critical language than journal news. in election periods, harsher political discourses and the rivalries between political parties create specific political conditions that determine the contents of political cartoons. in these periods, which subjects the political cartoons deal with and how they reflect the political party or the leader gain importance. the purpose of this study is to determine the ideological point of view of the political cartoons in election periods and how they function politically and socially. in this direction, which subjects were included more frequently and how they were interpreted; how political parties, arguments and party discourses were presented on political cartoons on newspapers published in turkey in election period were analyzed. 14 political cartoons were selected from 7 national newspapers, (akşam, cumhuriyet, habertürk, hürriyet, sabah, star, zaman) that were published in 30 days time before june 12, 2011 general elections and analyzed by semiotic analysis method. according to the results, it was found that the leaders were pictured as representation of their parties in political cartoons, the parties and the rivalries, personal arguments and differences in discourses between the leader of the parties were emphasized instead of social problems and the interpretations and the critics of the political cartoons were correlated with their newspapers’ ideological perspective.