UTOPIA AND DISTOPIA: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IDEAL OR NIGHTMARE SOCIETY IN ELECTION POSTERS

Abstract

In the search for order that has existed throughout history, utopia, which describes the ideal, that is, what should be, and dystopia, which describes what should not be, have come to the fore. Ideals that are valuable for people are revealed with utopia, while the negativities in the historical memory of societies are expressed with dystopia. Political parties, which are among the indispensables of democracies, benefit from utopia and dystopia, which go beyond being just literary terms and settle at the center of sociology, philosophy, art as well as the discipline of politics, in their political communication activities. In this context, despite the rapid development and transformation in technology, with election posters, which are among the oldest applications of elections, politicians and political parties convey their message to the people they aspire to vote for, carry out propaganda activities and find the opportunity to create a political identity, while making use of utopia and dystopia. Within the scope of the study, the election posters used by the Democrat Party and the Republican People's Party in the general elections held in 1954 and 1957 were analyzed by using qualitative content analysis. As a result, in the analysis of the election posters, the elements that refer to the ideal social order in utopias are economic development, investment, employment, justice, equal distribution of country resources, fair income distribution, eliminating class differences, technological transformation in education and health sector, fair working conditions, landless peasants. land is represented by equal access to public services without making any village-urban distinction, while dystopias are generally characterized by economic deprivation, inequality in income distribution, discourses on social class differences, etc. It has been determined that it is represented by the social fears that are brought to the fore.