Canvassing As A Political Communication Tool: A Study On Canvassing And Its Use By The Refah Party (RP) In Türkiye

Abstract

Canvassing has been one of the tools for political communication and propaganda. As its name indicates, canvassing means to get votes from voters by using different tools. Political parties conduct various face-to-face communication activities for voters either to encourage them to participate politically or to make them support their own political ideologies. It is believed that various academic studies have been conducted about different canvassing tools that political parties and leaders use in the USA. However, we might say that the number of studies on the effects of canvassing on voters in Turkey is few. Although, it’s not evaluated as a subject, we could say that in the early 1990s the most successful political party to use canvassing tools effectively and successfully was the Refah Partisi (RP). Devoted canvassing efforts of the volunteers of the party contributed to the accession to power of the party. This study depends on the compilation of leading studies on political communication and canvassing in the literature and it uses historical and qualitative methods.