GAME OF WORDS: INSTRUMENTS IN POWER AND INSTRUMENTS OF POWER

Abstract

The study's purpose is to analyze the elements of the pre-election meeting between Ahmed Dogan and the residents of the village of Kochan, Satovcha Municipality, which qualify it as a pseudo-event. The integration of these elements provoked planned affective reactions from the media, political leaders and the electorate, which swung the vote. Two research questions were asked: How do external elements such as context, place and time, and characteristics of the message qualify Ahmed Dogan's pre-election meeting as a pseudo-event? What public communication effects do the integration of the internal and external elements of the pre-election meeting cause, which qualify the meeting as a pseudo-event? The subject of study is the pre-election meeting between Ahmed Dogan and the residents of the village of Kochan. The study's object is the context, place, time, message (speech) and media-mediated reactions of the political leaders. The methodology of qualitative research is based on the pragmatism paradigm. The methodological triangulation of the agitation propaganda theory and agenda-building engineering are used. Methodological triangulation includes critical discourse analysis and axeologematic analysis. The main conclusions are that the meeting between Ahmed Dogan was a pseudo-event that developed according to a strictly defined scenario and provoked emotional reactions among political leaders and voters. The media could have easily ignored pseudo-events coverage if they had focused on the event's weight and impact rather than the speaker of the event.