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The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Erdal DAĞTAŞ, Ph.D.
Associate Prof. in Anadolu University
Faculty of Communication Sciences
Department of Journalism
Yunusemre Campus-26470
Eskişehir-Turkey
Tel: +90 222 335 05 80 (52 69-office)
Fax: +90 222 320 45 20
GSM: +90 532 310 36 28
E-mail: edagtas@anadolu.edu.tr
EVALUATING ADVERTORIAL NEWS THROUGH THE MAGAZINE
SUPPLEMENTS OF TURKISH PRESS IN TERMS OF CRITICAL
POLITICAL ECONOMY
Abstract
Along the last quarter of twentieth century, it can be assumed that western capitalist
societies, with the developing peripheral countries like Turkey, have entered a new phase and
the structure of societies has been determined by the new economic dynamics. In the context
of critical theory, power relations, economic life, and social foundations considered as
superstructure should be inspected altogether and how anti-public benefit structures achieve
reproduction should be interpreted.
As the last phase of capitalism having begun and continued in the last quarter of
twentieth century, mass media is assumed to raise its ideological significance with its new
emplacement in the centre of ideological reproduction. As such, the contents disseminated
through the magazine supplements of Turkish newspapers have been examined in context of
the texts published in media and the position of the new middle class, which is both the
producer and the consumer of such contents. That new middle class has been defined as new
cultural mediators.
Within the scope of mainstream media studies, the informative function of media for
citizens is highlighted. Despite this fact, violating ethic principles and professional codes,
media’s presenting advertisements to the reader under the disguise of news or amalgamating
the frame of news -concerning products related to the news matter- with the advertisements
are regarded as advertorial news. In this context it is supposed that, media performs on the
reproduction of power relations, on behalf of the benefits of ruling classes. As cultural
intermediaries, new middle class plays the key role in keeping masses inside the system by
being both the producer of the texts in advertorial news (directly or indirectly) and the
consumer of such contents and products, and also being the representative of new life
style/cultural posing that are disseminated through advertorial news.
Today, as in the rest of the world media, advertisements and advertorial news, along
with the sales revenues from circulation, compose the primary sources of income for the
magazine press in Turkish media. As such, the evaluation of advertorial news placed in
magazine press within political economy aspects and the assessment of the effects of such
contents on the democratic involvement among citizenship form the subject of the study.
Some issues of two newspapers selected among the highly circulated ones in Turkey,
have been sampled as the analysis unit, from the determined period of June 2009.
Considerably, within the period of one month, the advertorial news through the weekend
magazine supplements of the newspapers Hürriyet and Akşam have been analyzed with the
method of content analysis. As a result, findings derived from the analyses of advertorial
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