Abstract
.. a -XXX- ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to observe through content analysis whether machiavellian, authoritarian, and conservative messages existed in Turkish television commercials, and how these commercials were evaluated by subjects. The study was carried out in two parts. In the first part, commercials recorded on videotape for a one week period each in 1987, 1988, and 1989 were classified according to the developed categories and sub-categories and were put through content analysis. Because of the similarity between conservatism and authoritarianism, similar items were classified together under a new category, authoritarianism-conservatism. Because of the nature of machiavellian messages and the structure of the society, it was assumed that machiavellian messages in commercials would be the least frequent messages among the three message types in the commercials. It was also hypothesized that because of the traditional structure of the society, the sub-categories of Respect for and Dependency on the Nation, and Respect for and Dependency on the Family in the category of authoritarian- conservative messages would be the most frequently given messages, while Ethnocentric messages in the category of authoritarian-conservative messages would not be found in the commercials since Turkey has always been a cotintry open to ethnic groups. In the second part of the study, a questionnaire was given to students of Dil ve Tarih, Coğrafya Faculty to see how they evaluated the commercials containing these messages after watching them. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant difference in liking for and memory of having previously watched the commercials with the various messages. It was also hypothesized that increase of interest would be highest for products advertised with machiavellian messages, and least for those with conservative messages; subjects would find more aspects-ıv- against both the social structure and their personal values in commercials with machiavellian messages; and that machiavellian, authoritarian-conservative, and conservative aspects in the commercials would be salient to the subjects. The results showed that the hypotheses were partially supported. Although they were the least frequent type of messages, machiavellian messages showed an important relative increase over the three years. Another result was that although Respect for and Dependency on the Nation and Family were among the most frequent messages, Preference for the Conventional in Art, Clothing, and Institutions in the category of conservative messages showed to be the most frequently presented messages. Although subjects did find more aspects against the social structure in commercials with machiavellian messages, there was no such difference between the commercial messages in finding such aspects against their personal values.
