Browsing by Author "Yildirim, Kerem"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Citation Count: 2
Biased perceptions against female scientists affect intentions to get vaccinated for COVID-19
(Sage Publications Ltd, 2022) Dogan, Isminaz; Baruh, Lemi; Cemalcilar, Zeynep; Kuru, Ozan; Yildirim, Kerem; Carkoglu, Ali
Based on role congruity theory, we investigated how gender bias may influence public attitudes toward the vaccine in Turkey. Using a between-subjects design, we tested whether an emphasis on the female versus the male scientist as the vaccine's inventor in a news story influenced attitudes about the BioNTech vaccine and vaccination intentions. Partly confirming role congruity theory, three-way interaction results from 665 participants demonstrated that among male participants with a stronger belief in traditional gender roles (compared to males with lower belief), the presence of the female inventor, either by herself or together with the male inventor, decreased the perceived efficacy and safety of the vaccine and reduced intentions to be vaccinated by the BioNTech vaccine. We did not observe such differences for women. These findings highlight how gender bias may influence individuals' information processing and decision making in a way that may have negative consequences for public health.
Citation Count: 0
Continuity and change in Turkish politics: economic and behavioural explanations of democratic backsliding
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2024) Aydın, Mustafa; Yildirim, Kerem
This paper introduces a special issue focusing on the intricacies of Turkey's party system and the evolution of Turkish party competition amid democratic challenges. The introduction provides a brief overview of each paper in this special issue, which delves into the relationship between economic factors and voter behavior, offering insights into the continued dominance of the ruling party. While doing so, the special issue specifically examines the 2023 Turkish General elections, presenting alternative perspectives on how the incumbent party maintains its electoral success.
Citation Count: 4
Media Effects in a Polarized Political System: The Case of Turkey
(Springer/Plenum Publishers, 2023) Carkoglu, Ali; Yildirim, Kerem
Can the media influence vote choice when the media and the party system are highly polarized, and vote shifts are infrequent? We argue affirmatively that media significantly influences vote choice even in such systems. First, we show that information filtered through the media has an independent effect on vote choice. Second, we link respondents' newspaper choices in the pre-election survey with the favorability of major political parties in their newspapers during the campaign period. Third, we provide rich empirical data from media content and voter surveys. Our analyses suggest that media content has a significant effect in influencing party support and vote switches during the campaign periods of four general elections between 2002 and 2015 in the increasingly polarized setting of Turkey. We further break down this effect to study how favorable coverage and visibility influence party support differently among partisan loyalists and switchers.
Citation Count: 1
Partisan Bias in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: News Reliance and the Moderating Role of Trust in Health Authorities
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2023) Wu, Yuanyuan; Kuru, Ozan; Baruh, Lemi; Carkoglu, Ali; Cemalcilar, Zeynep; Yildirim, Kerem
Neglecting the role of political bias in the public's perceptions of health authorities could be deceptive when studying potentially politicized COVID-19 conspiracy theories (CCTs); however, previous studies often treated health authorities as a single entity and did not distinguish between different types of CCTs. Drawing from motivated reasoning theory, we investigate the politically motivated nature of CCTs by examining their associations with individuals' media reliance, party identification, conspiratorial mentality, and importantly, trust in (politicized or independent) health authorities. In a national survey conducted in late 2020 (N = 2,239) in Turkey, a heavily polarized context, we found that not accounting for political identities shown in CCTs and health authorities could be misleading. While those with a strong conspiracy mentality were more likely to endorse all types of CCTs, party identification and trust in different types of health authorities led people to believe in certain CCTs aligning with their political attitudes. The influence of media reliance on CCTs depended on the level of trust in health authorities, again suggestive of the influence of political partialities.
Citation Count: 0
Who receives clientelistic benefits? Social identity, relative deprivation, and clientelistic acceptance among turkish voters
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2023) Yildirim, Kerem
Why do voters accept clientelism? Previous research suggests that poorer voters are more likely to accept clientelistic benefits. However, identities may moderate the effect of poverty through identity-based economic comparisons across groups. The role identity plays in partisanship, and dense ethnic identity networks may make it easier for parties to enforce clientelism among specific groups. This paper presents evidence from a survey experiment in Turkey to argue that politicized Kurdish ethnic identity, combined with heightened perceptions of relative economic deprivation, explains why certain voter groups are more likely to accept clientelism. Additionally, experimental evidence shows that support for clientelism may depend on the quality of benefits rather than quantity. Focusing only on the amount of resources or the recipients' economic conditions may fail to explain why certain voters accept clientelism more in the Turkish context.