That is wonderful to hear!! Thank you ☺️☺️

Taken together, we argue that emotionally charged, easily digestible videos help populist autocrats tell a compelling story that turns past glories and threats into a basis for regime legitimation.

Special thanks to Didem Seyis and Ezgi Şiir
Kıbrıs for outstanding research assistance!

A third common theme is the portrayal of perennial threats. PHVs show Turkey under attack by coup plotters, Western powers, or faceless enemies. Martyred citizens appear in color as the "pure" ingroup, resisting "corrupt" outgroups in black and white.

Another core theme in PHVs is strength through sacrifice. Voice-over narration (often by Erdoğan) adds drama to scenes of martyrs fighting on “just when hopes were about to be extinguished,” linking historical battles and the 2016 coup as shared moments of national resilience.

We then used intertextual analysis to examine how common themes in PHVs were conveyed. Some videos show flag-bearing figures riding through battles like Manzikert and Gallipoli into today’s Turkey. Others use 1980s nostalgia, sepia tones, and folk music to urge support for the AKP.

Our coding scheme tracked which historical figures and events appeared in each video, and who was cast as hero or enemy.

We created a new dataset of 11,000+ YouTube videos shared by Turkey’s ruling party and state institutions (2005–2022).

From these, we hand-coded 134 “storytelling videos”, including “Popular History Videos” (PHVs) that use the past to legitimize rule today.

My article "Film-Making the Nation Great Again" with
@liselhintz.bsky.social is out now in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social!

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

We show how Turkey’s ruling party instrumentalizes history through emotionally evocative videos to legitimize the authoritarian incumbent

🧵

My article "Film-Making the Nation Great Again" with @draege.bsky.social is out in Perspectives!

Poli sci work on authoritarianism and populism largely overlooks audiovisual strategies.

Our multi-modal study uses a new dataset of 11,000+ regime YouTube videos in Turkey.

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

Before my PhD, I worked mostly in arts and media. Regimes invest lots in AV media, but Pol Sci largely doesn't engage it.

So I was thrilled to see images in the proofs for Film-Making the Nation Great Again with @draege.bsky.social. We analyze autocrats' AV instrumentalizations of history.

Folks in Istanbul please join me July 10 at IPC.

I'll present findings from a new dataset of over 11,000 YouTube videos. In two projects with @draege.bsky.social, our multi-method analysis examines regimes' instrumentalizations of history and foreign threat production.
forms.gle/6BRkXR3439LKV7A96