Economic Insecurity, Precarious Employment, and the Rise of Populist Attitudes in Turkey: A Novel Methodological Approach to Assessing Precarity and Its Implications Using a Time-Series Analysis of Social Media Data

In Turkey, where precarious employment conditions and rising economic insecurity are pressing issues, how do these factors contribute to the increasing prevalence of right-wing populist attitudes? Do substantial changes in these attitudes emerge in the aftermath of major social, political, and economic events—external shocks? While the impacts of labor market conditions—such as unemployment, poverty, and inequality—on the rise of populist attitudes has been widely explored in the literature, increasing attention has been drawn to other dimensions, including economic insecurity and precarious employment. Although not fully explored, these concepts are increasingly being studied for their impact on supporting far-right political parties and policies, with findings suggesting a significant influence on the rise of right-wing populist attitudes. Turkey, in particular, stands out as an uncommon situation due to extremely high inflation, a currency crisis, and consequently rising living costs, which presents a compelling case for examining the broader economic and social implications of these challenges.

This research aims to make a two-fold contribution; the first is methodological, and the second is theoretical. While existing literature on these phenomena relies heavily on surveys, this research will introduce a new method that assesses economic insecurity and precarious employment conditions primarily through their manifestation in social media. Computational methods like Natural Language Processing will be employed to derive representative indexes. Additionally, social media’s dynamic nature enables the examination of external shocks' before-and-after effects. The second contribution is theoretical. Most literature examining these relations uses voting patterns as a measure of right-wing populist attitudes. Our research, however, will adopt a more sociologically grounded approach, observing attitudes that can be classified as right-wing in the case of Turkey (as there is no comprehensive study on this topic in the Turkish context). The primary goal is to contribute to the literature from these unique perspectives.