The Cultural Politics of Advertisements in the Context of Wallerstein’s World-System Analysis: A Global Examination

The world-system analysis, which takes shape from the capitalist world-economy, examines global relations in political, historical, sociological, and cultural contexts. In this study, cultural effects are evaluated through advertisements, an important tool of this system. Advertisements are both a tool for the circulation of cultural policies and an opportunity to analyze the cultural consequences of the world-system. A total of 49 advertisements sent from Türkiye, a semi-periphery country, to 60 core, periphery, semi-periphery countries during the years 2021-2022-2023 were analyzed. This analysis aims to reveal how Türkiye frames the cultural component of the world-system in the core, periphery and semi-periphery countries through advertisements. The advertisements were examined under 4 categories using 31 sub-codes. The global cultural policy reflected in advertisements tends to favor modernity. The findings show that traditional values are unequally distributed, utilitarian values are decreasing, and symbolic values are represented at the lowest rate in all country groups. In addition, the subcodes differ according to the core, semi-periphery, and periphery positions of the countries. Although the country groups are in similar value groups, they are not equal in terms of cultural subcodes. There is a hierarchical order in which the periphery follows the semi-periphery in the following year, and the semi-periphery follows the center. This reveals a monitoring system from the center to the other country groups. The most significant aspect is that the approach of world-systems analysis, which tends to avoid specific cultural connotations, is distorted through advertisements.