Film-Making the Nation Great Again: Audio-visualizing History in the Authoritarian Toolkit

How can populist authoritarian incumbents justify remaining in power when the golden age they promised remains unrealized? We argue that audiovisual products such as videos are particularly suited to enlivening the histories that so many populists evoke in seeking to legitimize their rule. Political science’s traditional focus on speech-based legitimation, however, leaves audiovisual tools largely overlooked. The few studies that do engage these tools test for audience effects, but the content itself and the political strategies behind its curation and dissemination remain undertheorized. By adding an audiovisual lens to studies of authoritarian legitimation, we identify a regime durability strategy we term selective revivification. We specify the cognitive and affective characteristics of videos that quickly communicate information-dense, emotionally evocative messages, arguing that they engagingly distill specific historical elements to portray incumbent rule as not just legitimate but also necessary. In advancing our argument, we construct an original dataset of all existing narration-based YouTube videos shared by six regime institutions in Turkey from the establishment of YouTube in 2005 to 2022 ( n = 134). We use quantitative analysis to identify when video usage emerges as a strategy, as well as patterns of dissemination and content elements. We then use intertextual analysis to extract common historical themes and production techniques. The audiovisual tools we specify and the selective revivification strategy they enable fill gaps in studies of authoritarian legitimation while adding to political scientists’ toolkits for wider inquiry.