What Does Political Context Tell Us? Understanding the Persistence of Ideological Imprints in the Case of Turkish Humor Magazines

Abstract

This study aims to develop a contextualized perspective for understanding the variation in the persistence of founders’ ideological imprints across different periods. We argue for the time-varying influence of political circumstances on ideological imprinting to grasp the consequences of multiple different imprints. Employing a multiple-case study research design that relies heavily on archival data, we explored the political contextual sources of variation in political cartoons of Turkish humor magazines from 1972 to 2015. Our findings show that the variation in the persistence of ideological imprints is related to political changes that result in (in)congruence between the founder’s political ideology and the ideology of the governing party, the type of political ideology that the founder represents, and change within the party ideology over time. By revealing how political contexts surrounding imprints lead to persistence, we contribute to imprinting theory and the organizational implications of political ideologies in non-Western contexts.