Your Doctor Speaking: The Representation of Doctor Characters in COVID-19 Public Service Advertisements

In public service advertisements by the Ministry of Health, "Coronavirus is not Stronger than our Precautions", Turkey's famous TV series characters, Ates Hekimoglu and Ali Vefa were starring. It is significant to see that fictional characters were used instead of real and successful doctors. This preference indicates that simulation is much more real than "the reality" in the age of hyper-reality. The idea that messages regarding human life can reach people more easily in the form of representations points out the existence of a problematic and transcendent universe of simulation. This research approaches this issue based on Jean Baudrillard's Simulation Theory and aims to examine the motivation behind this preference of fictional characters by narrative analysis. The characters are fictionalized as people who can "achieve the impossible" and "have extraordinary abilities", thus, their "wizard" identities transform them into "opinion leaders from representations". Hence, they easily provide the communication of information about COVID-19 precautions to the public in a simulation experience. Thus, trust is formed between society and these characters with miraculous abilities, which is why they are used in public service advertisements. In sum, this article will conclude that public service advertisements prefer to narrate fictional doctors rather than actual ones due to the hypothesis that simulation contains a stronger narrative than real life.