Mapping Turkish health podcasts: ‘Strategic voice or storage?’

This study maps the landscape of Turkish-language health podcasts produced by professionals and institutions in Türkiye and evaluates their strategic communication capacity. The sample of 100 podcasts identified via the keyword 'sağlık' [health] on Spotify and Apple Podcasts was analyzed by coding the most recent episode of each podcast against a five-item index: (1) presence of a call-to-action (CTA), (2) regularity of release cadence, (3) host expertise, (4) conversational tone, and (5) explicit audience specification. Of the podcasts examined, 55% are individual productions and 45% are institutional. Thematic distribution is led by mental health (32%), followed by nutrition (19%) and general health (18%). A substantial share of institutional podcasts functions primarily as a content repository, suggesting that the editorial conventions of podcasting have yet to be fully internalized. The highest strategic scores are concentrated in mental health, which shows that foreground professional credentials, employ behavior-oriented call to actions, and delineate their target audiences. Turkish health podcasts display marked formal and thematic fragmentation and generally operate without a systematic publishing ethos. This study also highlights the need for future qualitative research on producer strategies to holistically map the field and unpack the 'podcast as content repository' mindset.