The media landscape is shifting in Turkey, with 90% of news media tilting towards being pro-government. Audiences are searching for different views, and for trusted sources and outlets. With this election there is a void in the mainstream media, and BBC News Turkish seems to be filling that void.

We know this because we launched a live elections blog on 11 June, the first time we’ve done this, and the response has already gone way beyond our expectations. In a 24-hour period our video content had half a million views, which is not something that we’re used to.

The live blog, with updates all the time from nine reporters roving all over Turkey every day, is a new thing. Our initial plan was to focus on overarching themes, but the election campaigning had been so fierce that we decided instead to focus on the electorate. The reporters are also be providing video content, including via Facebook Live, textual analysis, features and human interest stories.

Where they report from has not been chosen arbitrarily. Each city and area has a different story, and we have identified swings from previous elections, and shifts in voting patterns. For all regions, we wanted to understand what’s happening, what the trends are, what areas are becoming increasingly polarised.

The race seems to be between President Erdoğan and main opposition centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate, Muharrem İnce. It is set to be different from the previous ones as Mr Erdoğan’s victory is not seen as a foregone conclusion.

There is also a new party, the İyi (Good) Party, which is a splinter from the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) – President Erdoğan’s current ally. We wanted to see how this new party, with its leader, Meral Akşener, standing as the first and the only female candidate, could split the vote based on previous election results and voter swings. In the south-east of Turkey, the presidential candidate from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş, is standing for election from a prison cell – his campaign is being run by his lawyers, family and friends, via their social media accounts.

In terms of logistics, and our covering the election campaigns, another difference is that usually there would be international election rallies, canvassing, and meetings taking place in places such as the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, and France, for Turkish expatriate voters. This year, however, most of the countries – specifically, the Netherlands and Germany – aren’t allowing this because of diplomatic spats. However, Mr Erdoğan held a rally in Bosnia last month, inviting the Turkish expats of Europe. An estimated 15,000 attended.

Launching soon on our website is a tool showing how the distribution of votes would affect the distribution of seats in Parliament. In this election the system has changed, and it’s the first time people will be voting under it. We will be the only news outlet going into this much detail, which is quite exciting.

Other materials BBC News Turkish has published online include a glossary of election keywords, the party manifestos, and interactive content. To ensure people can find our content easily, we are participating in a pilot SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) project.

The backbone of this is that we are doing it to better engage with people, with women and young people in particular, and our users can see that in the subjects of our reports and videos.

In Goldie’s election night programme, she relied on maps stuck to walls and lists of which politician was up or down. Of course what Goldie did then was cutting edge however old fashioned it seems now when we have touchscreens and virtual reality graphics. Where there are comparisons to my world 67 years on are the judgements made about what news lines to run, the accuracy over policy details, the overwhelming importance of impartiality throughout all of the BBC’s coverage. The difference now is the speed of the news. The advent of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for example mean the story can change in a second. The parties’ spinners are ever present, ready to push a line, pull a story. The leaders may seem calm but behind the scenes they are learning their words, anticipating the questions. And if a story breaks while they’re on stage – well they just have to roll with it – but the press knows it and they know that too.

Despite the second female Prime Minister taking office last year, politics remains an area dominated by men. Although there’s been a big growth in recent years, still only 30% of MPs in the last parliament were women. Political broadcasting is changing too. Laura Kuenssberg is the BBC’s first female Political Editor, and I’m proud to work alongside her as well as the other women who now report on politics for the BBC. Though as we always say, and perhaps Goldie would too, it’s not about being a woman, it’s about getting it right.

Katy Searle is the BBC’s Editor of Political Newsgathering.

• Election 2017 will air on BBC One and the BBC News Channel from 9.55pm on Thursday 8 June and will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast.

Ten years ago, the idea of televised election debates in this country was still a pipe dream. Then the 2010 election came along and the mould was shattered - Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, and David Cameron took part in the BBC's first TV debate. They’ve been a staple of campaigns ever since. In the referendum on Scotland’s independence. The election of 2015. And most recently during the EU referendum. More than 20 million people watched at least three minutes of one of the debate programmes on the BBC last June.

These TV moments give the public the chance to sit and listen to arguments put by all sides and to hear their questions answered – not, as is sometimes the case in the media, the trivia of the Westminster village.

That’s why we plan to do it all again this vote, as part of the most comprehensive package of election programming that will put you, the audience, at the heart of our coverage.

BBC One will put on a live BBC Election Debate hosted by Mishal Husain on 31 May from Cambridge. It will feature seven podiums for leading figures from Conservative, Labour, LibDem, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Green Party and UKIP spokespeople to put their cases forward to the public.

As we know, the Prime Minister has said she will not participate in a televised leaders’ debate. That is her right. We won’t be embarrassing anybody into taking part – there’ll be no empty chair or vacant podium on any BBC programme. Ultimately it is for each party to say who will participate. We are inviting them to put up for the debate the person that they think will best make their party’s case. We do this because we think it is right to host debates that give people the chance to see how the major parties match up against each other.

Rest assured, we’ll be putting your tough questions to all the party leaders across a series of programmes during the campaign. That will include bringing Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in front of the same Question Time audience on the same night to be quizzed by the public.

We will scrutinise the Conservative and Labour leaders and we will do it in a way that asks the difficult questions, placing the audience and the choice at the heart of these primetime programmes. There will be two Question Time Specials, hosted by David Dimbleby, where the four main party leaders will face direct audience questions consecutively. Viewers in 2015 really connected with this format and the Question Time Special in Leeds was one of the most important and informative events of the 2015 General Election. So we are delighted to be putting it on air again.

We know our TV specials have helped galvanise people because the responses of the candidates can be compared and weighed up side-by-side, live. In all, we will put on more than ten hours of prime-time TV bringing the audience closer to what the big election choices are.

The BBC will be the place to come for expert coverage of that choice, not forecasting the race. In our programmes we will ask about the important public policies airing them to a large audience – they won't simply be a platform to repeat the slogans of political campaigning.

After all, this is a contest about the choices the next Government is going to make over the coming five years. We will examine what the most difficult and consequential issues are likely to be through our reporting, interviewing and by giving the public a platform to ask those questions of politicians, or to hear them asked on their behalf.

Multi-millions of voters watched the TV moments in the 2010 and 2015 General Elections, and we know that they were seen by audiences who don’t traditionally tune in to mainstream news programmes.

The Wembley Arena debate during last year’s EU Referendum was watched by nearly 700,000 young people. And the democratic process itself benefitted from that, with turnout in younger age groups higher in those elections with debates than recent campaigns without. And, at the last election three quarters of the Newsbeat debate audience said it helped them understand the issues better. Our final debate will be a Newsbeat one on Radio 1 and BBC One on 6 June.

As a Public Service Broadcaster, we count that as a success. We can see we have helped inform, one of the underlying principles for why the BBC exists. Our promise to the public during this election campaign is to give them reliable impartial news and a place where they can get beyond the noise to better understand the issues at stake.

The BBC will play to its strengths. Audience engagement. Accuracy. Impartiality. Expertise. It will be the home for real news and insight. It is why one of the things I’m especially excited about is the new Reality Check slot on the Sunday night News at Ten bulletin. Steph McGovern will be examining whether the big claims stand up to scrutiny.

There is no more important time to engage with the people of this country than now. When they want to hear from the politicians vying to lead the country. That is good for public service TV. That is good for democracy. That is firmly in the public interest.

Jonathan Munro, Head of BBC Newsgathering

More than 22m people watched any of the three prime ministerial debates that took place in the run up to the election. It's hard to tell what kind of impact the debates had on voting behaviour - voter turnout was up on 2005 from 61.4% in 2005 to 65.1% - but it is clear that the debates engaged viewers.

The success of the debates at this election makes them a very likely feature at the next, so we asked viewers what they thought of the debates.

The key themes that came back were a desire for more grilling of the leaders and a greater degree of audience participation. Many said that they wanted the moderator to be able to respond once the leaders had spoken.

The rigidity of the debate was a slight bugbear for audiences. Just a third thought the programmes were spontaneous or that there were surprising elements in the debate and a significant minority felt the staged responses and tight rules were a weakness of the debate.

Of course the rules of the debate aren't just for the broadcasters to decide - the parties themselves heavily influence this - but we will feed these views into discussions next time round.

Luba Kassova is Head of Audiences, Journalism