While research has examined how politicians engage in personalized presentations of themselves and their policies, and how journalists personalize political coverage, few studies have asked voters ...what types of personalization they wish to see from politicians. In-depth interviews with Generation Z, who heavily use Instagram, identify visual and verbal elements of politicians' Instagram posts that they consider influential on their beliefs and actions. Responses reveal several elements, including two that expand the contours of what constitutes persuasive political personalization. Successful personalization includes politicians participating in two-way conversations with followers and adopting a backstage pass aesthetic when showing what politicians do on the job and how they feel about it. Both tactics can make politicians seem credible and personally relatable, which is the foundation for effective electronic word-of-mouth communication.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un, until recently an important yet relatively unknown figure in international politics, has begun to receive increased attention in the international media. Based on ...the concept of media personalization, this study examined whether the news media focused on Kim Jong-Un's political traits and activities - i.e., media individualization - or on his apolitical characteristics - i.e., media privatization. By content analyzing 2,045 news articles about Kim Jong-Un published in South Korean and U.S. newspapers between 2012 and 2018, this study found that media individualization was more prevalent than media privatization. The number of news articles focusing on Kim's political traits and activities was about three times greater than articles that emphasized Kim's apolitical characteristics. Compared to news coverage about his public role, articles about his apolitical aspects were more negative. The results also showed a positive correlation between the political stance of South Korean news organizations toward North Korea and the degree of media privatization of Kim Jong-Un: that is, in South Korea, conservative newspapers were more likely than liberal newspapers to focus on Kim's personal characteristics and life, and the tone of that coverage was more negative.
News personalization in one-party dominant countries has been understudied or often analyzed through a Western lens. This study unpacked this phenomenon in one-party dominant country with the theory ...of leadership cult and soft power and compared news personalization of Xi Jinping in China with that of Donald Trump in the U.S. against the backdrop of the U.S.–China trade conflict. This study also investigated the influence of press ideology, political–geographical scope of news coverage and the trade conflict period on the presence and valence of personalization within each country. Results showed that leadership personalization was less prominent in China than in the U.S. The manifestation of news personalization in the U.S. was affected more by press ideology, while contextual factors, such as news political scope and the conflict period, played bigger roles in China. These findings provide insights into how news personalization is displayed in divergent political and media systems.
Strategy framing is usually studied in the context of news coverage about domestic Western politics. This study expands its application to news reports on the China-US trade war—an inter-state ...conflict including a democratic and one-party dominant system—thereby adding an international dimension to the study of strategy framing. Through a manual content analysis of news coverage from China, the US, Singapore, and Ireland (from January 2013 to January 2020; n = 1872), we investigate whether media independence, conflict involvement, and crisis phases influence the employment of the issue framing and strategy framing. For democratic countries, the more involved they are in the conflict, the more prominent strategy framing was in their coverage of the trade conflict; the inverse was observed for one-party dominant systems. Strategy framing that considers countries as contenders is more prevalent than the sub-frame that focuses on individual politicians. The presence of national-versus-personal level strategy framing was more balanced for directly involved countries than indirectly involved countries since news from directly involved countries accords relatively more space to politicians’ personal strategy.
Durante su primer año de mandato Rodrigo Chaves Robles ha obtenido altos niveles de apoyo a su gestión, algo atípico para los presidentes en Costa Rica en los últimos 20 años. A partir de los datos ...obtenidos por dos encuestas se trata de determinar que variables y características de la población se relación con la valoración de la gestión de Chaves Robles, con el propósito de generar una explicación a este fenómeno. Se concluye que el apoyo de la población no se vincula con las características y estilo de liderazgo del presidente, o con la agenda política que impulsa; tampoco se encuentra una relación con el nivel de apoyo expresado y las variables sociodemográficas de la población. En cambio, la percepción de la población de su nivel socioeconómico y lo canales utilizados cotidianamente sobre política si inciden en la valoración expresada a la labor del presidente. También se identifica una relación entre ciertas prácticas religiosas y la valoración positiva a la labor de Chaves Robles.
Actualmente los políticos participan en programas de entretenimiento para acercarse a sus votantes de manera festiva. En este despliegue recurren a la personalización, es decir, la tendencia a ...resaltar aspectos personales, biográficos y privados por sobre asuntos ideológicos o partidistas. Para describir esta aparición televisiva en los matinales chilenos en contexto electoral (2020-2021) se realizó un estudio exploratorio mixto, con análisis de contenido de segmentos exhibidos en la TV y 16 focus groups con audiencias habituales de estos programas. Los resultados registran que hay diferencias según el tipo de comicios que se realiza: la primera y la segunda vuelta presidencial lideran las referencias privadas de los políticos; mientras que la elección de gobernadores es la que menos reseñas individuales reúne. Efectivamente el público aprecia la incorporación de asuntos y temas políticos en estas emisiones, pero son cautelosos en cuanto a la exposición de aspectos íntimos de los políticos. Se valora más la transparencia y honestidad de la gestión que la vida privada del funcionario público.
Authenticity is an increasingly important factor in citizens’ evaluations of political candidates and their voting decisions. As citizens value political authenticity, politicians attempt to appear ...true to themselves in the public eye. However, little research has examined how these perceptions of politicians as more or less authentic are constructed. This study examines how citizens form perceptions of politicians’ authenticity and particularly sheds light on the relationship between political media exposure and perceived political authenticity. Drawing on the literature on performed authenticity in social media, personalized media coverage, and information processing, we examine the effects of exposure to political information in different media on perceptions of political authenticity and its subdimensions. Results from an online quota survey in Germany (N = 1,210) show that differences in perceived political authenticity are not simply determined by citizens’ political attitudes but can also be explained by their frequency of exposure to political information in different media types. When citizens use private TV news, political accounts on social media, and follow candidate profiles, they perceive politicians as more authentic. Our analyses also suggest that some effects of media exposure on perceived political authenticity are conditioned by citizens’ party identification and their tendency to select ideologically congruent political information.
The emergence of personalized party organizations has called for a redefinition of the concept of party institutionalization (PI). This article brings different strands of literature together and ...proposes a new multidimensional index of PI. PI is conceived of as the interplay of objective and internal party features with the external environment. The viability of the index is tested through its application to a prominent case of personal party, the Italian Five Star Movement (5SM). Through a detailed analysis of its history, we show that the 5SM has become more institutionalized over time; however, this has especially affected its external facet, while other specific party traits have been less involved. Findings suggest that the stabilization of internal structures to connect party echelon and rank-and-file remains a challenge.
PDF
