(De)personalization of campaign communication: Individualization and hierarchization in party press releases and media coverage in the 2008 Austrian parliamentary election campaign
-
Günther Lengauer
and
Georg Winder
Abstract
To restructure and systematize the concept of personalization, in this study we introduce a two-dimensional and relational typology of (de)personalization of political representation, comprising a horizontal (individualization) as well as a vertical dimension (hierarchization), and put it to an empirical test. We concertedly utilize content analyses of political newspaper and television coverage as well as of party press releases during the 2008 Austrian election campaign. With regard to the Austrian case, the findings outline that personalization of political representation is not a universal phenomenon; it rather appears as a context- and logic-sensitive communicational phenomenon. Political public relations shows significantly higher levels of horizontal as well as vertical diversification than the media by being more individualized and less monopolized by leaders and executive elites. Additionally, political representation in the tabloid press is more personalized than in quality papers, and the communication of catch-all parties is more individualized than of niche parties.
©2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Articles
- Academic publications in the age of post-Enlightenment
- (De)personalization of campaign communication: Individualization and hierarchization in party press releases and media coverage in the 2008 Austrian parliamentary election campaign
- Internet-using children and digital inequality: A comparison between majority and minority Europeans
- A qualitative approach to the use of ICTs and its risks among socially disadvantaged early adolescents and adolescents in Madrid, Spain
- Online experiences of socially disadvantaged children and young people in Portugal
- Cyberbullying by mobile phone among adolescents: The role of gender and peer group status
- Book reviews
