Gattermann Katjana
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Int J Press Polit. 2018 Jul;23(3):345-366. doi: 10.1177/1940161218779231. Epub 2018 Jun 5.
The personalization of politics is a popular thesis but often challenged when it comes to media personalization. While previous research compared the prominence of different types of political actors across national political contexts, this article situates its research in the context of European Union (EU) politics and, thereby, studies similar reference points across countries. Its focus lies on the European Commission and its members. Personalization is conceptualized as individualization and presidentialization, respectively. The article proposes that the EU integration process provides journalists with the opportunity to report more often about individual politicians, while political developments should further incentivize journalists to personalize their news from Brussels. To test this argument, the article investigates personalization patterns in seven broadsheets from Ireland, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, and Poland. In total, 119,070 articles are analyzed by automated content analysis over a period of twenty-five years. The article finds no pan-European trend toward greater personalization of politics with respect to news coverage of EU executive politics. The findings nonetheless provide important implications for future research. The article particularly discusses the universal applicability of the phenomenon, the time frame for analysis, and journalistic styles in covering European politics.
政治的个性化是一个流行的论点，但在涉及媒体个性化时常常受到挑战。尽管先前的研究比较了不同类型政治行为体在不同国家政治背景下的突出程度，但本文将研究置于欧盟政治背景下，从而研究各国间类似的参照点。其重点在于欧盟委员会及其成员。个性化分别被概念化为个体化和总统化。本文提出，欧盟一体化进程为记者提供了更多报道单个政治家的机会，而政治发展应进一步促使记者将来自布鲁塞尔的新闻个性化。为验证这一论点，本文调查了来自爱尔兰、英国、法国、荷兰、丹麦、意大利和波兰的七家大报的个性化模式。在二十五年的时间里，通过自动内容分析总共分析了119,070篇文章。关于欧盟行政政治的新闻报道，本文未发现政治更加个性化的泛欧洲趋势。尽管如此，研究结果为未来研究提供了重要启示。本文特别讨论了该现象的普遍适用性、分析的时间框架以及报道欧洲政治的新闻风格。
