CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Akuka, Tali |
|---|---|
| Title | Media influence on the personalization of politics: A comparative study of Argentina and Spain |
| Summary | For the past decades, democratic elections have more and more campaigns that tend to personalize political appeals. This phenomenon arguably expands with the interaction of politics and contemporary mass media. This study investigates the relationship between the media and the personalization of politics. It aims to understand the relation between the news coverage and the phenomenon of the personalization, in order to understand how personalization as a strategy is built. The objective is to explore the influence of the media in coverage of campaigns before mayoral elections in Argentina and Spain during 2015. The case studies are the elections of the current Mayor of the province of Buenos Aires, María Eugenia Vidal, and Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau. The cases of Buenos Aires and Barcelona provide some distinct characteristics. They are two elections that candidates won after decades of political dominance by another party. The winners are two women who engaged in campaign discourses with high levels of personalization. This is a constellation of factors that would sufficient to explain no matter how personalized the media coverage of these campaigns were. If I nonetheless find evidence for an active influence by the media that would provide robust confirmation that personalization in contemporary politics is, indeed, linked to media characteristics. The comparative analysis gives to the study an understanding about the role of the media as a fundamental actor in politics, and contribute to the studies of this specific countries. The selection of cases is based on the assumption that the role of the media in elections is fundamental place in the configuration of the political arena in different contexts. The strategy is to use a qualitative methodology to analyse processes. The objective is to categorize grades of personalization, using sources from interviews to specialists in political communication and articles from the coverage in the digital media. The research reveals original new ways to study the construction of discourses in the digital media and the strategies of the candidates in the news. The investigation brings new empirical evidence about the role of the media as a key actor in the personalization of politics. Keywords: Media - Elections - Personalization - Politics - Election campaigns |
| Supervisor | Toka, Gabor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/akuka_tali.pdf |
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