Intimate Politics E-Book

James Stanyer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: CPC - Contemporary Political Communication
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 369

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

It is often remarked that politicians’ private lives are becoming a feature of political communication in many advanced industrial democracies. However, there have so far been no genuinely comparative studies examining the personalized nature of political communication. Intimate Politics provides for the first time a systematic comparative analysis of such developments in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, it assesses the extent to which the private lives of politicians have become a feature of political communication in each democracy. The book provides a comprehensive account of the shifting boundaries between the public and private, and whether any developments are universal or more advanced in some democracies than others, and seeks to explain why this might be. Intimate Politics will be of great value for students and scholars of communication and media studies and political science and is required reading for anyone who wants a fuller understanding of the transformation of mediated politics in advanced industrial democracies.

Leseprobe

Intimate Politics

Contemporary Political Communication

Robert M. Entman, Scandal and Silence

Max McCombs, R. Lance Holbert, Spiro Kiousis and Wayne Wanta, The News and Public Opinion

Craig Allen Smith, Presidential Campaign Communication

James Stanyer, Intimate Politics

Intimate Politics

Publicity, Privacy and the Personal Lives of Politicians in Media-Saturated Democracies

James Stanyer

polity

Copyright © James Stanyer 2013

The right of James Stanyer to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

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ISBN: 978-0-7416-6207-7

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

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Contents

Figures and tables

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Politicians’ Personal Lives in the Media Spotlight

1  Soft Focus: Leaders’ Personal Lives Close-up

2  Digging for Dirt: Publicizing Politicians’ Sex Lives

3  Changing Exposure: Critical Moments and the Uncovering of Politicians’ Infidelity

4  Transnational Revelations: Flows, Access and Control in a Global News Environment

5  Drawing Conclusions: Intimization and Democratic Politics

Appendix: Research Notes

Notes

References

Index

Figures and tables

Figures

0.1    Political persona and spheres of action

0.2    The personal sphere

1.1    The appearance of national leaders on television entertainment talk shows while in office: 1990–2009

1.2    Yearly average visibility of French Presidents’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

1.3    Yearly average visibility of US Presidents’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

1.4    Yearly average visibility of UK Prime Ministers’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

1.5    Yearly average visibility of Australian Prime Ministers’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

1.6    Yearly average visibility of Spanish Prime Ministers’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

1.7    Yearly average visibility of Italian Prime Ministers’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

1.8    Yearly average visibility of German Chancellors’ personal lives based on four indicators over their period in office

3.1    Publicized cases of politicians’ infidelity over time: 1970–2009

4.1    The number of news items mentioning politicians’ infidelity in Australia, the UK and US in Le Monde: 1992–2009

4.2    The number of news items mentioning politicians’ infidelity in Australia, the UK and US in Taz – die Tageszeitung: 1992–2009

4.3    The number of news items mentioning politicians’ infidelity in Australia, the UK and US in La Stampa: 1992–2009

4.4    The number of news items mentioning politicians’ infidelity in Australia, the UK and US in El País: 1996–2009

5.1    Cluster map showing levels of intimization across seven democracies

Tables

0.1    Personal information/imagery typology

1.1    Yearly average number of news items mentioning the national leader’s spouse on his or her own over a 15-year period: 1995–2009

1.2    Yearly average number of news items mentioning the national leader’s children over a 15-year period: 1995–2009

1.3    Yearly average number of news items mentioning the national leader’s holidays over a 15-year period: 1995–2009

1.4    Appearance of elected politicians on Australian Story

1.5    Yearly average number of news items mentioning the national leader’s birthdays over a 15-year period: 1995–2009

1.6    Yearly average number of news items mentioning the national leader’s spouse’s birthdays over a 15-year period: 1995–2009

1.7    Yearly average number of books focusing on national leaders’ personal lives while in office: 1992–2009

1.8    Yearly average visibility of national leaders’ personal lives based on four indicators: 1995–2009

1.9    Yearly average visibility of national leaders’ personal lives based on four indicators by leader

1.10  Causal recipes for the visibility of national leaders’ personal lives

1.11  Causal recipes for the lack of visibility of national leaders’ personal lives – the negation

2.1    The number of cases of publicized infidelity 2000–2009

2.2    Causal recipes explaining high levels of publicized infidelity

2.3    Causal recipes explaining the absence of high levels of publicized infidelity – the negation

2.4    The number of cases of ‘outing’ 2000–2009

2.5    Causal recipes explaining high levels of outing

2.6    Causal recipes explaining the absence of outing – the negation

3.1    The actual and annual average number of cases of publicized infidelity per decade 1970–2009

3.2    The use of private investigators by British newspapers (top five users of private investigators)

4.1    The number of cases of politicians’ infidelity in Australia, the UK and US reported in French,German, Italian and Spanish newspapers (1992–2009)

4.2    The number of newspaper news items mentioning the rumours of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla BruniSarkozy’s extra-marital affairs, in six countries

4.3    The number of newspaper news items mentioning the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s extramarital trysts, in six countries

4.4    Coverage by country of the Mail on Sunday reporting of Gerhard Schroeder’s extra-marital affair and of El País’s publishing of paparazzi photographs of Silvio Berlusconi at the Villa Certosa (number of news items mentioning the event)

4.5    The number of posts mentioning Noemi Letizia on Italian blogs and blogs in other languages

4.6    The number of posts mentioning Mara Carfagna on Italian blogs and blogs in other languages

5.1    Causal recipes explaining the visibility of national leaders’ personal lives

5.2    Causal recipes explaining the levels of publicized infidelity

6.1    Causal conditions for membership of fuzzy set ‘leaders with highly visible personal lives’

6.2    Causal conditions for membership of fuzzy set ‘democracies with high levels of publicized infidelity 2000–2009’

6.3    Causal conditions for membership of the fuzzy set ‘democracies with high levels of outing 2000–2009’

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help of numerous people and institutions. I would like to thank Loughborough University for a series of small grants to undertake some of the necessary research and for providing a semester’s leave to work on the book.

A special thank you goes to the team at Polity Press, especially Andrea Drugan for being patient and understanding in the preparation of this manuscript. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences, the anonymous reviewers of the original book proposal and the finished manuscript, and those who provided comments at conferences and seminars where findings from the book were presented.

I am also indebted to the following people who have all contributed to this book in various ways and to different extents: Freddie Attenborough, Rafaella Bianchi, Hélène Bilger-Street, Jay Blumler, Andrea Burmester, Donatella Campus, María José Canel, Cristopher Cepernich, Andrew Chadwick, John Corner, Jamil Dakhlia, David Deacon, Claes De Vreese, John Downey, Frank Esser, Mike Gane, Peter Golding, Murray Goot, Emily Harmer, Richard Heffernan, Frank Henseler, Michael Higgins, Christina Holtz-Bacha, Oliver James, Bengt Johansson, Emily Keightley, Raymond Kuhn, Ana Langer, Guido Legnante, Philippe Maarek, Paolo Mancini, Gianpetro Mazzolini, Susanne Merkle, Sabina Mihelj, Andreas Muellerleile, Graham Murdock, Ralph Negrine, Rui Novais, Henrik Örnebring, Heather Owen, Barbara Pfetsch, Mike Pickering, Carsten Reinemann, Andy Ruddock, Karen Sanders, Paula Saukko, Tamir Sheafer, Liz Stokoe, John Street, Jesper Strömbäck, Mick Temple, Peter Van Aelst, Liesbet Van Zoonen, Silvio Waisbord, Dominic Wring, Reimar Zeh.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Fleur for her constant support throughout the time spent writing this book. Any errors are, of course, my own.

Introduction

Politicians’ Personal Lives in the Media Spotlight

If you are applying for the presidency of the United States of America, then by definition you have given up your privacy; people are going to want to know what you have done in your life and what you stand for.’ (Barack Obama, on the stump in Oregon, the 2008 US presidential campaign, BBC World at One, 19 May 2008)

I think people have a right to know a bit about you and your life and your family, what makes you tick, and what informs your thinking. (David Cameron, ITN interview, cited in Winnett & Prince, 2008)

It is often remarked that the personal lives of politicians, like those of sports, film and television stars and hosts of other celebrities, have become a familiar part of the public’s daily media consumption. The public, it might be said, know more detail about politicians’ personal lives than their policy stance or voting records. Like celebrities in other fields, they have willingly surrendered their privacy, or have been unable to defend it from a celebrity-obsessed media.

Across democracies, academics have observed the increasingly personal nature of political communication (see, for example, Stanyer & Wring, 2004; Van Zoonen, 2005). In many democracies, studies show that politicians are increasingly prepared to disclose aspects of their personal lives. Research by Dakhlia (2010) has documented the ‘peopolisation’ or celebritization of French politics in the 2000s, a key aspect of which has been personalized self-disclosure. Leading French politicians make regular carefully choreographed appearances on television talk shows and in glossy celebrity magazines (see Chenu, 2008; Dakhlia, 2008, 2010; Neveu, 2005). For example, Errera (2006) found that leading politicians’ relationships, personal health, their home and family life, personal financial issues and their past life were very much to the fore in magazine coverage in the 1990s. In the run-up to the 2007 presidential election the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, appeared in her bikini in Voici, Closer and VSD (Dakhlia, 2008). The former President Nicolas Sarkozy exploited his private life for political purposes, openly using his family to bolster his presidential ambitions (Kuhn, 2010, 2011). Indeed, Kuhn notes, the extent to which he exploited his spouse and family was considered groundbreaking in a French context (Kuhn, 2010). His subsequent very public divorce from his second wife, Cécilia, and courtship of and marriage to supermodel and singer Carla Bruni, were conducted very much in the media spotlight. Photo opportunities of the new lovers were staged for the media, and intimate interviews given (Chrisafis, 2007; Kirby, 2010). In the UK, Deacon (2004) observes that Prime Ministers have been quick to use their personal lives as a resource. Tony Blair has frequently disclosed aspects of his private life to the public and might be accused of over-sharing some of the more intimate aspects. For example, in an interview with Tony and Cherie in the Sun during the 2005 general election campaign, Tony confessed he was ‘up for it’ at least five times a night, a point corroborated by Cherie, who, when asked if he was ‘up to it’, said he always was (Marrin, 2005). There is some evidence of a broader trend; research by Langer shows that coverage of UK Prime Ministers’ private lives increased in The Times over the post-World War Two period, rising from around 1 per cent of leaders’ coverage in 1945 to 8 per cent during Tony Blair’s tenure in office, a trend David Cameron has continued (Langer, 2007, 2012).

In the US, personal self-disclosure has become normalized on the presidential campaign trail; indeed, politicians feel that they have to reveal aspects of their personal lives or will be greeted with suspicion. Perloff observes that, 100 years ago, presidential candidates hardly spoke in public; now they ‘trip over each other to disclose psychologically correct tidbits from their personal lives’ (Perloff, 1998, p. 279). Intimate moments from candidates’ personal lives are shared with an audience of unknown others; for example, during the 1992 race for the White House, Al Gore discussed the near-death of his son, while Bill Clinton shared stories of his brother’s battles with drug addiction (Perloff, 1998; see also Gamson, 2001; Hart, 1999). In 2004, both candidates for the presidency, and their wives, talked about their families and a range of family-related matters on the Dr Phil Show; George W. Bush and Laura Bush were asked openly if they had spanked their children (see Van Zoonen et al., 2007).

In Italy, numerous authors have remarked on the personalized nature of political communication since 1994 and the formation of the Second Republic (Allum & Cilento, 2001; Campus, 2010a; Mancini, 2008, 2011; Paolucci, 2002). Silvio Berlusconi is the most high-profile politician to have used his private life to promote himself to the Italian people. During the 2001 general election campaign, he distributed a Hello-style glossy brochure to millions of households; entitled ‘An Italian Story’ (Una Storia Italiana), the publication featured his family and life story (Campus, 2002). During the 2006 Italian general election campaign, his main rival, Romano Prodi, and his wife released their autobiography. Both Berlusconi and Prodi appeared on a variety of entertainment talk shows where they discussed aspects of their private lives and other matters (Campus, 2006).

Research shows that in Germany, government ministers’ personal relationships are more visible than ever before (Holtz-Bacha, 2004). For example, in 2000, the then Defence Minister, Rudolf Scharping, and his new lover granted the popular magazine Bunte an exclusive interview in which they spoke openly about their love for each other. The following year they appeared again in Bunte, this time on holiday in Majorca (Holtz-Bacha, 2004). In the Netherlands, leading politicians share personal moments and intimate aspects of their lives with the celebrity media, and the demand for such intimate details has increased. Such coverage often focuses on their family life and the tensions that emerge between career and the family (Van Zoonen, 2005). Studies in Australia show politicians, like celebrities, are increasingly keen to parade their personal lives in the media. They have been quick to use their family lives to enhance their electoral appeal. As a new leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mark Latham used his family to project a family-friendly image to the electorate in 2004 (Muir, 2005b). Australian politicians are also increasingly aware of the importance of non-traditional media in connecting with voters. Shows such as Australian Story regularly feature prominent politicians. In 2001, the show went behind the scenes to provide an intimate look at the home life of John Howard, then Prime Minister, and leader of the opposition, Kim Beazley (Bonner & McKay, 2007). Popular celebrity magazines provide another outlet for politicians to parade their personal lives before the voter. Federal Senator Natasha Stott Despoja underwent a fashion makeover for magazine Cleo and, during the 1998 general election, Australian Labor Party MP Cheryl Kernot used an appearance in a woman’s weekly magazine to pose in a variety of gowns and talk as much about ‘her family life’ as her ‘public prominence’ (Turner et al., 2000, p. 135; see also Muir, 2005a).

In some democracies the literature points at the increased proclivity of certain media to intrude into the private lives of politicians (Sabato et al., 2000; Tumber & Waisbord, 2004a, b). The peccadilloes of leading politicians find their way into the press. Bill Clinton’s presidency was dogged by a series of allegations and revelations concerning his fidelity. In 1992, while campaigning for office, the supermarket tabloid the Star disclosed that he had been unfaithful to his wife (Gronbeck, 1997). After he was elected, there was an almost constant stream of rumours concerning spurned lovers and children out of wedlock, much publicized in the tabloid media. In 1998, sexual revelations, drip-fed through gossip-based websites, published in the press and the Starr Report, provided an extremely intimate insight into his extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky (Maltese, 2000; West & Orman, 2003). The media digging for and publishing dirt on politicians is now a permanent feature of US politics at all levels, not just the presidency (see Neiwert, 1998; Sabato et al., 2000; Splichal & Garrison, 2000). For example, court divorce records are now a newsworthy source of personal information that news outlets have been keen to exploit. In 2004, divorcé Jack Ryan withdrew from the contest for the Republican nomination for an Illinois Senate seat after a Californian judge was persuaded by Chicago news outlets to unseal his divorce files, revealing intimate details about his split from actress Jeri Ryan (Chase & Ford, 2004).

In the UK in the 1990s, the Major government was subject to a raft of media revelations about marital infidelity of government ministers and MPs (Parris & Maguire, 2005). One of the most colourful concerned the then Heritage Minister, David Mellor, whose sexual antics in his Chelsea FC football strip and penchant for sucking toes received wide coverage in the tabloid press (Tunstall, 1996). Research by Bob Franklin found that, between 1990 and 1994, sex scandals and misconduct involving politicians were the third most popular subject in press coverage, with almost 10 per cent of the 820 news items examined focusing on it (Franklin, 1997, p. 236). Indeed, the sexual exploits of Tory politicians were even fictionalized, in the 1995 Channel Four-produced The Politician’s Wife, a drama based loosely on actual events. Since the 1990s, tabloid press intrusion into the private lives of politicians has become normalized (Deacon, 2004). Within a year of winning office, three UK ministers in the coalition government – William Hague, Chris Huhne and David Laws – have been forced to issue public statements about their sex lives when confronted by revelations and rumours in the media.

In democracies where the private lives of politicians have been very much legally protected, certain media outlets seem increasingly eager to publish gossip about public figures, and to challenge existing privacy norms and the ability to control access to their private lives. For example in Finland, in 2006, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen’s former girl friend Susan Kuronen appeared semi-naked in a gossip magazine, where she suggested that Vanhanen was a boring lover. The following year, she then went on to write the country’s first kiss-and-tell memoir, ThePM’s Bride, based on her relationship with Vanhanen, revealing the most intimate details about their relationship (Laine, 2010). The ensuing coverage of the book and attempts to quash its publication dominated the media for months (Juntunen & Valiverronen, 2010; Karvonen, 2009). Other Scandinavian countries, despite strict laws designed to protect the privacy of public figures, have also seen a growth in the media exposure of politicians’ private lives (see Allern et al., 2012). In France, Kuhn (2011) notes, that despite strict privacy laws there has been a ‘striking’ decline in the control politicians exercise over the press in the last decade, especially regarding the Internet. Dakhlia (2010) observes that, over the last decade, celebrity magazines have not shied away from publishing paparazzi pictures of leading politicians in their swim suits, something that would have been unheard of before. Often, recourse to privacy laws does not prevent exposure in an increasingly transnational news environment. For example, in January 2003, lawyers acting for the then German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, tried to stop the British tabloid, Mail on Sunday, publishing the rumours about his supposed marital difficulties. The original Mail on Sunday allegations were then reprinted in German newspapers, which cited the Mail on Sunday as their source (Holtz-Bacha, 2004). In March 2010, rumours emerged on Twitter that Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of France, and his wife, Carla Bruni, were having affairs (Kirby, 2010). While the French press at first hesitated to cover the allegations, the global news interest meant that the story could not be ignored as the President wished, and it was eventually reported in the French media.

These different nationally focused examples, I would argue, cannot be ignored; they point to a potentially significant development in democratic political communications, namely the growing focus on the personal lives of politicians. They suggest that across a range of advanced industrial democracies the personal lives of politicians are no longer a purely private matter but are instead an increasingly ubiquitous feature of the mediated public sphere. The zone of privacy which once surrounded politicians and those in public life seems to be slowly disappearing with and without politicians’ consent. These documented incursions of the personal into the public sphere are an indication for some of a public realm that ‘no longer has anything to do with civic commitment’ and is increasingly colonized by the trivial and inane (Rössler, 2005, p. 170). In other words, the growing flow of personal information about those who govern us has important consequences for the nature of information citizens receive in advanced industrial democracies.

However, while the above examples provide a tantalizing glimpse of recent developments, they are far from conclusive; it is hard to determine whether there is a trend across advanced industrial democracies and difficult to identify the consequences of such developments – in short, more evidence is needed. This book sets out to examine the personalized nature of mediated political communication across a range of advanced industrial democracies. It seeks to tease out developments, drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, assessing the extent to which the personal lives of politicians have become a prominent feature of political communications. The book seeks to comprehend the shifting boundaries between the public and private and whether these developments are indeed universal. This introductory chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book, starting with existing attempts to conceptualize developments and comprehend the wider processes involved.

Conceptualizing developments: personalization or intimization?

While concepts are of primary importance to social science research (see Goertz, 2005; Sartori, 1970), the robustness with which concepts are defined varies. It is sometimes the case that the same concept is defined differently by different authors – in other words, there is a lack of conceptual agreement (see Sartori, 1984). This is particularly the case with the concept of personalization, increasingly used in political science and political communication research (see Van Aelst et al., 2012). For example, one might instinctively think that what the above examples show is evidence of the personalization of politics; after all, they document growing media coverage of politicians’ personal lives in different countries. However, the way the term ‘personalization’ has often been applied, especially in political communication research, means that matters are not so straightforward. The majority of studies conducted on personalization do not deal with the flows of information and imagery about politicians’ private lives (for synoptic accounts, see Adam & Maier, 2010; Karvonen, 2010). Rather, most focus on the visibility of individual politicians, especially party leaders and candidates, compared to political parties or institutions; indeed, Plasser and Lengauer (2008) define it as ‘an increasing focus on candidates at the expense of their parties or even policy issues’ (2008, p. 257; see also Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000; Kriesi, 2010; Mughan, 2000; Reinemann & Wilke, 2007). Rahat and Sheafer (2007) observe that, in the personalization literature, personalization does not mean the growing disclosure of information about politicians’ private lives; in fact, the ‘personization’ of politics would perhaps be a more accurate description of how the concept is defined. The growing visibility of politicians compared to parties, however important, is only part of the story. The personalization literature, with noted exceptions (see Langer, 2012), overlooks the flow of personal information and imagery. With the concept being operationalized in such a way by numerous studies, the utility of redefining it for the purposes of this book is limited.

If the use of the term ‘personalization’ is problematic, what other concepts might be used? Several authors make a distinction between personalization (meaning the visibility of politicians) and what they term ‘privatization’: ‘a media focus on the personal characteristics and personal life of individual candidates’ (Rahat & Sheafer, 2007, p. 68; see also Holtz-Bacha, 2004, pp. 48–9). While ‘privatization’ captures the process by which information and imagery about politicians’ personal lives enters into the public domain, it is problematic for several reasons. First, it is a word most commonly associated with the sale of state-owned assets to the private sector, which distracts from its explanatory potential. Second, the word in that context has a different meaning: it does not mean making the private public, but the reverse, privatizing of something that is public – the opposite of what is meant in Rahat and Sheafer’s or Holtz-Bacha’s definition (see Benn & Gaus, 1983, and Weintraub & Kumar, 1997, for a discussion of the term). Third, it has little to say about questions of intrusion and control: for example, on the extent to which the focus on the personal characteristics and personal life of individual candidates is the product of intrusion. While not explicitly acknowledged, the research overwhelmingly focuses on examples which are benign, or at least could not be described as damaging, although we do know from the examination of sex scandals that politicians are not always in control of such flows (see Adut, 2008; Thompson, 2000).

The developments described earlier might be better understood by drawing upon the varied literature that has examined the changing nature of intimacy in contemporary societies. Take for example Sennett’s seminal work The Fall of Public Man, whose central concern is the emergence of what he terms the ‘intimate society’ and its consequences. This is a society where the display of personality comes to dominate the public realm and group (class) interests become subordinate to the belief in the innate abilities of the individual. Sennett’s concern is how such an ideology emerged in capitalist societies in the nineteenth century and how the public have been seduced by it and have come to accept it and the withering of an impersonal public realm. While his concern is not primarily with changing political communication, he is clear what role the media plays in promoting personality, especially in the political sphere. He argues that television shows a ‘compulsive’ interest in personality, arousing amongst audiences an interest in the personality of the politicians they see before them (Sennett, 2002[1974], p. 285). Television is crucial to the promotion of personality politics that deflects public interest away from effective public action to questions of personal character; for Sennett, politics becomes something more akin to the Hollywood star system, its function to routinize the selection of charismatic leaders (2002).

Other studies have approached questions of intimacy and communication technology more directly, examining television’s ability to create a new form of intimacy. The notion of tele-mediated/non-reciprocal intimacy gained much attention in the 1950s; as Lang and Lang note, this is not intimacy in the proper sense – there are ‘no two way responses and exchange of feelings’ – but rather it is illusory: the viewers believe they know what public figures are really like, based on tele-mediated experience (Lang & Lang, 1956, p. 110). Horton and Wohl, in their now-classic 1956 study, observe that the audience comes to see the person on television as directly addressing them. Like the Langs, they note television gives the ‘illusion of a face-to-face relationship with the performer’; the audience enjoy what they call a ‘para-social relationship’ with the person they see before them (Horton & Wohl, 1956, p. 215). They go on to suggest that television enables them to ‘know such a persona in the same way they know their chosen friends: through direct observation and interpretation of his appearance, his gestures and voice, his conversation and conduct in a variety of situations’ (1956, p. 216). Joshua Meyrowitz, several decades later, in his account of how television has undermined traditional political leadership, observes that television ‘brings the politician close for the people’s inspection … [and] brings a rich range of expressive information to the audience’; it can show politicians perspiring, their facial gestures, intonations and mispronunciations (Meyrowitz, 1985, p. 272). Schickel, similarly, in his 1990s examination of celebrity, observes that ‘thanks to television and the rest of the media we know [celebrities]. To a greater or lesser degree we have internalised them, unconsciously made them a part of our consciousness, just as if they were, in fact, friends’ (Schickel, 2000, p. 4). They are no longer seen ‘from the alienating distance of the stage or the lecture hall, which is where we were forced to view them in the pre-electronic age’ (p. 10). He notes ‘we are able, over months and years … , to learn these faces as we learn those of our best friends and relatives’; we come to know ‘their tics, blinks and glances’ (p. 11; see also Perloff, 1998). One could even, perhaps, go back further in time to the mechanical reproduction of photographs in the mass-circulation press in the 1880s, which meant that the public would see not only the name and face but also realistic images of political actors, in the course of the daily consumption of media output (Gamson, 1994; Murdock, 2010).

However, any understanding that relates purely to an individual’s non-reciprocal, tele-mediated relationships with distant others, thanks to whatever technology, overlooks the nature of the information and imagery to which an audience is exposed. The nature of the information and imagery is important in relation to what audience members know about the actors they see.1 Take the example of the spouses of national leaders. The high level of mediated visibility of the US First Lady is not recent. Since the early twentieth century, with the rise of photography, mass-circulation media and the moving image, the US First Lady has been visible to the US population at large (Ponder, 1999), a point that could also be made for the wife of the UK Prime Minister (Seymour-Ure, 2003). However, today, partners in the US and UK are not just visible, there is also a lot of personal information about them in the media; for example, we know about their taste in clothes, their relationship, their family histories, etc. (Stanyer, 2007). In other words, not only are public figures and leading politicians more visible and familiar as faces, but more information about their personal life circulates in the mediated public sphere. This latter point has been picked up by other studies: see, for example, Lowenthal’s classic study of American celebrity (1961) and Ponce de Leon’s (2003). Van Zoonen (1991) develops the concept of ‘intimization’ in relation to content of television news. She defines it as a process whereby ‘values from the private sphere are transferred to the public sphere’ (1991, p. 223). Hirdman et al.’s study of changes in Swedish journalism from the 1880s to the present defines intimization as a process which sees increased journalistic attention on the family, sexuality and the private – what they term the ‘intimate sphere’ as opposed to the public sphere (Hirdman et al., 2005, p. 109).

Intimization in the context of this book relates primarily to media content formation and dissemination and should not be conflated with non-reciprocal or tele-mediated intimacy (see Horton & Wohl, 1956; Thompson, 1995). That said, it should be noted such a concern with media content does not negate audience relations to it but merely emphasizes the importance of the nature of information and images which audiences consume. Further, it is not a technologically centred process; the driving force of change is not assumed to be new communication technology but a combination of economic, political and social factors – as will be illustrated later. Implicit in the notion of intimization is that it is a temporal process, if you like: that the indicators of intimization become more visible, more pervasive in national mediated public spheres over time; this can also be seen in Hirdman et al.’s study of Swedish media. Of course, intimization might be connected with other temporal processes, for example, the rise of the personalization of politics, as classically defined, or the celebritization of politics (see Dakhlia, 2010; Gamson, 1994; Ruddock, 2010; Street, 2004). As politicians become more visible, or political celebrities emerge, their personal lives may become more discussed but it might well be possible to have the greater visibility of politicians without an increased flow of information about their personal lives; Rahat and Sheafer (2007) clearly show this is the case. This is not say that the way intimization has currently been understood is problem-free, but I think it has significant potential in helping make sense of current developments in the political communication environment highlighted at the start of this chapter. The next section seeks to flesh out a fuller definition of intimization.

Defining intimization

A good starting point in defining intimization is Corner’s model of the spheres or arenas in which politicians operate. Corner (2003) observes that elected officials operate in three different but overlapping spheres. The first is the sphere of ‘political institutions and processes’: this is the world of party organizations, legislatures and government. Second is the ‘private sphere’: this includes all private aspects of a politician’s life from biography to familial relations. The final sphere is the ‘sphere of the public and popular’: it is the mediated space in which politics takes place and politicians perform; it is, in his words, ‘the stage where, for instance, politicians develop reputations, draw varying levels of support, are judged as good or bad, undergo meteoric or steady advancement, decline, resign or are sacked’ (Corner, 2003, p. 74). Corner identifies a range of flows of information from the institutional and private spheres into the sphere of the public and the popular (see figure 0.1). Information continually circulates between these spheres. In this context, intimization refers specifically to the flow of information and imagery between the private sphere and the mediated public sphere.

Figure 0.1 Political persona and spheres of action

Source: Corner, 2003. Reprinted by permission of SAGE publications, London, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore.

However, caution needs to be exercised in how the term ‘private’ is used. What Corner defines as the private sphere (see also Bauman, 2011, ‘private realm’; Thompson, 1995, ‘private domain’), I would argue, is better comprehended as the personal sphere. The personal sphere can be understood to be all aspects of a politician’s personal life, including information about the politician as an individual, his or her living spaces and domestic life and relationships with others who inhabit this realm. However, once subjected to publicity, these aspects cease to be private. The private, therefore, is better seen as a state of being rather than a specific space or piece of information. Personal information and spaces can be kept private – that is, access and disclosure are controlled, they are open to certain people but not others. However, once publicized to a non-co-present media audience, information and spaces are no longer private, or their privacy may become more difficult to maintain (for a wider discussion, see Rössler, 2005; Thompson, 2011). With this in mind, therefore, I want to suggest that intimization can be seen in simple terms as a revela-tory process which involves the publicizing of information and imagery from what we might ordinarily understand as a politician’s personal life – broadly defined. It is a publicity process that takes place over time and involves flows of personal information and imagery into the mediated public sphere. However, before elaborating on this publicity process in more detail, it is important in this context to say something about the nature of the personal sphere.

It is too simple to lump personal life together as one – I want to develop a more nuanced understanding of the personal sphere. The personal sphere is not simply a back region as defined by Goffman (1971[1959]): it consists of three overlapping parts or domains (others have suggested two; see Rawlins, 1998, and Van Zoonen, 1998). The first domain concerns what I term the inner life of a politician. This includes, for example, his or her health, well being, sexuality, personal finances, deeds, misdeeds, key milestones (such as birthdays), life experiences and achievements, but also choices about the way an individual wants to live his or her life: for example, life-style choices, ways of behaving, choice of religion or questions of taste. The second domain concerns significant others in a politician’s personal life and his or her relationship with these actors. This includes relationships with partners, other immediate and extended family members, friends and extra-marital lovers. The third domain concerns an individual’s life space: this includes his or her home but it also includes happenings in locations outside the home where the individual is not performing a public function and might want privacy, such as on family holidays (see figure 0.2). I want to suggest that intimization consists of the publicizing of information and imagery from these three domains: in other words, exposure of information and imagery about the politician as a person; the public scrutiny of personal relationships and family life; and the opening up of personal living spaces or spaces a politician might reasonably expect to be private from the public gaze. Of course such personal exposure is not limited to politicians but can be seen in relation to other public figures, including celebrities and royalty.

Figure 0.2The personal sphere

The nature of information and imagery and its publicity

It is important at this point to say something about the nature of the information on, and imagery of, politicians’ personal lives that flows into the mediated public sphere and how it is publicized. Table 0.1 shows that the exposure can be consensual or non-consensual. With consensual exposure, the personal information and imagery entering the media do so with the expressed or implied consent of those they feature. An example might be an act of self-disclosure on a talk show or in an autobiography which is then recycled in the media. It is the exposure of the personal life that politicians might expect as part of being in the public eye, but is not the product of unwarranted intrusion into areas of the personal domain. With non-consensual exposure, personal information and imagery enter the media without expressed or implied consent. Examples might include paparazzi photographs of politicians backstage or off-duty, taken without the subject’s permission, phone hacking, a kiss-and-tell exclusive or some other breach of confidentiality. Non-consensual exposure is an unwar-ranted intrusion into areas of the personal domain that politicians want to remain private.

Table 0.1Personal information/imagery typology

Non-consensual/ScandalousNon-consensual/Non-scandalousExample: exposure of infidelity or other transgressions in the personal domain via kiss-and-tell; unofficial memoirs; phone hacking.Example: photographs of holidays and family members via long-lens photography. Exposure without permission of actor(s) but not of scandalous material.Consensual/ScandalousConsensual/Non-scandalousExample: admission of infidelity or other transgressions in the personal domain via interviews; autobiographies; official memoirs; documentaries.Example: exposure of personal information via interviews; (auto) biographies; official memoirs; documentaries. This non-scandalous material can be benign, laudatory or critical.

Table 0.1 also shows that information and imagery disclosed can either be scandalous in nature (it reveals a transgression of societal norms in a politician’s personal life) or non-scandalous. While the former includes information that might have the potential to damage a politician’s reputation, career or personal relations, the latter includes all information and imagery from a politician’s personal life that can largely be considered benign, although they may sometimes be critical or laudatory. This does not mean that such information and imagery are of a single type – they can relate to any of the domains of the personal sphere as highlighted in figure 0.2.

Intimization can involve, for example, both the flows of non-scandalous personal information and imagery consensually co-disclosed in the media, and scandalous information and imagery gathered and publicized in the public realm without a politician’s consent. However, in different democracies, such flows might be weighted towards the former or the latter due to numerous factors.

What drives intimization?

While it is important to document the nature of the information on politicians’ personal lives, it is crucial to identify the factors enabling or inhibiting the intimization process. Intimization is not the result of one factor, such as communication technology, but the outcome of a complex interplay of a range of factors. One of the shortcomings of both Meyrowitz (1985) and Schickel (2000) is that these studies place too much emphasis on the power of television. To imply that this alone is responsible for intimization of political communication is to ignore the other variables that might contribute. When thinking about causes of intimization, we need to consider the numerous factors that potentially might contribute to publicizing the personal lives of politicians. These include a mix of macro and micro variables which may work in combination to produce an outcome (see Adam & Maier, 2010). At a micro level, we need to take account of the various political actors in any political communication system. Perhaps most obviously there are the politicians themselves, who routinely self-disclose, or might be expected to self-disclose, aspects of their personal lives or seek to expose elements of their opponents’ personal lives that might damage their chance of being elected or re-elected. Politicians, therefore, selectively disclose information in order to ensure non-co-present others form an appropriate positive or negative impression (see Stanyer, 2008). In addition, information and imagery may originate from actors who know the politician personally – for example, family members or significant others, such as, for example, a jilted lover. Finally, there are actors in the public sphere who might take an interest in a politician’s personal life: the police, investigatory magistrates and other judicial and quasi-judicial actors, and journalists and media actors. These agents together ask questions, package and disseminate information and imagery, and recycle them.

In media-saturated democracies, this information and imagery come to public attention through a myriad of media outlets and via different media genres. The presence and/or absence of different outlets and genres might be influential in determining the nature of information and imagery that reach the mediated public sphere. Media interviews are now a well-established means through which politicians talk about themselves; in many democracies, interviews on entertainment talk shows or in glossy magazines have become a routine part of a campaign (Just et al., 1996; Van Zoonen, 1998). In addition, politicians’ personal lives feature in documentaries and books, which in turn often receive coverage in the wider news media, and also via media investigations; the tabloid or boulevard press is often at the forefront of coverage of the personal lives of public figures. In other words, a media system which sees a flourishing of such outlets and genres might well provide greater opportunities for personal disclosure.

Acts of self-disclosure may also reflect politicians’ needs to ensure electoral support in a political environment where they can no longer rely on the loyalties of voters, and voters often make electoral choices based on personal factors (Clarke et al., 2004; Corner & Pels, 2003). In such situations, politicians need to develop new ways of building and maintaining support. Developing a personal connection with the electorate might be one of several means open to them. Further, the nature of the political system might well incentivize personal disclosure. In presidential democracies where the national leader is directly elected, candidates for high office may need to make personal disclosures to a greater extent than in a parliamentary system, where voters choose a party or parties to govern.

The normative environment governing what it is acceptable or permissible for politicians to reveal about themselves may also play a role. Politicians, like other public figures, are embedded in a culture where talking about their personal lives, however intensely intimate, is no longer seen as inappropriate but, rather, is normalized, even expected, in some countries (Adut, 2008; Solove, 2007). If we take Calvert’s thesis, politicians are embedded in a culture that is increasingly voyeuristic, a culture which is dominated by ‘the consumption of revealing images of and information about others’ (Calvert, 2000, p. 2). People’s personal space and private lives are laid bare through an endless series of highly popular programmes, articles and websites (2000). Reality TV shows, such as Big Brother