Personalization: a theoretical and historical account

In this paper we report on a 4-year research project about the history and culture of Dutch political television journalism. Our analyses show that Dutch public (and commercial since 1989) television has carried ever more ‘informative’ programs such as news, current affairs and documentaries. Airtime for infotainment, programs in which information is mixed with entertainment and often public participation such as, for instance talk shows and magazines, has stayed relatively stable. This suggests that television has not offered many easy options for personalized political communication. It may be the case, however, that within the category of ‘information’ changes have taken place that can be typified as ‘personalization’, referring to coverage of individual competence, private lives and emotions of individual politicians. To examine that possibility we performed a qualitative content analysis of 23 televised portraits of Dutch politicians that were broadcast between 1961 and 2006. Results from this study show that personal narratives were present as early as 1961, and cannot be considered a mere product of contemporary television culture. Our results also show that these personal narratives have always comprised of individual and private stories, with emotional accounts only slightly increasing in the recent period. Finally, we observed that personal narratives are always primarily articulated with the political ideas, activities and goals of the guest politicians, and embedded in the political and societal affiliations of the politician. We conclude that our conceptualization of personalization adds to the literature a refined instrument for analysis without taking an a priori, normative position. Applying it in content analysis has shown that personalization seems a historical continuity, rather than the effect of the alleged contemporary video malaise, and that personalization has not become ever more dominant to the detriment of substantial attention for political issues.