The Celebritization of Politicians
Veronika Frantová
Paper for Europaeum Summer School 2010 – Bologna
The Media, Europe and Democracy
Introduction
For the last thirty years, celebritization of politicians began to be one of the most interesting
themes in western sociology and cultural studies, because it is closely associated with the question of
legitimacy of elected representatives in post/modern democracy. Also in stabilizing democracies of
post-transition societies of the Middle Europe the theme started to be highly up to date.
In scholarly discussions, one of the processes treated to be subordinated to the
celebritization process is the personalization of politicians, which is usually thought as one of its
indicators or manifestations. This paper tries to demonstrate, that this merging of two categories celebritization and personalization - is mistaken, because in spite of their mutual relation, both of
them have diverse sources, manifestations, as well as different consequences for the problem of
legitimacy.
Celebritization vs. Personalization
Many scholars link personalization and celebritization of politics with each other [Corner, Pels
2003; Street 2004; Van Zoonen 2006]. Couldry and Markham [2007] tend to describe celebritization
of politicians as a part of personalization of politics or narativization of democracy as for instance,
mixing it with celebrity culture. Personalization, among other causes, probably encouraged the
celebritization of politicians. But as I will claim, there is a strong difference between those two
processes. Both of them embody another kind of logic.
The personalization process stems from traditional political sphere – now being eroded
according to Langer by „(post)modernity and the individualisation of society, declining party
identification and membership, the weakening of binding ideologies and the rise of ‘life-style’ and
identity politics, the fragmentation and supra-nationalisation of power, and the growing complexity
and competence of the state“ [Langer 2007: 371-372; see also Langer 2009: 11].
TV and press started to personalize political news and concentrate on leaders and their
personalities instead of institutions and abstract processes. This simplifies reporting and makes news
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more attractive for public [Langer 2007]. On the other hand, politicians try to adjust their
communication strategies to the media logic and exploit this change to gain electoral support [Langer
2007; Campus 2010].1
In contrast, celebritization of politicians has its origins in popular culture - in substantially
divergent field of public sector than is the political one. As Boorstin stated: „The celebrity is a person
who is well known for his well-knowness.“ *Boorstin 1982; 57+. And that is also the motto of hardcore celebritization process. Media which prefer scandal-oriented journalism are its main actors, who
started it and still handle the rudder. In contrast to personalization process, celebrity-news about
politicians do not have any ties to the holding of public office, which should politicians represent.
Media just take advantage of the situation of widely known politicians and use this knowness to
acquire the public interest in buying the newspaper.
Celebritized Politics in Media Communication
In celebritized political news the content as well as the form of reporting plays the role. In
contrast to personalization, in this case media use the same vocabulary and journalistic figures or
genres as if they were writing about celebrities of show business. We even cannot find any single
reference to what politicians do or should do regarding to their offices. Media refer about them in
same way as about super stars, reality show participants or tiny TV stars. Typical celebritized reports
about politicians are most similar to the reports about pop stars in magazines for teenagers. The
most read Czech tabloid „Blesk“, which I was analyzing through the last year, also usually works with
the photos and uses some “funny” titles which should enhance the interest in the article which
follows. Despite that those articles are about politics, their informative value is miserable. Regarding
to the visual as well as informative aspects of celebritized reporting, we can also see one very
interesting phenomenon. In many causes, same photographs are used for a week or month. It could
be interpreted in the way, that this approach saves time and the costs for the tabloid and in addition
it goes to meet readerships‘ demands - readers do not have to buy the tabloid every day, but
whenever they buy it, they know right now what is up and do not have to think about the content
much.
By personalisation process, politicians were forced to open their privacy to broader public.
But they also exploited the situation and bound those private issues with their ability to “do a good
job” in the political field and furthermore to raise the glimmer of being closer to ordinary citizens.
But now, having private information more accessible, tabloids know how to take advantage of this
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There is of course a strong discussion about consequences of the personalization and its effect upon democracy
[see Goldschmidt 1954: 404-411; Elving 1988: 257], but it is not a point here.
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situation. Unlike media celebrities, the active role of politicians is suppressed here, because they
cannot influence the production of celebritized reports anymore. Tabloids simply do not need to
cooperate with them, because it is much more effective and cheaper to fabricate stories just on their
own. What is crucial here – we really speak about imagination without much respect to traditional
journalistic culture. The tabloid thus (with respect to its readers) creates the new kind of politically
irrelevant “political” reality.
From the point of view of traditional normative theory of public, celebritization is probably
much more dangerous than mere personalization of politics or narativization of democracy. Although
there is a discussion, if the personalization leads to higher political participation [Gupta 2003] of
otherwise excluded citizens [Mahajan 2003], the discourse of personalisation still holds the frame of
judging the politicians’ eligibility for public office. On the contrary, celebritization is not promising in
this respect at all, because it takes citizens away from politics as such and offers only meaningless
domain of amusement.
Readership, Political Participation and the Problem of Vicious Circle
The discrepancy between personalization and celebritization highlights the crucial role of the
readership. Different media are satisfying different kinds of reader’s demands – from gaining the
information to relaxing and having fun. We can assume that almost all citizens draw their
information about politics from various kinds of media (TV, radio, internet, newspapers, tabloid etc.).
It is thus important, how much do they rely on the truthfulness of reports which concrete media
offer. And last but not least how do they use that information for deciding about public affairs
(voting, demonstrating and other kinds of civic engagement). And here we can see the main problem.
According to contemporary research findings, readers of the most read tabloid in Czechia,
“Blesk”, are recruited from lower strata. As much as 47 % of the citizens with the lowest status read
Blesk at least once weekly, compared to 28 % with the highest status *Špaček, Šafr 2010: 94+. We can
assume, that high strata members combine more kinds of newspapers, which means, that they
probably do have another resources of “reliable” information about politics. For instance broadsheet
“Hospodářské noviny” (“Economic Newspaper”) is at least once weekly read by 20 % of the highest
stratum members compared to only 2 % of lowest stratum.
Conclusion
As my analysis of “Blesk” and “Hospodářské noviny” showed, we can clearly claim that the
celebritization of politicians is typical for “Blesk” and Czech tabloids in general, but in “Hospodářské
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noviny” and other broadsheets we can hardly find any indications of this process. In their case we
should at most speak about personalization of politics.
Readers of tabloid belong to the stratum with the lowest political participation.
Personalization – reading about politicians as personalities - could probably intensify reader’s
interest in politics. On the other hand, the celebritization, in the way in which it is produced by Czech
tabloid, has the opposite effect. Negative fabrications and unfounded private stories, without any
connection to politician’s public office, probably cannot affect or even encourage readers’ public
decision-making at all.
We should, of course, not underestimate the readers’ ability to decide, if they want to find
information in tabloids or just would like to have fun. It is probable, that many of those, who derive
their information about politics just from the tabloids, do not really want to engage in public issues.
But, nevertheless, if there was somebody, who wanted to do so, then celebritization of politics could
even play a delusional role, because he/or she could simply gain the impression that his/her duty to
care about public issues is filled by this kind of celebrity-reading about politics. We would therefore
conclude, that the personalization of politics has the impact on the public at large, but celebritization
deepens the chasm between the political participation of high and low strata, regardless of its
concrete form.
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