Personalized coverage of election news : an analysis of Turkish-Cypriot newspapers

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Personalized coverage of election news:

An analysis of Turkish-Cypriot newspapers

by Hayriye Rüzgar Student ID: 10602445 Supervisor: Dr. Rachid Azrout

THESIS

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Communication Science

Political Communication Track

University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Communication

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Abstract

This study examined the degree and form of personalized coverage (individualization and privatization) of election news in two Turkish-Cypriot newspapers – Kıbrıs and YeniDüzen - , and compared the difference between the coverage of two recent elections - 2013 Early National Elections and 2014 Local Elections. Findings showed that individual politicians were more prominent than political parties in the general coverage and in the articles focusing on individual politicians, the elements of individualization were more dominant than the elements of

privatization. No significant difference was found between the election coverage of tabloid and quality newspapers. When two election periods were compared, the results showed that the coverage of local elections was more personalized than the coverage of national elections as expected.

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Personalized coverage of election news: An analysis of Turkish-Cypriot newspapers

“When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property” Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)

Remark to Baron von Humboldt (date not known)1

Today, this quote of Jefferson seems to be more valid than it ever was. With the advance of communication technologies, we are always up-to-date with people who assumed our trust; the politicians. From the first sign of their intention to be a part of a governing body of the country, until they are no longer active in politics (in some cases even until the end of their lives) they are followed closely by the media and by the public. What has changed from the time of Jefferson is that this attention is no longer directed solely towards the public life of the

politicians but also towards their private lives. Today, politicians are not perceived as only being political figures but also as individuals who happened to be involved in politics. Their political (public) identities are no longer detached from their identities as individuals; rather in some cases, the individual traits of politicians have become more prominent than their political affiliation and behavior.

The changes in the attention towards politicians have intrigued many scholars from the field of political communication. This phenomenon is referred to as “personalization of politics”. It is possible to encounter the term in relation to voters - the leaders or candidates may become the basis of decision making to vote - ; to political actors - the parties may focus on their leader in their communication or individual politicians act less as members of a party and more as

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Retrieved from: Melton, B. F. (2005). The quotable founding fathers: A treasury of 2,500 wise and witty quotations from the men and women who created America. Washington, DC: Potomac Books.

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individual actors - ; or to the media – coverage may be focused on individual politicians rather than collective political actors (Van Aelst, Sheafer and Stanyer, 2012). The present study is concerned with the third one and therefore will focus on the personalization of media coverage of election news.

Most studies conducted recently have a focus on the degree of personalized coverage of national election news, sometimes with a cross-national approach (Strömback and Van Aelst, 2010; Wilke and Reinemann, 2001; Takens et. al., 2013). However, there are also regional and/or municipal elections in parliamentary systems, which have received little attention from the scholars. Nonetheless, there are various reasons to expect personalized coverage in local elections. Design of the local elections - election of a single candidate to represent a district - , and “geographic proximity” of the candidate to voters in local elections (McAllister, 2013 p. 2) are some of the factors specific to local elections which might result in a more personalized coverage than the coverage of national elections . In addition, as Carey and Shugart (1995) argue, having a distinct reputation than the party is important for politicians’ success in small electoral arenas - like constituencies in local elections -, which is a strong incentive for personalized campaigning that may result in personalized media coverage.

Research on personalized politics seems to focus on mostly individualistic, Western-European countries. This results from the fact that the rise of personalized politics has been theoretically linked to individualization of society (Garzia 2011). This study aims to contribute to the existing literature by studying a non-European and collectivistic country, and by comparing the degree of media personalization in the coverage of national and local elections. The country of focus is an internationally unrecognized, de-facto non-European territory – Turkish Republic

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of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). More specifically, the study aims to address the following research questions:

RQ1: To what extent the press coverage of election news are personalized in a collectivistic society?

RQ2: Is there a difference between the degree of personalized coverage of national election news and of local election news?

In order to answer these questions, a content analysis of election news covering 2013 Early National Elections and 2014 Local Elections, in two most read newspapers is conducted. Results confirmed the presence of personalized coverage in the newspapers. The coverage of national and local elections significantly differed from each other; the coverage of local elections turned out to be more personalized than the coverage of national elections. These results show that personalization of politics can be observed in non-individualistic settings as well; countries that are characterized by collectivistic tendencies in politics and in the media, where the social life isn’t individualized yet. This means that the presence of personalized politics is not

necessarily a part or a consequence of individualization of the society. In addition to

individualization, there might be other factors at work leading to personalization of politics in the individualistic countries as well.

The difference between the coverage of national and local elections suggests that the structure of an election itself can influence media coverage. However the direction of this effect, either towards more personalization or less personalization, is highly dependent on the relative importance of the elections in that particular context and on the possible impact the result may have on the society.

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Theoretical Framework

Personalization of politics.

In her PhD thesis “Popularization and personalization: a historical and cultural analysis of 50 years of Dutch political television journalism”, Van Santen (2012) gives a detailed account of definitions of personalization of politics, based on the studies conducted on this topic. She lists seven definitions: “focus on leaders” (media focus on individual politicians instead of parties), “institutional personalization” (presidentialization – changes in the institutional structure where individual politicians are more prominent), “giving parties a face” (politicians/leaders behaving as the “face of the party”), “individual political competence “(media focus on political skills of individual politicians), “privatization” (media focus on private life of politicians), “personal narrative” (media attention on personal emotions and experiences of individual politicians) and “behavioral personalization” (politicians acting more as individual political actors and less as a member of political party) (p. 41).

These definitions show that, research on personalization of politics clusters around three main categories: personalization of political actors, of voters and of the media. First category refers to the behavior of politicians, presenting themselves as individuals rather than members of a political party or an organization. Second category, in relation to voters, refers to the voting decisions that are made based on individual leaders or candidates rather than on the political actor those individuals represent; and the third category, in relation to media, refers to increased coverage focusing on individual politicians rather than collective political actors (Van Aelst et. al., 2012).

Voters and political actors. From a general perspective, several scholars argue that

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where people increasingly see themselves as individuals, as opposed to representative members of groups (Bauman, 2001; Garzia, 2011; Karvonen, 2007). According to this perspective, personalization is a result of weakening of the social structure of industrial society, which was initially characterized by cleavages between socio-economic and/or cultural groups represented by political parties and ideologies. Therefore the need for a representative political collectivity started to evolve to the need of competent, representative individuals. For electoral systems, this means that voters started to associate themselves with individuals rather than with political parties (Karvonen, 2007; Van Holsteyn and Andeweg, 2010).

In addition, McAllister (2007) argues that it is easier for parties to reach out to voters by using the familiarity and the appeal of the leader or individual politician to disseminate their ideas. Therefore they place the individual politician to the center of their communication

strategy, rather than by publishing documents about the policies of the party, which consequently results in personalized coverage.

The Media. Developments in the media realm have also been regarded as relevant to the

rise of personalization. Increased media competition is often cited as the main one (Enli and Skogerbø, 2013). The argument of “media logic” is based on these developments and their consequences, including increased personalization. Strömbäck (2008) explains media logic as “the dominance in societal processes of the news values and storytelling techniques the media make use of to take advantage of their own medium and its format, and to be competitive in the ongoing struggle to capture people’s attention” (p. 233). Some of these techniques are increased negative coverage, contest/game coverage, simplification and visualization as well as

personalization (Strömbäck, 2008; Takens et. al., 2013). According to Campus (2010), media institutions have to make these choices because of their limited ability to provide substantial

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information about political issues. Accordingly, they cover information which is most likely to attract large segments of audience. These developments – the dominance of media logic, the use of storytelling techniques and increased competition - are usually considered problematic

because of a change in the focus from politically relevant information towards a focus on human-interest side of politics.

This change is sometimes referred to as “tabloidization” since it has been established with empirical research that the coverage of politics in tabloid newspapers tend to be more negative and more personalized than the quality ones (e.g. Vliegenthart, Boomgarden and Boumans, 2011). Tabloidization can be defined as increased focus on human interest and entertainment stories; emphasis on visual elements than the text and decreasing amount of political and international news (McLachlan and Golding, 2000). Thus it is more likely to find news that focus on individuals in tabloid newspapers than in the quality ones.

Influence of cultural orientation on personalization of politics.

As it was mentioned earlier, personalization studies tend to focus on European countries (mostly Western European countries). One common characteristic of these countries is that they are all characterized as individualistic cultures. This has to with the argument that

personalization of politics can be seen as a consequence of individualization of social life in general (Bauman, 2001) as mentioned above. Karvonen (2007) argues that economic and technological developments transformed the industrial society from a structure characterized by several groups with different economic and political interests; to a structure in which the lines between these groups are blurred and political parties became to represent interests that were no longer shared by the people. Hence the citizens turned to individual politicians rather than parties as representatives of their interests.

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It is likely that in societies that are characterized as collectivistic, the degree of personalization of politics will differ from that of the individualistic ones. As it is elaborated below, in collectivistic cultures, people tend to see themselves as part of a larger group with shared values and goals, unlike individualistic cultures. In other words, when studying

personalization of politics, it is important to consider where the country of focus is placed on the cultural spectrum.

Individualistic cultures tend to emphasize the importance of interests and goals of the individual and of their immediate environment over those of the group; whereas in collectivist societies, this order of importance is reversed (Tak, Kaid and Khang, 2007). On the other hand, in collectivistic cultures, the emphasis is on belonging to a certain group, a collective entity which represents one’s goals and interests “in exchange for loyalty” (Kim, 2005 p.26). Middle Eastern, East Asian and Arabian societies are some of the examples of collectivistic societies (Darwish and Huber, 2003).

The purpose of this study is to determine whether and to what extent personalized coverage can be observed in a society which did not experience individualization as much as European societies and is still characterized by collectivistic tendencies in politics and in the media. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to examine the reasons of personalized coverage in a collectivistic context, based on the literature it can be argued that a highly probable reason is that the political actors choose to “go personal” (Bjerling, 2011).

Personalized coverage.

Just like personalization of politics, personalized coverage has also been studied from various perspectives and is often referred to as media personalization. Rahat and Sheafer (2007) define media personalization as “… a change in the presentation of politics in the media, as

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expressed in heightened focus on individual politicians and a diminished focus on parties, organizations and institutions.” (p. 67). Although there is not much disagreement about what media personalization is and what it entails, different labels are pronounced regarding the aspects of it. Rahat and Sheafer (2007) differentiate between media personalization (defined above) and media privatization. The latter is used to describe the media focus on politician’s personal life and characteristics. Bjerling (2011) discusses the same two aspects under different names: orientation towards persona and intimization. The former refers to the media focus on personal political traits of politicians (e.g. reliability, competence) and the latter refers to media focus on private attributes of politicians.

In their literature review of personalization of political communication, Van Aelst et. al. (2012), combine different labels and definitions under two categories: individualization and privatization. The authors define individualization as “a focus on individual politicians as central actors in the political arena, including their ideas, capacities and policies” (p. 204); and

privatization as “a shift in media focus from the politician as occupier of a public role to the politician as a private individual, as a person distinct from their public role” (p. 205). In short, individualization suggests that the content is still political, whereas privatization suggests that the content is not about the public/political identity of the politicians but about their private lives. Present study will make use of these two dimensions - privatization and individualization - of personalized coverage.

Previous research.

There are two dominant features of academic literature on personalized coverage of election news; a focus on individualistic (mostly Western European) countries, and a focus on

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national elections. Although one might expect high personalized coverage in individualistic countries, research in this field has produced mixed results.

Vliegenthart et. al. (2011), in their study of British and Dutch newspapers, have found that the level of personalized coverage was significantly higher in UK newspapers than it was in Dutch newspapers in the overall coverage. As to the differences between the tabloid and quality newspapers, the results of the study confirmed the argument that the coverage in tabloid

newspapers are more personalized than the quality newspapers once more. The scholars also found that there is no trend of personalization in the national election coverage, and variations during the period under examination (UK – 1991-2007, Netherlands – 1990-2007) are most likely the results of specific events or actors.

Nevertheless, Takens et. al. (2013) conducted a similar study on campaign coverage of national elections in Dutch newspapers and television from 1998 to 2010, and found that there is, in fact, a decrease in personalized coverage over time. In their study, no significant difference was found between the degree of personalized coverage in the tabloid and in the quality newspapers.

Yet another research by Kriesi (2012), examining national election coverage in 6 European countries (Britain, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, France and Germany) from 1970s to 2000s, has shown that, the institutional characteristics of the countries were highly influential on the degree of personalized coverage: the highest degree of personalized coverage was found in the coverage of the presidential elections of France. Netherlands and Switzerland, as parliamentary democracies had the lowest degree of personalized coverage among the six countries. According to the results of the research, the media coverage of politics in UK was less personalized than it was in Germany and Austria, which is in contrast with most previous studies

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(Kriesi, 2012). The results also confirmed that the coverage in the tabloid newspapers was more personalized than the coverage in the quality newspapers.

Different forms of media personalization have also been studied in Western-European countries. Jebril, Albæk and Vreese (2013), in their study on Denmark, Spain and Britain, found that individualization elements (which they name as personalization elements in the study) were more dominant in all news outlets than privatization elements.

Another comparative study of UK and Germany was conducted by Holtz-Bacha, Langer and Merkle (2014). The authors compared the personalized national election coverage between the two countries. They found that, while the level of individualization was similar in both countries, privatization was more prominent in UK than it was in Germany which the authors argue was a result of tabloidization and competitiveness in UK (Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014).

In Israel - which can be classified as a collectivistic society (see above) - empirical evidence point towards a trend of personalized coverage of national elections (e.g. Rahat and Sheafer, 2007). Rahat and Sheafer (2007) argue that these mixed evidences from different countries (and sometimes in the same country from different time periods if there was an institutional change in how the elections were conducted), could be the result of institutional characteristics of the election systems.

Although media personalization studies conducted in collectivistic countries is not easy to come by with the exception of Israel, there are studies pointing towards personalization in the behavior of political actors (political personalization) which is likely to result in media

personalization. Greece and Turkey are two of these countries where political personalization is observed.

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Sixteen years ago, Papathanassopoulos (1999), discussed the effects of media

commercialization in Greece, which is also a collectivistic Mediterranean country. He argued that with the increased dominance of television in people’s daily lives as the major news source from the 1990s, political parties started to use personalized election campaigns in order to disseminate their ideas (Papathanassopoulos, 1999). Although there is no recent research easily accessible on whether these campaigns are translated to personalized coverage in Greece, the article by Papathanassopoulos (1999) suggests that the transformations in the media sphere can be highly influential on the form of political communication, which may bypass the influence of the cultural orientation of the society.

Increase in personalized campaigning and coverage can also be observed in Turkey, although the reasons differ from those of Greece. Değirmenci (2011) describes Turkish society as mostly conservative and sensitive to emotions. She argues that religious and cultural values are extremely important in decision making of voters, which is a characteristic of collectivistic societies. Değirmenci (2011) discusses Erdoğan’s campaigns by comparing it to those of Berlusconi and she argues that both leaders emphasized the dominant cultural values in the society in their campaigns to develop their image. This style of campaigning naturally translated itself to personalized coverage around these leaders. The research of Değirmenci (2011),

suggests that collectivistic orientation of a society could actually be an effective tool for personalized campaigning providing another reason to expect personalized coverage in collectivistic societies as well.

As mentioned earlier, the second dominant feature of previous research is its focus on the coverage of national elections. However, national elections are not the only elections that take place in a parliamentary system. There are also local elections that didn’t receive much attention

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from the academic field (Wilke and Leidecker, 2013; McAllister 2013). Nevertheless the difference in the structure of these elections (national and local) may result in different levels of personalized coverage or in a change of focus from parties or party leaders to certain candidates.

To begin with, there is no reason to think that factors leading to personalization of national elections don’t affect local elections. For example if decline in partisanship (McAllister, 2007) or a change in the structure of political parties is contributing to personalization of national elections; they most likely have an influence on local elections as well.

As Carey and Shugart (1995) have argued a long time ago, factors specific to an election (available seats, number of candidates, distribution of votes etc), is highly influential on the politician’s decision to run a personalized or a party-oriented campaign. In local elections, there is only one candidate from a party who is competing to represent voters in his/her district. Therefore it is important for the parties to have a candidate who is perceived as belonging to that particular district and who is familiar to the voters. Having a unique, distinctive political standing strengthens the chances of success in these types of elections conducted in small electoral arenas (Carey and Shugart, 1995).

In addition, the structure of an election in terms of voting choices (stamps, preferential votes or both) might have an influence on the decision making process of voters. Wilke and Leidecker (2013) argue that the differences between the levels of personalized coverage of national and local elections may lead to “different perceptions of the campaigns by the public” (p.122).

Based on this theoretical framework, it is expected that media personalization will be observed in general coverage of politics in the newspapers. In addition, considering the

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“tabloidization” argument (McLachlan and Golding, 2000; Vliegenhart et al., 2011) a difference between the coverage in tabloid newspaper and in quality newspaper is expected:

H1: Individual politicians will be more prominent than political parties in the coverage of politics.

H2: Coverage of politics will be more personalized in tabloid newspaper than in quality newspaper.

As it was discussed above, there are two forms of personalized coverage often studied in individualistic countries: individualization and privatization. These dimensions of personalized coverage are also taken into account in this study, to find out possible differences from previous studies conducted in individualistic settings. Keeping in mind that collectivistic cultures tend to focus on group values and interests, it is expected that the topics in the coverage of individual politicians may reflect dominant political values and interests in the society. To put it another way, it is hypothesized that the newspapers will focus more on political traits and identities of the politicians, and less on their private traits and lives in the coverage:

H3: Individualization will be more prominent than privatization in the coverage of elections.

The second research question of the study examines whether there is a difference

between the coverage of national and local elections in terms of personalized coverage. As it was discussed in the theoretical framework above, media personalization studies tend to focus on national election coverage. This may have to do with the fact that national elections have always been considered more important than local elections, since they determine the governance of the whole country. In a sense these elections determine the “face” of the country: the prime minister. Therefore, one can argue that national elections will be more personalized than local elections.

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However, in collectivistic societies, there are other factors to consider when examining personalized coverage of elections.

As it was discussed above, political parties have an important place in the social structure of collectivistic societies. Ties between different groups (political and/or economic) in the society and political parties representing the interests of these groups are mostly strong,

especially compared to individualistic societies. Thus, national elections where political parties compete are often more about group values and interests than about politicians themselves. However in local elections, the main competing actors are municipal candidates of political parties. So, parties still play an important role but the elections determine an individual governor for a district. In addition, as it was discussed earlier, familiarity of the candidate to the electorate is especially important in small electoral arenas. Therefore it is expected that individuals will occupy a larger place than political parties in the coverage of local elections than they do in national elections:

H4: Coverage of local elections will be more personalized than the coverage of national elections.

Method The Case

The study requires to be tested in a country where media and politics are still

characterized by collectivistic tendencies; which is a parliamentary democracy with national and local elections; and which has high readership of at least one tabloid and one quality newspaper. Northern Cyprus (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) is one of the countries that meet all of these requirements.

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Politicial actors. Northern Cyprus is a Mediterranean society characterized by a

collectivistic culture just like its neighbors discussed earlier. Political parties have always been and still are very important in Northern Cyprus society. Political scene is heavily shaped by the developments in the Cyprus Problem. As the peace and unification negotiations continue between two communities (Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots), it is logical for the people living in both sides of the island to feel the need to be represented collectively; as a community. This shows itself in the news media as well. Political actors are always at the center of the stage, with the dominant topic of the Cyprus Problem; parties and the leaders always have access to the news media when there is any kind of development on the issue; and their comments and views instantly become news items (Christophorou, 2010).

As a parliamentary system, Northern Cyprus also has national and local elections. The fact that in the last two years, one national and one local election took place enables easy access to news articles. Most recent national elections took place on 28 July 2013, and most recent local elections took place on 29 June 2014.

Media. Şahin (2014) describes the news media in Northern Cyprus as having “a tradition

of advocacy reporting, often dependent on state, political parties or wealthy patrons” (p.449). Owners of media institutions (both state-owned and private) are highly influential in the process of news production and the media output is mostly in accordance with the political and

economical interests of the owners (Şahin, 2014). This means that media system in Northern Cyprus is still characterized by collectivistic tendencies, which might limit media

personalization. In addition, the ties between the news media and the political parties suggests that the news media in Northern Cyprus is characterized with a party (political) logic as opposed to media logic, which was described above as an explanation for the increase in media

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personalization. This might also limit personalized coverage, unless the political parties do not employ personalized campaign strategies which will translate to personalized coverage. Elections

National Elections. National elections in Northern Cyprus take place every five years. The party with the highest number of seats in the parliament earns the right to form the

government, and the leader of that party becomes the prime minister. In national elections, voters can vote in three ways: They can cast a vote just for a party (a seal); they can cast a vote for a party and use preferential votes for some (depending on the population of the city the voter lives in) of the party’s candidates; or they can cast a mixed vote from the list of all candidates in the election without voting for a certain party. Among all forms of voting, preferential voting is the most important predictor for personalization studies (Karvonen, 2007). It creates the possibility for voters to individually evaluate politicians; and it provides an incentive for politicians to run personalized campaigns.

Local Elections. Local (municipal) elections take place every four years, to determine the local governments composed of the mayor and the council. Although one might say that local elections are naturally personalized because people directly vote for the mayor, the fact that they also vote for the council requires high efforts from the parties in the campaigning period.

Moreover the mayor candidates are usually declared as the candidate of a certain party because the chances of winning the election without the support of a party are slim. Nevertheless, for the reasons discussed earlier, the fact that Northern Cyprus is a small country makes it necessary for a mayor candidate to be familiar to voters. This creates an incentive for politicians to run a personalized campaign, and for parties to launch a campaign centered on the mayor candidate that will result in personalized coverage.

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Sampling

According to the results of a survey conducted by KADEM (a market research company in TRNC) in March 2014, the most read newspaper in Northern Cyprus is Kıbrıs (a tabloid newspaper) and the second most read newspaper is Yenidüzen (a quality newspaper). The numbers prove the dominance of Kıbrıs: 83.8% of the respondents reported reading Kıbrıs everyday while the respondents who reported reading Yenidüzen on a daily basis formed only 23.4% of the sample2. These numbers indicate that most of the population read more than one newspapers everyday and most of the time one of these newspapers is Kıbrıs. Taking these percentages into account, Kıbrıs and Yenidüzen were selected for the content analysis.

Campaign periods of both elections are selected as the time frame for the study. The campaign period for national elections was; 2 - 27 July 2013 and for local elections; 3 - 28 June 2014. The actual elections took place on 28 July 2013 and 29 June 2014. Both newspapers had a special section for election news containing all news articles published during the campaign period per election. The sample consists of 300 articles; 150 for each campaign period divided equally between the two newspapers (75 from each newspaper). In both newspapers, there was no difference between the weekends and the weekdays in terms of publishing election news so the sample includes articles from all days of the week as well.

The codebook

The codebook consists of 91 items in total. Some of the items were coded only for the news related to national elections and some were coded only for the news related to local elections. In addition to items measuring personalization directly, in the form of the amount of references to individual politicians and the amount of references to political parties; the

2

Retrieved from: http://www.yeniduzen.com/FotoGaleri/Galeri/kadem-medya-anket/231 accessed on 17/10/2014 at 16:07.

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codebook also includes items designed to measure the concepts of individualization and privatization in the news articles.

Personalization in general, is operationalized as the difference between the amount of references to individual politicians and the amount of references to political parties. Both variables included one outlier each, which were excluded from the analyses after establishing that they influence the mean of both variables considerably. Both variables were (re)coded into same measurement scale, to have values between 1 and 5.

Individualization is measured with 10 items designed to code different aspects of the concept mentioned in the news articles. If mentioned, the tone of the article based on those aspects with regard to the individual politicians is also coded as “positive, negative or neutral”. These items are: competence, professional/political records, leadership, credibility, morality, communication skills, campaigning skills, strength, charisma and age. A scale variable was created for individualization using these 10 items and (re)coded to have values between 1 and 5.

The concept of privatization and the tone of the article (positive, negative or neutral) with regard to the aspects of the concept are measured using 8 items: family life, upbringing, socio-economic background, leisure time/life style, love life, personal appearance, religious beliefs and likability. A scale variable was created for privatization using these 8 items and (re)coded to have values between 1 and 5.

The items of both privatization and individualization were coded only when the article was about individual politician(s). In addition, for both the items of privatization and of individualization, the name of the individual politician that the specific characteristic refers to was coded. For a complete copy of the codebook, see the appendix.

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Reliability. Although all 300 articles in the sample were coded by single coder, inter-coder reliability was calculated in order to assess the reliability of the items in the codebook. 37 articles (approx. 10%) were selected randomly from the sample, and coded by two coders independently. Reliability of the items was measured using Krippendorff’s Alpha, and ranged between .77 and 1.00 (see the appendix for a complete list of reliability scores per variable).

Results

The main research question of the study is concerned with the degree of personalized coverage in Turkish-Cypriot newspapers. First three hypotheses are related to characteristics of the general personalized coverage. The second research question is concerned with the possible difference between the degree of personalized coverage of national elections and of local elections: the fourth hypothesis is related to the expected difference between the two. In this section, findings of each hypothesis will be outlined separately in detail.

Overall personalized coverage

The first hypothesis of the study was suggesting that the individuals will be more prominent than political parties in the general coverage. As it was outlined above, two scale variables were constructed for the amount of references to individual politicians (N= 298,

M=1.58, SD=.82) and for the amount of references to political parties (N= 298, M= 1.40, SD=

.88). Judging only from the mean values it is obvious that the amount of references to individual politicians is higher than the amount of the references to parties overall. To see whether the difference between these two means is statistically significant, a paired-samples t-test was conducted.

Results revealed that individual politicians were indeed more prominent than political parties in the general coverage. The difference between the two, .17, was statistically significant,

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t (297) =3.03, SE= .05, p (one-tailed) = .001, 95% CI [.06, .28]. Therefore the results provide

support for the first hypothesis and an answer for the first research question: personalized coverage can be observed in a collectivistic setting. Although there is only a slight difference between the amount of references to individual politicians and the amount of references to political parties, it does constitute a statistically significant difference.

Differences between newspapers and elections

The second hypothesis states an expectation of a possible difference between the election coverage of tabloid and quality newspapers; whereas the fourth hypothesis, which is related to the second research question of the study, states an expectation of a possible difference between the coverage of national and local elections. Both hypotheses were tested simultaneously using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Results are shown below.

Table 1 Personalized coverage

N M SD

Newspapers

Kıbrıs 148 .11 1.17

Yenidüzen 150 .22 .72

Elections

2013 Early National Elections 149 -.10 .93

2014 Local Elections 149 .44 .93

Table 2 Results of a two-factor analysis of variance

Sum of Squares df Mean

Square F p

Newspaper type

.93 1 .93 1.06 .30

Election type

23.14 1 23.14 26.37 <.001 Newspaper type*Election type

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Error

258.03 294 .878

Total

291.00 298

N=298

As it can be seen on the Table 1, the mean value of the tabloid newspaper Kıbrıs was in fact less than the mean value of the quality newspaper YeniDüzen meaning that the coverage of elections in YeniDüzen was more personalized than Kıbrıs. The hypothesis tested here was predicting that the coverage in Kıbrıs would be more personalized than the coverage in

YeniDüzen in accordance with the tabloidization argument. Therefore these mean values are in stark contrast with the tested hypothesis. Nevertheless, the difference between the two

newspapers was not significant.

Concerning the difference between the coverage of national and local elections, it is clear from the absolute mean values that the coverage of local elections are more personalized than the coverage of national elections. As expected the results of the MANOVA revealed that the

coverage of national and local elections was significantly different from each other as hypothesized: the coverage of local elections was more personalized than the coverage of national elections.

It should be noted that the assumption of equal variances in the population has been violated, Levene's F (3, 294) = 8.11, p (one-tailed) < .001.

Based on these results, the fourth hypothesis suggesting that the coverage of local elections would be more personalized than the coverage of national elections was supported. However no support could be found for the second hypothesis stating that the election coverage in the tabloid newspaper would be more personalized than the election coverage in the quality newspaper.

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Individualization vs. privatization

The third hypothesis, regarding the general coverage, suggests that individualization will be a more prominent feature of personalized coverage, compared to privatization. In order to test the hypothesis, a paired-samples t-test was conducted with privatization (N=166, M=1.01,

SD=.10) and individualization (N=166, M=1.53, SD=.60).

Results showed that on average, individualization items were more dominant than privatization items in the election coverage. This difference, .52, turned out to be statistically significant, t (165) =11.06, SE=.04, p (one-tailed) = <.001, 95% CI [.43, .61]. Based on the results of the analysis, the first hypothesis suggesting that individualization will be a more prominent feature of personalized coverage than privatization was supported.

This means that the private lives and traits of individual politicians do not occupy a large space in the personalized coverage. Rather, the content of the personalized coverage is still political. As it will be elaborated below, this implies the possibility that the coverage of individual politicians reflect the dominant group values in the society.

Discussion and Conclusions

The core aim of this research was to find out to what extent personalized coverage of elections can be observed in a collectivistic society like Northern Cyprus. It was hypothesized that if personalization could be found in election coverage, it would be characterized more as individualization than as privatization, and the election coverage in tabloid newspaper would be more personalized than the coverage in the quality newspaper.

In addition, the study was concerned about examining the possible differences between the personalized coverage of national and local elections: It was hypothesized that the coverage of local elections would be more personalized than the coverage of national elections.

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Findings showed that personalized coverage can be observed in Turkish-Cypriot

newspapers. This means that individual politicians got more coverage than political parties in the overall coverage. Findings also showed that in this personalized coverage, items of

individualization (competence, professional/political records, leadership, credibility, morality,

communication skills, campaigning skills, political strength, charisma and age of the politician)

were covered more frequently than the items of privatization ( family life, upbringing,

socio-economic background, leisure time/lifestyle, love life, personal appearance, religious beliefs and likability of the politician), which supports the third hypothesis of the study.

A distinctive feature of the election coverage in Northern Cyprus newspapers was that most of the time the items of individualization applied not to individual politicians but to the party candidates as a whole, which could not be coded since the codebook was designed to code the characteristics that apply to politicians, not the parties. This might suggest a clash between parties’ campaigns and values of the journalists. It might be that when a party focuses on

individual politicians during the campaign, journalists prefer to put all of that party’s candidates on the focus to create a middle ground.

More importantly it is in accordance with the collectivistic orientation of the society: The competences of individual politicians of a party are not separated from the competence of the party as a whole. For example, applying the characteristic of political strength to all politicians of a party in the coverage implies that the party has political strength. In other words, the

personalized coverage doesn’t separate the political identity of the politician from that of the party as in the personalized coverage in individualistic countries studied before. Therefore in reality, individualization features are even more prominent in the coverage than the results of this study suggests, although they don’t refer to separate individual politicians. This might give an

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indication of the characteristics of personalized coverage that exists in collectivistic countries: private lives of politicians do not constitute a large portion of personalized political coverage. Personalized coverage is still in accordance with the dominant political group values and interests in the society. Thus, the gap between the media focus on political identities of politicians and the media focus on private identities of politicians might be larger than it is in individualistic countries.

When the difference between the election coverage of quality and the tabloid newspaper is considered, the findings showed that there was no significant difference between the election coverage of the newspapers in terms of personalized coverage. Therefore the results did not support the second hypothesis suggesting that the election coverage of tabloid newspaper would be more personalized than the quality one. On the contrary, although the difference wasn’t big enough to be significant; there were more references to individual politicians in the quality newspaper than in the tabloid newspaper.

These results are surprising considering that several studies in different contexts found support for the link between tabloidization and personalized coverage as discussed earlier (see Vliegenhart et. al, 2011; Kriesi, 2012; Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014). Nevertheless the findings of the study as to the differences between the newspapers are in line with the study of Takens et. al (2013) on personalized coverage in Dutch newspapers.

Regarding the difference between the coverage of national and local elections, the study showed that the coverage of local elections was more personalized than the coverage of national elections as hypothesized. In fact, no indication of personalization could be observed during the coverage of national elections. Therefore the dominance of individual politicians in general

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coverage is possibly the result of the prominence of municipal candidates in the coverage of local elections. This difference can be linked to various reasons.

One of these reasons could be the difference between the structures of two elections. As it was discussed earlier, parties play a great role in both elections. However their role is greater in national elections: the party itself is the candidate for the governance of the country. On the other hand, in local elections, political parties only “support” a candidate for municipal government. Although there are also candidates for the municipal council in the election, the main attention is on the municipal candidate. Also, the fact that Northern Cyprus has a very small community with a population of 256,644 (2011)3, requires familiarity with the candidates of municipal

government in their own neighborhood. Therefore the candidates need to present a distinctive standing and image from that of the party in order to gain wide support in the election (Carey and Shugart, 1995). This increases the parties’ focus on their candidates which translates to

personalized coverage.

The second reason could be the continued existence of the Cyprus Problem. National elections determine the government and the parliament, so they consequently determine the strategy to be followed during the negotiations for the solution of the Problem. To put it simply, the representation of the interests of the Turkish-Cypriot community in the peace process is determined by the result of the national elections (although the leader of the community and the main negotiator is the President as a rule, no progress can be made without the support of the government and the parliament). Local elections on the other hand, don’t have this kind of a potential impact on the political, economic and social life of the people, no matter what the result of the elections is.

3

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Since the political parties competing in the national elections are the representatives of the interests and values of different groups in the society, as a society with collectivistic tendencies, national elections is the time for voters to show their loyalty. Therefore it is also logical for political parties to focus on group (party) values instead of certain individual politicians. Although the existence of preferential voting could be a strong incentive for personalization, it appears that collectivism bypasses that effect.

It is hard to know whether this difference between the personalized coverage of national and local elections exists in other contexts in the same way, since local elections are not studied extensively in the literature. Nevertheless there are few studies conducted on the differences between personalized campaigning in local and in national elections which are closely related to the personalized coverage. The study of McAllister (2013) is one of these studies focusing on personalized campaigning in Australian national and local elections. The findings of the study revealed that activities of politicians were less important than the activities of political parties during local elections. Whereas in the present study, findings suggest that individual politicians had more activities than political parties, bringing them more coverage.

In this study, although personalized coverage was found in the coverage, the reasons of focusing on individual politicians are completely different than the reasons of personalized coverage found in individualistic countries. The influential factor leading to media

personalization in this context was not the individualization of the society or the existence of dominant media logic. The results suggests that the most influential factors were the

characteristics of the elections themselves and probably, to some extent, the behavior of the political actors.

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In the context of Northern Cyprus, personalized coverage still focuses on the individual politicians’ political competence rather than their private lives. In a sense, the coverage of individual politicians still represents one or more (depending on the political background of the politician) of dominant group values in the society. It is likely that in other similar cases, if there is media personalization, it is also centered on political competence of politicians instead of their private lives and traits. As this study is based on a single case, it is not possible to make general arguments about the relationship between collectivistic cultural orientation and personalized coverage. However it does constitute a step forward in this neglected topic.

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Appendix I - Codebook

Q1 Which newspaper is the news article from?  YeniDüzen (1)

 Kıbrıs (2)

Q2 What is the title of the news article? Q3 What is the date of the news article? Q4 Which elections is the article about?  2013 Early National Elections (1)  2014 Local Elections (2)

Q5 Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

 Yes (1)  No (2)

Answer If Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES) <o:p></o:p> Yes Is Selected

Q6 Specify the amount of references to CTP-BG (or CTP) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Q7 Specify the amount of references to UBP (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES) <o:p></o:p> Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

Q8 Specify the amount of references to TDP (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES) <o:p></o:p> Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected

Q9 Specify the amount of references to TDP-BKP-BARAKA (or “İttifak”) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

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Q10 Specify the amount of references to DP-UG (or DP) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES) <o:p></o:p> Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

Q11 Specify the amount of references to BKP-TVG (or BKP) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND... (All Loops) Yes Is Selected

Q12 Are there other parties mentioned in the article?  Yes (1) ____________________

 No (2)

Answer If Does the article include references to one or more political parties? (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND... (All Loops) Yes Is Selected And Are there other parties mentioned in the article? (All Loops) Yes Is Not Empty Or Are there other parties mentioned in the article? (All Loops) Yes Is Empty Or Are there other parties mentioned in the article? Yes Is Selected Q13 Specify the amount of mentions to other parties:

Q14 Does the article mention the leader of a party?  Yes (1)

 No (2)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? Yes Is Selected

Q15 Specify the amount of references to the leader of CTP-BG (or CTP) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? Yes Is Selected

Q16 Specify the amount of references to the leader of UBP (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

Q17 Specify the amount of references to the leader of TDP (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected

Q18 Specify the amount of references to the leader of TDP-BKP-BARAKA (or “İttifak”) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

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Q19 Specify the amount of references to the leader of DP-UG (or DP) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

Q20 Specify the amount of references to the leader of BKP-TVG (or BKP) (COUNT BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT REFERENCES)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? (All Loops) Yes Is Selected Q21 Does the article mention the leaders of other parties? (IF YES IS SELECTED, SPECIFY IN THE FORM OF: PARTY NAME - LEADER)

 Yes (1) ____________________  No (2)

Answer If Does the article mention the leader of a party? (All Loops) Yes Is Selected And Does the article mention the leaders of other parties? (IF YES IS SELECTED, SPECIFY IN THE FORM O... Yes Is Selected

Q22 Specify the amount of references to the leaders of other parties:

Q23 Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article?  Yes (1)

 No (2)

Answer If Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article? (All Loops) Yes Is Selected

Q24 Does the article mention any non-aligned politicians? (IF YES IS SELECTED, SPECIFY)

 Yes (1) ____________________  No (2)

Answer If Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article? Yes Is Selected

Q25 Specify the amount of references to politicians (other than the leader) of CTP

Q26 Specify the amount of references to politicians (other than the leader) of UBP

Answer If Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

Q27 Specify the amount of references to politicians (other than the leader) of TDP

Answer If Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected

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Q28 Specify the amount of references to politicians (other than the leader) of TDP-BKP-BARAKA (or “İttifak”)

Q29 Specify the amount of references to politicians (other than the leader) of DP-UG (or DP)

Answer If Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

Q30 Specify the amount of references to politicians (other than the leader) of BKP-TVG (or BKP)

Answer If Are there other politicians except the leaders of parties mentioned within the article? (All Loops) Yes Is Selected

Q31 Does the article mention any politician(s) (other than the leader) of other parties?  Yes (1)

 No (2)

Answer If Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected

Q32 Does the article mention the mayor candidate of a party?  Yes (1)

 No (2)

Answer If Which elections is the article about? (All Loops) 2014 Local Elections Is Selected Q33 Does the article mention non-aligned mayor candidates? (IF YES IS SELECTED, SPECIFY IN THE BOX)

 Yes (1) ____________________  No (2)

Answer If Does the article mention the mayor candidate of a party? Yes Is Selected And Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected

Q34 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of CTP-BG (or CTP)

Q35 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of CTP-BG (or CTP) along with the party name

Q36 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of UBP

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Q37 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of UBP along with the party name

Q38 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of TDP-BKP-BARAKA (or “İttifak”)

Q39 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of TDP-BKP-BARAKA (or “İttifak) along with the party name

Q40 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of DP-UG (or DP)

Q41 Specify the amount of references to the mayor candidate of DP-UG (or DP) along with the party name

Q42 Which of the following is the main topic of the article? (WHAT THE ARTICLE IS REALLY ABOUT. DO NOT TAKE SIDE ARGUMENTS OR SUPPORTIVE

INFORMATION INTO ACCOUNT)

 Information about the election (about the conduct/characteristics of the elections) (1)  Political Party (2)

 Individual Politician(s) (3)

If Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected  Municipal Candidate(s) (4)

 Other, namely: (5) ____________________

Q43 Specify the length of the article (WORD COUNT):

Q44 Does the article contain direct quotes from the politician(s)?  Yes (1)

 No (2)

Answer If Does the article contain direct quotes from the politician(s)? Yes Is Selected Q45 Specify the amount of direct quotes from the politician(s):

Answer If Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2013 Early National Elections Is Selected

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Q46 Indicate which of the following is presented visually in the news article: (PICTURES, PHOTOGRAPHS ETC. THAT ARE PRESENTED ALONGSIDE THE ARTICLE)  Some or all of Party Members/Candidates (e.g. AS A TEAM) (1)

 Party Logo(s) (2)  Party Leader(s) (3)

 Individual Politician (OTHER THAN THE LEADER(S)) (4)  Other, namely: (5) ____________________

Answer If Which elections is the article about? <o:p></o:p> 2014 Local Elections Is Selected

Q47 Indicate which of the following is presented visually in the news article. (Pictures, photographs etc. that are presented alongside the article)

 Mayor Candidate with Council Candidates (e.g. AS A TEAM) (1)  Mayor Candidate(s) (ALONE) (2)

 Party Logo(s) (3)  Party Leader(s) (4)

 Other, namely: (5) ____________________

Answer If Which of the following is the main topic of the article? (WHAT THE ARTICLE IS REALLY ABOUT. DO N... (All Loops) Individual Politician(s) Is Selected Or Which of the following is the main topic of the article? (WHAT THE ARTICLE IS REALLY ABOUT. DO N... (All Loops) Municipal Candidate(s) Is Selected

Q48 Throughout the article, how dominant is the political context? (ALL STATEMENTS AND ACTIONS MADE IN THE POLITICAL ARENA e.g. IN PARLIAMENT, DURING CAMPAIGN ETC OR EXPLICITLY RELATED TO THE PUBLIC ROLE OF THE POLITICIAN)

 Not present (1)

 Only mentioned in passing (2)  Present but not dominant (3)  Dominantly present (4)

Q49 Throughout the article, how dominant is the personal context? (ALL STATEMENTS AND ACTIONS MADE OUTSIDE THE POLITICAL ARENA e.g. ON VACATION, FAMILY GATHERING OR EXPERIENCES BEFORE GOING INTO POLITICS)  Not present (1)

 Only mentioned in passing (2)  Present but not dominant (3)  Dominantly present (4)