How Politicians put the ‘Persona’
in Personalization
An Analysis of Discourse used by Politicians in Dutch Late-night Talk Shows
Bas Wijnsouw
10733124
Master’s thesis
Universiteit van Amsterdam
‘Graduate School of Communication’ Political Communication
Supervisor: Dr Lukas Otto
Abstract
The focus of the academic discussion on personalization has revolved mainly around election
times. To examine if elections are a critical condition for personalization to occur this thesis
will compare the discourse politicians use in talk shows during and outside election times. To
measure the personalization of discourse the methodology of Holtz-Bacha and Van Zoonen
(2000) will be used. They define personalization of discourse in two dimensions. The first is
language, what politicians say. This language can be either more public and abstract, or more
private and personal. The second dimension is the position from which a politician speaks,
which role he uses. This can be political, personal, or a mixture of both. This mixed position
allows the politician to use personalized aspects to proclaim his political message. An
analysis of Dutch late-night talk shows showed that politicians use the mixed position as
often outside election times as during campaigns. The study also showed that politicians use
more public language to show that they belong to a group or can act as a representative. Jesse
Klaver as a parliament member does this more than Mark Rutte as a Prime-minister. These
results signal that the discourse of politicians is personalized all the time, not only during
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 2
Introduction ... 4
Theoretical Framework ... 7
Personalization ... 7
Personalization and Talk shows ... 10
Elections ... 11
Different politicians, different persona’s ... 14
The case and the sample ... 16
Methodology ... 18
Coding instructions ... 18
Public and private language ... 19
Political, personal, and mixed positions ... 20
Results ... 23
Conclusion ... 27
References ... 31
Appendices ... 35
Appendix A; Sample Frame... 35
Appendix B; Codebook... 36
How Politicians put the ‘Persona’ in Personalization
An Analysis of Discourse used by Politicians in Dutch Late-night Talk Shows
Political communication is becoming a bigger part of the job of politicians
(Holtz-Bacha, 2003). The academic community has studied this phenomenon to an increasing degree
(Adam & Maier, 2010). Since the rise of technology politicians have more opportunities to
communicate with their electorate. Radio and television made it possible to get their message
across to a large population (Blumler, 2001). This increase in communication has evoked
changes in political strategies and media behaviour.
Two processes connected to these changes are ‘personalization’ and ‘mediatisation’
(Strömbäck, 2008; Van Zoonen & Holtz-Bacha, 2000). These processes are the effect of the
technological development of the media. Mediatisation can be described in four phases
(Strömbäck, 2008). These phases describe how media became a more important source of
information, especially for political communication. This will result in anticipation of
politicians to act more towards the standards of media, and less according to the standards of
politics, this is also called personalization.
In the academic literature ‘personalization’ is studied in many different ways. It has
even been described as a, if not the most, central concept of political communication in the
last decades. It is agreed upon that personalization has become more apparent over the last
decades, not increased per se (Adam & Maier, 2010).
The concept of personalization does not have a clear definition (Adam & Maier,
2010). The most general idea is that the focus in politics shifts towards individuals, instead of
parties and policy issues. This means that individual politicians and candidates are seen as
central actors. In other words, politics nowadays is about people instead of topics, and
the political debate and the way politicians are addressed by the media (Schulz, Zeh, &
Quiring, 2005; Swanson & Mancini, 1996). The latter has a large effect on the former. The
media is seen as one of the most important causes of personalization. They do not solely
influence the way media addresses the politicians, but they also influence the manner
politicians perceive the media and behave around them. This increasing power of the media is
described as mediatisation, a concept which is intertwined with personalization (Blumler,
2001; Strömbäck, 2008).
Personalization is a complex concept. Studies show that this concept presents itself in
different ways, and many factors influence personalization. It has been studied in different
ways, and with different types of measurement. This thesis will follow the method of a
previous study which investigated how the politicians acted in a personalized media
environment, the talk show (Van Zoonen & Holtz-Bacha, 2000). This study used a
comparative approach between two cases, Germany and the Netherlands, in election time.
Holz-Bacha and Van Zoonen (2000) describe personalization as a multi-dimensional concept.
In which they do not limit their definition to the increased focus on politicians instead of
political parties, but also look at what is being said. They measured this in the discourse of
politicians in the media. They state that personalised discourse appears in two dimensions.
First, the position from which a politician speaks, this can be either personal, political, or a
mix of both. This mix is called the ‘political persona’ of the politician, which they use as a façade where they use both personal and political aspects of themselves to be more accessible
and more appealing to public and media. The second dimension is the language a politician
uses, this can be more public, with the use of more abstract terminology, or private, with
more personal names and details.
This thesis will look at the difference in personalization of politicians in different
use the methodology of Van Zoonen and Holtz-Bacha (2000) and try to replicate their study
in the case of Dutch late-night talk shows. This methodology consists of counting words in
interviews and sorting them in categories of positions and language. Besides the setting of the
talk show that allows a unique style of interviewing, the guests also provide a personal and
accessible platform for the politicians. Politicians get the opportunity to have a conversation
that is ‘less abstract and detached’ than a regular political interview (Van Zoonen &
Holtz-Bacha, 2000. p.48). This interaction can have considerate positive effects on the image of
politicians, but also has negative effects. The current form of late-night talk shows on Dutch
television is unique for Europe and possibly in the world. They provide a program in a
debate-setting where the topics of the day are discussed. The host sometimes is just a
moderator and sometimes needs to be the interviewer when the conversation turns more
towards a one-on-one interview.
These factors are combined in the following question that will be answered in this
thesis;
‘Is there a difference in personalized political communication by Dutch politicians during election times in comparison to non-campaign periods?’
Theoretical Framework
This section will start with a description of the concept personalization. To this
definition more theoretical elements, as elections and talk shows, will be linked. These added
elements are necessary to formulate the hypotheses that will be tested in this thesis.
Personalization
It is stated that personalization is a, if not the central aspect of political
communication in the twenty-first century (McAllister, 2007). Nevertheless, there is not a
clear or unanimous definition of the concept. The most general formulation of personalization
is that it embodies an increase of individual political actors over collective actors (Campus,
2010). The use of the term increase, suggests that personalization is a dynamic concept which
develops over time. This is something that can be seen in the theory about personalization.
Either, empirical evidence is mixed and shows that personalization occurs in different
amounts in different situations (Adam & Maier, 2010). Many factors influence
personalization. These factors can be institutional, media-related, or related to the candidates
in the election. This thesis will look into the way the political situation can influence the way
politicians are personalised in the media.
When looking into such a narrow area of the personalization debate it is critical to
define the concept of personalization and more concrete the use of it in the media.
Personalization is seen as a shift in focus in the political debate. People in general and
politicians, in particular, are becoming more important in politics. Policy issues shift towards
people and political parties shift to politicians (Adam & Maier, 2010). This means that
individuals are the central actors in the political sphere, instead of parties that were created to
represent a certain group. Personalization must be seen as a multidimensional concept that
important than parties, this is called ‘individualisation’ of politics (Holtz-Bacha, Langer, &
Merkle, 2014; Van Zoonen & Holtz-Bacha, 2000). Further, it will look into the different
traits of these individuals, these can be either professional traits; if their character makes them
suitable for politics, or personal traits; their private lives or personal details that are not
connected to their job. This process is part of ‘individualisation’ and is called ‘privatisation’ (Van Aelst, Sheafer, & Stanyer, 2012). Privatisation is a shift in emphasis from the political
to the personal sphere. The next factor that is essential for personalization is mediatisation.
Mediatisation means that the media the most prominent source of political information for the
voter, and therefore is the most important channel for politicians to reach the voters
(Strömbäck, 2008). Since the media play such a significant role in society, they can control
politics and voters. They can set the logic which politicians will follow, namely ‘media logic’
(ibid.).
Another effect of mediatisation is growing negativity of politicians towards the media
because they are being personalised and privatised without their consent. Politicians feel
subservient to the media and can only follow the media logic (Driessens, Raeymaeckers,
Verstraeten, & Vandenbussche, 2010; Elmelund-Praestekaer, Hopmann, & Nørgaard, 2011;
Elmelund-Præstekær, Hopmann, & Nørgaard, 2011). Because if they don’t do that they won’t
get the media coverage to reach their voters (Curran, Iyengar, Brink Lund, &
Salovaara-Moring, 2009). To gain back control over the media and especially the way the media portrait
politicians, politicians will present themselves as ‘political personas’ (Van Zoonen & Holtz-Bacha, 2000). The term persona is used to reflect the idea that only an aspect of the
personality of the politician is shown. Politicians use parts of their private lives, parts of their
political career and aspects of their political identity to gain media attention, but also get their
An important reason to replicate the methodology of Holtz-Bach and Van Zoonen
(2000) is their perspective on personalization and the way politicians mix personal aspects in
their political discourse. They describe two dimensions in the portrayal of politicians that
revolve around the discourse of politicians in the media. One is the language that is used, so
what is being said. The amount of personalization can be seen in the increase of private
language over public language, where the politician addresses his colleagues by name and
mentions individuals instead of collective political agents, like ministries and political parties.
The other dimension is the position from which the politician speaks, this means that, next to
what is being said, Holtz-Bacha and Van Zoonen include which role the politician plays
when he speaks. Personalization plays different parts in each of these positions.
When politicians are speaking from the position of politician, they are talking about
issues and policy problems, where they are not incorporating personalization in their
discourse (Van Zoonen & Holtz-Bacha, 2000). When they speak from the personal position,
they speak as a family member or a hobbyist, but neither about nor from their position as
politician. The political persona, or mixed position, allows politicians to comment on politics
from a personal perspective and reflect on their work as a politician. It is important to
mention that personal anecdotes about the political career of the speaker or anecdotal
examples used by the politician are seen as a mixed position as well. It allows the politician
to portrait himself as more than just a policymaker, namely a human. Even claims on
common courtesy or common sense are categorized in this hybrid ‘political persona’. It
allows the politician to step out of the abstract debate about policies and statistics and react to
the issues from a more humane and civil viewpoint. The political persona is used by
politicians to benefit from the personalised media reporting they have to face (ibid.). These
positions are being formed and adjusted to different types of media and their characteristics.
personalization of politics by the media and institutions. They harness themselves by
conducting a style of discourse towards the media, and maybe even in the political arena,
which mixes politics and personal, and emotional and rational. This view makes the original
study by Holtz-Bach and Van Zoonen unique, the introduction of the ‘political persona’ is a
main part to use their methodology in this thesis.
Personalization and Talk shows
As discussed above, media reporting is a crucial factor in personalization but next to
that the media outlet is important for the volume of personalization. Mediatisation has
increased with the rise of television. This new media made it possible to reach a broad
audience with limited costs (Blumler, 2001; Van Aelst et al., 2008). Later on, commercial
broadcasters rose up, causing commercialisation in television (Brettschneider, 2002; Hallin &
Mancini, 2004; Roca-Cuberes, 2014). This shifted the media focus to a profit-based model,
which made that television got to be more profitable to become a success. This increased the
amount of sensationalism and personalization. Items included more street-interviews, ‘vox
pops’, where the focus moved towards public opinion and interaction, instead of the issues itself. This gave room for a new type of television format, the talk show (Van Zoonen &
Holtz-Bacha, 2000). These shows operated alongside normal news broadcasts and provided
an evaluation or deeper insight into the events in the news. In these talk show discussions
experts, journalists or regular citizens participate, which made it an accessible platform to
watch and to perceive the news in a broader context. As politics are a substantial part of the
news, politicians became frequent guests on these talk shows. They could comment on their
political standpoints and how these lead to certain political actions. This allows them to reach
a broader spectrum audience and give more explanation on issues and policies than would
unique platform for politicians to act on (ibid.). It allows them to interact with citizens, who
are central actors in the format. This type of interaction requires a complicated form of
political communication which is less abstract and detached than politicians would use when
they are in function (ibid.). The talk show is a highly personalised and mediatised platform,
which would normally evoke resistance in politicians, they have adapted to this genre. The
assumption that politicians would not be able to perform in talk shows only holds if
emotional and personal are seen contradictory from political and rational (Van Zoonen &
Holtz-Bacha, 2000, p. 48). However, politicians have learned to thread the line between these
two spheres and adjusted themselves with a hybrid form of political communication, the
political persona.
As the genre is justifiably named, talking is an important mode of interaction and a
presentation on its own. As politicians use speech as an important part of not only their job
but also their appearance in general, it is important to research that. The discourse a politician
uses in the media or even in the political sphere can say a lot about who he is, but more
importantly, how he wants to position himself. The dichotomy in political, preferred by
politicians, and personal discourse, preferred in talk shows, provides a tension in which
politicians need to adjust their discourse. This makes the case of the talk shows an interesting
and important subject to study (Santen & Zoonen, 2011; Van Zoonen, 2000; Van Zoonen &
Holtz-Bacha, 2000).
Elections
In a review on personalization, Adam and Maier (2010) argued that elections are
important when looking into personalization since it is the time where politicians need to
differentiate themselves from others and win votes. In many academic studies, elections are
election times media show aspects of politics that do not appear in the common media outside
election times, like polls or televised debates (Farnsworth & Lichter, 2013; Reinemann,
2008). Academic studies did not find concluding evidence or a consensual dynamic of
personalization during elections (Adam & Maier, 2010). Many comparative studies have
shown that personalization differs from country to country and differs from election to
election (Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014; Zeh & Hopmann, 2013). This only shows that there are a
lot of factors involved when looking into personalization. It is assumed that elections are a
large factor in this process. There is very little research that looks into the role that elections
play in the amount of personalization. Therefore, this study will focus on the comparison of
personalization of politicians in- and outside election times. The case used in this study
allows for this type of research. The talk shows provide a comparable platform to study the
discourse of politicians in and outside of the elections. This is not the case when a study
looks at debates or campaign posters.
Elections are the time when politicians need to reach out to the voter and convince the
voter to choose them and to trust them with the power to govern for a new term
(Brettschneider, 2002). This means that politicians are under a magnifying glass and that
there is more focus on them than usual. Thereby politicians need to place themselves in the
spotlight to gain attention and create a platform to announce their plans and outlooks. They
need to show the voters that they are ready to be chosen and more importantly that they are
more capable than their opponents. To prove this, they will use campaigns. Campaigns are a
prime example of political communication. Longitudinal research shows that campaigns have
become more personalised over the years (Brants & Van Praag, 2006; Brettschneider, 2017;
Campus, 2010; Holtz-Bacha, 2006; Swanson & Mancini, 1996). While not all election
campaigns are more personalised than in the previous elections, the general trend is that
reporting of elections, being more personalized. This increase is empirically proven solely on
the aspect of media coverage (Adam & Maier, 2010). As discussed earlier, the introduction of
television changed the way politicians reached the voters. The use of television proved to be
a success for the media. The media created a horserace between candidates and letting them
debate in public (Crigler & Graber, 2006; Farnsworth & Lichter, 2013). Nevertheless, it also
changed the focus of elections towards the individual candidates instead of the political
parties and their ideological beliefs. A prime example of this process is the introduction of
televised debates.
Politicians have become the main subject of the media and adopted a more
personalised way of campaigning. Candidate traits, either political or non-political, are
increasingly important (Brettschneider, 2002). An example, in Dutch political elections the
second person on the ballot behind a male leader is often a female politician. Another
example is the way incumbent leaders use their position in office or experience to portrait
themselves as the more secure and proven choice (Poguntke & Webb, 2005). This shows that
politicians move beyond personalization and try to use it to their advantage. Media coverage
personalises them, so to regain control over their image and discourse politicians adopt
personalised aspects in campaigns and elections. This process can be seen as a form of the
political persona that politicians use. Considering this, it can be concluded that
personalization of politicians will be elevated during elections. This leaves room for the
question if elections are the only situations when politicians use the political persona. When
there are no elections, a politician is already elected in office and there is less need to present
the political persona to convince voters. The elected politician is in function and needs to be
what the voters elected him for, a politician and a public representative. This leads to the
H1: In election times politicians will speak more often from a mixed position than
they do in non-election times.
By testing this hypothesis in the study, this thesis will try to grasp the way politicians
modify their discourse to the current situation. It is expected that, due to the way media
coverage personalised elections and political campaigns, politicians will speak more often
from a mixed position during elections, since there is less need for personalised discourse
outside elections (Brettschneider, 2002).
Different politicians, different persona’s
In their research agenda, Adam and Maier (2010) mentioned a need for more in-case
comparative research, next to the between-case studies, for example between countries or
different elections. The measurement of personalization that will be used in this study
provides the opportunity for such a comparison. The way language is used by politicians can
be a sign of the level of personalization and the political persona that they use. Political
experience and career can be of value when constructing one’s political persona (Van Zoonen
& Holtz-Bacha, 2000). One of the obvious traits a politician can have is the position of being
in office. As the incumbent leader, in the Dutch case the Prime-Minister, the politician can
speak from a more secure platform, since he is a proven, and the current, representative of the
cabinet and governing body (Brettschneider, 2002). He can incorporate this into his persona,
resulting in a discourse that reflects this position of representation and current leadership. A
newcomer or opponent of the incumbent leader, on the other hand, needs to convince
followers of his capabilities. Also, he does not have the responsibility to govern and can
openly oppose the incumbent leader. This will result in a different kind of discourse,
This theory lead to the formulation of the following hypothesis:
H2: The incumbent Prime-Minister will use more public language when presenting
himself in talk shows than the opposition leader.
This hypothesis assumes that the incumbent Prime-Minister will speak from the
position of the political leader of a country. He forms a cabinet and is politically responsible
for the political course of the country. This is why the Prime-Minister will speak more from a
public position. He will speak more from an included outlook. He is part of the status quo and
speaks on behave of a cabinet or the electorate because he is the Prime-Minister. This
position will present itself in the manner that the incumbent Prime-Minister will use more
public language, either when he talks about his political work, where he speaks on behalf of
the entire cabinet, or when he speaks about the country and his political beliefs, where he
speaks on behalf of the whole country or electorate. By using more public language he shows
that he is part of the public and a first among equals, ‘primus inter pares’, with the other
cabinet members.
The opposition leader, on the contrary, does not have the responsibility for the
country or a cabinet. He can speak more freely from his political position. This will manifest
in less public language in his performance in talk shows. Since his political persona does not
come from an included position, he has less need to speak as a representative. He can oppose
the incumbent leader from a more personal stance. Besides he has to convince the electorate
of his traits since he is not currently in office. This leads to a more private discourse, due to
The case and the sample
This thesis will use a sample of late-night talk shows in the Netherlands. Late-night
talk shows have become a separate genre in the Dutch media landscape. This study will look
at three shows, all of which are broadcasted by networks that are part of the NPO (the Dutch
Public Broadcaster). There used to be a show that was broadcasted by the commercial
network RTL 4 (Radio Télévision Luxembourg 4) called ‘RTL Late Night’. Unfortunately, due to the limited resources available for this thesis and lack of cooperation of the
broadcaster, it was not possible to include this show in the sample.
The first show is ‘Pauw’, this show is presented by Jeroen Pauw and is the replacement of ‘Pauw en Witteman’, which Pauw presented with co-host Paul Witteman. The second show in this study is ‘Jinek!’. This show is presented by Eva Jinek, who presented talk shows before on Sunday. The late-night talk show ‘Jinek!’ started as the replacement of
‘Pauw’ during holiday breaks. As of 2017, ‘Pauw’ and ‘Jinek!’ both have the same number of broadcasts. The last show is a special show presented by both Jeroen Pauw and Eva Jinek to
monitor the elections and the campaigns surrounding the elections. This show was named
‘Pauw en Jinek, de Verkiezingen’ (translated ‘Pauw and Jinek, the Elections). It was broadcasted in the same timeslot as ‘Pauw’ and ‘Jinek!’, as it served as a replacement for their normal broadcasts. Up till now, they have presented two series of this elections special.
The first one was from February 27, 2017 to March 17 2017, to monitor the Dutch parliament
elections held on March 15, 2017. The second series revolved around the elections for the
States-Provincial that were held on March 20, 2019 and was broadcasted from March 11,
2019 till March 19, 2019. These two series will also mark the research period of this thesis.
19, 2019. This means that the interviews from non-election times will be selected from
broadcasts between the two elections.
The three shows used in the sample follow similar formats. The show runs for
approximately one hour. In this hour the host has two to four interviews with different kinds
of guests that have been in the news or comment on the events of that day, this can be
journalists, politicians, artists or ordinary citizens. News and actualities are leading for the
guests and the topics that are been discussed in the show. An exception is the show about the
elections, where all the conversations revolve around the elections. Different types of guests
are invited to comment on the electoral events of that day, these can be journalists, comedians
and politicians
To demark the sample, I have chosen to include two politicians in the sample. The
first is the leader of the VVD and current Prime-minister, Mark Rutte. Mark Rutte has been
the political leader of the VVD since 2010. In that year Rutte won the elections. He became
the Prime-Minister of the Netherlands, which he still is. The sample includes the last election
which elected Rutte to be the Prime-minister for a third term, the elections for Dutch
parliament on March 15, 2017. The second politician is the leader of the green party,
GroenLinks, Jesse Klaver. He is seen as the most important politician on the left spectrum
and can be seen as the opposition leader in the Netherlands. In the general elections of 2017,
Klaver led the green party to a historic number of seats in the Parliament.
The main differences between these two politicians is their position and their party.
Rutte came to the elections as the incumbent Prime-minister, while Klaver was a newcomer
who has not yet made a name for himself. Rutte, as the Prime-minister, is a representative of
the whole Netherlands. He can use this position to his advantage, and probably will do so.
advantage. In the next section, I will discuss the method used to test the hypotheses with this
sample.
Methodology
This thesis replicates the methodology in principle of the study by Holtz-Bacha and
Van Zoonen (2000). To study the interviews a sample of 20 interviews is drawn. Due to lack
of appearances of Mark Rutte, the distribution between the two subjects is skewed. Rutte
appears in 6 segments, while Klaver appears in the other 14. The shows are more equal
represented, 8 are from ‘Pauw and Jinek, de Verkiezingen’, 8 are from ‘Jinek’ and the other 4
are from ‘Pauw’. The items need to be labelled for the date they were broadcasted, the show in which they were broadcasted, the interviewer and interviewee, and the duration. This
sample frame can be found in appendices at the end of this paper. The use of such a frame
makes it easier to systematically analyse and code the items.
The coding will be done on at least two different points in time and preferably these
points will be more than one week apart. This is to increase the objectivity of the coding and
minimalize the risk of incidental errors. To secure these two different moments of coding, the
date of the first and second coding will be noted in the sampling frame. What the
methodology embodies and how it will be used in this study will be described in the
following section.
Coding instructions
This study will try to replicate the methodology used by Holtz-Bach and Van Zoonen
(2000). Like the original study, I choose to count words as the unit of analysis. This
methodology comes from the original study, which was developed by Van Zoonen (1999).
expressions. The counted words need to be sorted on two levels, both the type of language
and the position from which they are spoken. These levels are both divided into two scales,
public/private language and political/personal position. The language scale had two
categories and the scale on positions has an added category, the mixed position, that was
linked to the political persona that politicians use.
Public and private language
This variable concerns the actual words spoken by the in the politician and will be
used in the second hypothesis. The same definition is used in the original study. Holtz-Bacha
and Van Zoonen measured language in two categories, ‘public’ and ‘private’ language
(Kress, 1986). Under ‘Public language’ fall all words that are concerning not an individual or
is referring to something that is not personal. This means when a politician speaks of an
abstract idea or concept, like a political institution or ideological group. Also, groups of a
similar identity, like ‘voters’, or ‘electorate’, fall under this category. Even if a politician speaks of a single actor, like ‘the minister of finance’, this is qualified as public since he uses the title of the function instead of the name of that particular person. This type of language
shows of a certain detachment by the speaker and provides a higher level of abstract than
private language, and is therefore much used by political institutions and for describing
political processes.
‘Private language’ are sentences that the speaker says about himself or another particular individual. This type of language concerns the private domain, in the sense of
personal experiences or actions by individuals. This type of language is associated with
popular media since it embodies emotion and intimate details. Incorporating this form of
language in political communication is a sign of personalization. A personal or political
name, fall in this category of private language. I choose to not count sentences with a
hypothetical ‘you’ (like in ‘you could say...’) as private language since the person can’t be specified.
Political, personal, and mixed positions
This variable concerns the position from which the politician speaks, other than the
actual words he speaks. This variable will be used in the first hypothesis. A result of
personalization is that a politician has different positions he can take when speaking in the
media (Van Zoonen & Holtz-Bacha, 2000). The scores of this variable will be determined by
sorting the words counted for language and labelling them for the position they were spoken
from. This is a replication of the methodology from the original study (Van Zoonen &
Holtz-Bacha, 2000)
The first of these positions is the position of politician. This is when a politician
speaks as a candidate or minister. From this position, he can speak about political processes
or issues. When he reacts on a colleague, on an issue and factual statements, this is also done
from a political position. An example could be the politician reacting on a law or motion he
passed in parliament or a Prime-minister speaking about a crisis he handled in office. But if
he acts as a political expert and explains political processes to the audience he is not speaking
from a political position.
The second position is the other end of the spectrum, the personal position. This is
when the politician speaks as a spouse, family member, or a friend. Also, when he speaks
about hobbies or his personal life outside his political career. Emotions and feelings are also
spoken from this position. When he speaks about his family life and how he raises his
children or where he will be celebrating Christmas.
The last position is a mixture of the previous two. This can be when they speak about
the politician reacts or comments on his political actions or speaks about his thoughts on the
political actions of his colleagues. I choose to include appeals to common sense and courtesy
in this position since they are not political, but link to the humane part of politics. A good
example of these claims is when a politician says that something is ‘unacceptable’ or ‘not normal’. These expressions often concern political affairs.
A big part of this position is when a politician comments on campaigns, either from
himself or other candidates. This can be discussing a debate or a commercial. These
comments can be seen as an assessment of one’s own political actions. This position encloses the part of political discourse that concerns form more than with content. The use of political
anecdotes, either as a politician or speaking about experiences of other persons, will also be
sorted under ‘mixed position’. Since he encountered this anecdote while acting as a politician, but it has an aspect of personal experience in it.
It is key that the construction of this codebook is objective and motivated by choices
for the terms that are in it. The latent matter also requires that the codebook has to be
followed very closely. If items are coded outside the codebook the generality of the coding is
in jeopardy as well as the objectivity and validity of the study. This list can be found in the
appendix of this file. Since the variable concerns discourse the list consists of nouns and
terms that connect to either concept.
To analyse the coding scores, the exact scores were recalculated to percentages. This
matches the methodology of the original study. This was necessary because the interviews
had variating durations and not the same amount of words. Using the scores as percentages
provide the opportunity to see how the different interviews compare to each other on a
relative level. The percentages are calculated by dividing the number of words counted per
category by the total number of words counted in that variable. Consequently, the categories
up to 100%. The use of percentages in analytical testing must be done with caution. In this
study there is no problem since the variables add up to 100%, therefore the percentage scores
can be seen as a score on an interval scale that ranges from 0 to 100 that is measured for each
interview separately, therefore there is no speaking of average percentages. These scores can
be used to look at the differences between the talk shows and the politicians. But this means
that it is important to keep in mind that these scores are very selective and only bear meaning
in respect to the two politicians and the three talk shows that are used in the sample.
With these percentages, an intracoder reliability test was conducted to see if the
coding in the first and second round were sufficiently correspondent. The Krippendorff’s
Alpha resulted in unsatisfactory scores (Political position a = 0.729, Mixed position a =
0.628, Personal position a = 0.866, Public language a = 0.432 and Private language a =
0.432). This is due to the volatile character of the variables. The automate reliability test only
accounts for the amount of direct overlap in scores. This test does not fit the methodology
used in this thesis, due to the volatile character of the variables. Therefore, the reliability was
calculated by determining the amount the two rounds differed from each other. As in other
tests a range of deviation was accepted, namely 10%. 10 cases did not meet this criterion and
were coded a third time where I stayed very close to the last coding scheme. After this round,
all the interviews were coded within 10% of each coding round. These rounds were not all
included in the following analysis but were conducted to check if the coding was objective
Results
To test the hypotheses, the percentage scores were used, because they give a better
representation of the relations between the different interviews. For instance, the minimum
amount of words counted in an interview is 90, while 578 words were counted in the longest
interview. The tests are conducted with one coding of each interview (N=20), not all three
rounds are used. The variables that are of interest for the hypothesis are evenly spread. A full
report of the descriptive data can be found in table 1, where the means and standard
deviations of the dependent variables and their categories are shown per group of the
independent variables, the politicians and talk shows, are shown. The means are the average
percentage scores of each category per group of the independent variables. The relative
character of the percentages can be seen in the fact that the percentages for each variable add
up to 100%.
Table 1
Means and (standard deviations) of dependent variables per independent variable.
Position Language
Personal Mixed Political Private Public
Title ‘Pauw’ 0.015 (0.011) 0.425 (0.026) 0.560 (0.032) 0.163 (0.017) 0.837 (0.017) ‘Jinek!’ 0.031 (0.013) 0.481 (0.059) 0.488 (0.068) 0.186 (0.016) 0.814 (0.016) ‘Pauw en Jinek’ 0.024 (0.006) 0.462 (0.141) 0.510 (0.046) 0.232 (0.029) 0.768 (0.029
Politicians Jesse Klaver 0.018 (0.018) 0.455 (0.141) 0.528 (0.148) 0.186 (0.055) 0.814 (0.055) Mark Rutte 0.043 (0.036) 0.484 (0.109) 0.473 (0.144) 0.233 (0.076) 0.0767 (0.076)
Total means 0.511 (0.145) 0.464 (0.129) 0.026 (0.027) 0.199 (0.064) 0.801 (0.064)
Other pre-tests showed that the variables were normally distributed among the
sample. This was tested with Shapiro-Wilk tests and the values of ‘skewness’ and ‘kurtosis’.
These results can be found in a table in the appendices (see Appendix C). These results
cleared the use of t-tests to test the hypotheses.
The first hypothesis concerns the positions politicians take in and outside election
times. To test this hypothesis a t-test was conducted comparing the average percentage the
mixed position was used in either regular talk shows or the election-themed talk show. The
t-test showed no significant results that politicians took the ‘mixed position’ more often in election times (M = 0.46 SD = 0.14) than in non-election times (M = 0.47, SD = 0.12), t(18) =
0.053, p = 0.958, 95% CI [-0.13, 0.13]. The other categories that are connected to the mixed
position did not differ between the shows either. These results reject the first hypothesis and
show that politicians maintain similar positions to profile themselves in talks shows,
regardless of elections. Politicians also discuss the same topics in the different talk shows,
regardless of elections or the talk show. Politicians talk about and comment on the political
career and actions outside election times as well as during elections. Another aspect that
stood out in the interviews that were analysed is that politicians often act as political experts
in talk shows. They explain political actions and processes, rather than speaking about
political standpoints or opinions. Since these explanations are done neither from a political
position or a personal position, but are spoken from as a political expert or rendering from
personal experience, the methodology casts these statements under the ‘mixed position’. The
cause of a politician in a talk show was in almost all cases a political action or event.
Therefore, the conversation is directed towards political statements and their political actions
= 0.03, SD = 0.03) since they are invited as a politician and there is no need nor demand to
comment from a personal position or discuss personal affairs. While the details discussed in
the different talk shows varied more, this was not shown in the results of the tests which are
limited to the positions and not the topics. Where politicians are more inclined to talk about
political relations between parties and events that happened in the campaign during elections,
they tend to speak more about parliamentary proceedings outside election times. But they are
very prone to use examples of civilians to strengthen their argument, which was also
considered the mixed position in the current version of the codebook.
The second test concerned the language used by the two different politicians in the
sample. This hypothesis was also tested with a t-test, which compared the differences
between the mean percentages of private language used by Jesse Klaver and Mark Rutte. The
test showed that the difference in the scores between Mark Rutte (M = 0.23, SD = 0.08) and
Jesse Klaver (M = 0.19, SD = 0.06) was not significant, t(18) = -1.554, p = 0.138, 95% CI
[-11.00, 1.65]. I also conducted a t-test for the other variable, to see if the two politicians
showed differences there. This did also result in non-significant findings. This lack of results
shows that this methodology did not show the differences between the two politicians. While
a closer look at the interviews reveal that there are differences in the discourse of the two
politicians. Klaver is not a member of cabinet and is, therefore, more concerned with voters
and parliamentary proceedings. Rutte, on the other hand, was incumbent Prime-minister
during the whole period covered in this study. This had an effect on his discourse and the
way he was portraited in talk shows. More than Klaver (M = 0.02, SD = 0.02) Rutte (M =
0.04, SD = 0.04) spoke from a more individual standpoint, either as the Prime-minister or the
person Mark Rutte. It is important to notice the influence of the talk show and its host
because Mark Rutte got invited to both talk shows, ‘Pauw’ and ‘Jinek!’, to reflect on his year as Prime-minister or his political career as a whole. This makes that the focus of the
interviewer and therefore also the conversation lies with the personal aspect of the
Prime-minister. This makes that the discourse of Rutte in talk shows is directed more towards
personal language over Klaver who acts as a representative of either his party, his voters or
the opposition in the parliament. Some changes in the discourse were noticeable during
election times, but mostly the first elections, were both subjects were up for re-election
themselves. They tended more towards personal aspects and presented themselves as more
than policymakers, to pursue the voters of their caring and humane characteristics. In the
second election time, both subjects were not eligible themselves and therefore they
Conclusion
This thesis analysed talk show interviews of two Dutch politicians. The results
showed that neither elections or the position of the politicians played a significant role in the
way these politicians speak and profile themselves in the talk shows. The statistical tests did
not show significant results proving differences in the discourse of the politicians used in this
sample. Yet, there are other indicators in this study that may lead politicians to use different
rhetoric in different situations.
This thesis shows that many factors are at play in conducting the discourse of
politicians in the media. This is something that has been shown in the literature that is
discussed earlier in this study. The results showed that there were many differences between
the two groups that were studied, between the different talk shows as well as between the two
politicians. Like the focus on campaigning in elections, or the different personal aspects
politicians used in the ‘mixed’ or personal position. Only the way personalization has been measured here did not show these differences in a statistical way. Personalization is seen as a
concept that has many aspects and many causes. This thesis looked at one of these aspects,
with the focus on the format of the talk show. In their study, Van Zoonen and Holtz-Bacha
(2000) stated that it might be hard for politicians to perform well in talk shows. The two
politicians in this study disproved this statement, showing that they do adapt very well to the
more intimate and personalised setting of a talk show, just like other politicians that happen
to be part of the interviews analysed. They are not as rigid as they were described in the
original study and appear to be more flexible in their performance. This was noticeable in
informal back and forth with the host and the more interactive way that they communicate
and Holtz-Bacha, Dutch politicians adapted better to the format of the talk show, and most
likely also in other media. Making it easier for them to construct a political persona, in which
they include personal details and anecdotes to get their political message across.
The small sample of this study (N = 20) made it possible to look at the items in a
more in-depth manner next to the statistical analysis. This was necessary since one of the
limitations of the study was the specific and limited methodology of Holtz-Bacha and Van
Zoonen. I believe that the concept of the ‘political persona’ can be a valuable addition to the concept of personalization, but the methodology did not measure this concept in the best
possible way. The theoretical construct may be better studied in a more qualitative approach,
where there is room to look at topics and discuss the discourse of politicians in more detail.
Such an approach could give a better view of how politicians use this political persona in
different situations and different media. The measurement of language and position used here
did not provide this perspective and therefore did not gave a complete view of the political
persona.
Next to the limitations of in the methodology, due to the limited conceptualization of
personalization, the methodology also relied on some latent variable that made the content
analysis less objective. This made replicating the study and reconstructing the codebook
harder. The coding instructions were not clear enough and left too much room for
interpretation. During the second round of coding, the analysis got more systematic. This
process of adjusting the coding was a reason that the scores of the first and second round of
coding differed so significant. I tried to adjust the coding by recoding half the sample. But
this problem is one of the limitations of this study and this methodology.
Also, this study could have benefited from a broader representation of Dutch
politicians in its sample. The use of only two politicians in this study was justified by the lack
would have made it possible to state a bit more about Dutch politicians in general. As earlier
stated personalization and the political persona of a politician is influenced by many factors,
the use of the persona by these two politicians might very well be a result of their personal
characteristics and may not connected be to a larger trend in Dutch politics. The same
argument can be made about including only two elections, which in their turn are not
comparable, because they are for different institutions. Yet, there were no talk shows catered
to other elections. But this also affects the explanatory value of this study.
While there are limitations to this study, I do believe that it can be of added value to
the broader discussion revolving around personalization. Personalization could benefit more
from smaller studies that look at different aspects of the concept. All these studies can help
construct a spectrum of factors that are connected to personalization. Although this study did
not show significant differences due to election times, it did show that the politicians in this
study speak a substantial amount of time from the ‘mixed position’ in talk show interviews, which is linked to personalised political discourse. The use of this hybrid position can be seen
as a reaction of politicians to the personalization of the media. In their study, Holtz-Bacha
and Van Zoonen showed that two decades ago politicians had it more difficult in the personal
setting of a talk show. Today politicians appear more often in talk shows and have developed
a way to handle the intimate format.
It may be believed that politicians adjust their discourse to the media outlet that they
appear on. More comparative research could provide more insight into this assumption. Such
studies could shed a light on the way politicians include personalization in their discourse in
more settings than in talk shows. Other points of perspective can include different countries
in a study or longitudinally look at the issue.
Personalization is a generally accepted concept; therefore, the next step could be to
future studies might be to look at the way politicians are affected by and react to
personalization, instead of looking at personalization in general. The way politicians included
personalization in the sample from this study may be a sign that personalization can exist
next to a constructive political debate. This is contrary to the current believe that
personalization is bad for political communication and leads the attention from the more
important political issues. Could more research result in the belief that personalization might
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Appendices Appendix A; Sample Frame
1 19-03-2019 P en J Rutte 0:19:26 29-05-2019 11-06-2019 2 06-02-2018 Jinek Klaver 0:12:43 29-05-2019 11-06-2019 3 14-03-2017 P en J Rutte 0:15:06 03-06-2019 11-06-2019 19-06-2019 4 09-03-2017 P en J Klaver 0:08:47 11-06-2019 13-06-2019 5 13-06-2017 Jinek Klaver 0:21:39 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 19-06-2019 6 05-03-2019 Jinek Klaver 0:17:25 03-06-2019 11-06-2019 19-06-2019 7 27-06-0201 Jinek Klaver 0:18:52 03-06-2019 11-06-2019 8 12-12-2017 Jinek Klaver 0:11:54 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 19-06-2019 9 19-12-2018 Pauw Rutte 0:17:04 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 10 20-12-2017 Jinek Rutte 0:20:16 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 19-06-2019 11 15-03-2019 P en J Klaver 0:24:34 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 20-06-2019 12 15-03-2019 P en J Rutte 0:17:51 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 20-06-2019 13 19-06-2018 Jinek Klaver 0:15:39 05-06-2019 12-06-2019 14 21-01-2019 Jinek Klaver 0:13:27 06-06-2019 12-06-2019 19-06-2019 15 06-03-2017 P en J Rutte 0:46:46 06-06-2019 13-06-2019 16 20-04-2018 Pauw Klaver 0:08:20 06-06-2019 13-06-2019 17 24-04-2018 Pauw Klaver 0:16:02 06-06-2019 12-06-2019 19-06-2019 18 14-03-2017 P en J Klaver 0:09:45 05-06-2019 11-06-2019 19 03-03-2017 P en J Klaver 00:13:18 06-06-2019 13-06-2019 19-06-2019 20 10-12-2018 Pauw Klaver 0:20:15 06-06-2019 13-06-2019
Appendix B; Codebook
The coding needs to proceed as follows;
- Count the times that words or terms from the list are mentioned.
- If a word is mentioned score it in the correct column
Columns are divided in two categories, ‘Political’ and ‘Private’. - Calculate the totals for each category.
- Process the totals in the sampling frame
The list is in English, but the actual coding will be done in Dutch. Similar and related words
are mentioned together. Synonyms and other formulations that are not yet included in the list
will be considered when coding.
Public language
Party, fraction, congress, cabinet, opposition Ministry, minister, state secretary
Parliament, senate, council MP’s (kamerleden)
Debate, meeting Voting, voters, people
Election, electorate, campaign
Law, regulation, rule, policy, motion, amendment Social groups or social agents named by title The use of ‘we’ as a collective actor
The use of ‘you’ in an explanatory or hypothetical setting Calling a person ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ when referring to them
Private language
The use of ‘I’
The use of ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘mine’
Personal names when referring to individuals Opinions, feelings, emotions
Words that are used to explain someone’s judgement
Political position
Views as a party member or minister
Explanations of political processes and institution Factual arguments
Speaking about political standpoints and ideologies
Personal position
Family (husbands, wives, children, parents) Hobbies, sports, musical interests
Emotions, feelings, opinions
Mixed position
Views on political career Interference of career on family
Anecdotal arguments for political standpoints Personal beliefs as influence on political standpoints Personal struggles in politics or with authorities Views on the campaign
Appendix C; Pre-tests on skewness, kurtosis, normality and variance
Position Language
Personal Political Mixed Public Private
Skewness 1.589 -0.050 -0.215 -0.783 0.783
Kurtosis 3.179 1.161 1.479 0.007 .007
Shapiro-Wilk 0.738 0.172 0.169 0.067 1.000 Levene’s test* 2.089 0.076 0.153 0.880 0.880
