Intimate Politics
Publicity, Privacy and the Personal Lives of Politicians in Media Saturated Democracies
CPC - Contemporary Political Communication
1. Edition October 2012
248 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
It is often remarked that politicians' private lives are
becoming a feature of political communication in many advanced
industrial democracies. However, there have so far been no
genuinely comparative studies examining the personalized nature of
political communication. Intimate Politics provides for the
first time a systematic comparative analysis of such developments
in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US.
Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, it
assesses the extent to which the private lives of politicians have
become a feature of political communication in each democracy. The
book provides a comprehensive account of the shifting boundaries
between the public and private, and whether any developments are
universal or more advanced in some democracies than others, and
seeks to explain why this might be. Intimate Politics will
be of great value for students and scholars of communication and
media studies and political science and is required reading for
anyone who wants a fuller understanding of the transformation of
mediated politics in advanced industrial democracies.
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Politicians' Personal Lives in the Media
Spotlight
1. Soft Focus: Leaders' Personal Lives Close-up
2. Digging for Dirt: Publicizing Politicians' Sex
Lives
3. Changing Exposure: Critical Moments and the
Uncovering of Politicians' Infidelity
4. Transnational Revelations: Flows, Access and Control in a
Global News Environment
5. Drawing Conclusions: Intimization and Democratic Politics
Appendix: Notes on Research Methods and Indicators
References
Endnotes
world beyond the level of bar-room gossip.'
href="http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/126534">Morning
Star
'Stanyer has delivered a highly persuasive evidence-based
study, creatively developed and carried out, drawing on a
range of data sets inventively designed to compare how far the
private lives of politicians are reported in seven countries. In my
view, Intimate Politics has genuine international relevance
and should be considered the benchmark study for future
scholarship.'
Journalism Studies
'Stanyer's treatment of the phenomenon of
"intimization" is data-rich, conceptually mature and
several-sided. He systematically examines it by genre, over an
extended time span and, in a revealing comparative analysis, across
seven advanced democracies. Intimate Politics is likely to
be the definitive treatment of its subject for years to
come.'
Jay Blumler, University of Leeds
'For the first time, intimization and popularization are dealt
with using hard data, showing that they are not just in the minds
of scholars but that they represent tendencies that have emerged in
several countries worldwide. Our democracies are facing at the same
time new strategies on the part of politicians and also already
well-rooted journalistic routines.'
Paolo Mancini, Università di Perugia
