Tamir Sheafer

The Personalization(s) of Politics: Israel, 1949-2003

In recent years, there has been an increase in interest in the personalization of politics. Unfortunately, the findings of studies carried out in different countries have led to inconsistent conclusions. This article argues that one of the reasons for this inconsistency is the lack of uniform conceptualization and operational definitions. The authors contend that it is helpful to make a distinction between institutional, media, and behavioral types of political personalization, and they provide specific measures of all three types. These clear distinctions should bring us closer to answering two questions: First, has there been a rise in the different types of political personalization? Second, what is the relationship between these various types of political personalization? This study shows, through a historical comparative analysis of the Israeli case (1949–2003), that political personalization can be better understood by employing Wolfsfelds politics-media-politics (PMP) model: Institutional personalization leads to personalization in the media, which in turn leads to personalization in the behavior of politicians.

Social Media and the Arab Spring Politics Comes First

The goal of this article is to place the role that social media plays in collective action within a more general theoretical structure, using the events of the Arab Spring as a case study. The article presents two broad theoretical principles. The first is that one cannot understand the role of social media in collective action without first taking into account the political environment in which they operate. The second principle states that a significant increase in the use of the new media is much more likely to follow a significant amount of protest activity than to precede it. The study examines these two principles using political, media, and protest data from twenty Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority. The findings provide strong support for the validity of the claims.

The personalization of mediated political communication: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

Personalization has become a central concept in discussions on how political news, and election coverage in particular, has changed over time. The general belief is that the focus of news coverage has shifted from parties and organizations to candidates and leaders. However, the evidence is far from conclusive. This is due in no small part to a lack of conceptual clarity and an absence of common operationalizations which are a major cause of the unclear or conflicting conclusions about the personalization of political news. This article seeks to remedy this shortcoming. It presents a model for comprehending the personalization of political news based on a review of relevant studies. The article makes a series of recommendations for how the concept might be operationalized for an analysis of media content in order to enable cross-nationally comparative research.

Competing Actors and the Construction of Political News: The Contest Over Waves in Israel

The study is meant to provide a more actor-oriented approach to the construction of political news by looking at the competition over news exposure during political waves in Israel. Political waves are sudden and significant changes in the political environment that are characterized by a substantial increase in the amount of public attention centered on a political issue or event. A theoretical model is presented that attempts to explain who initiates political waves, which types of waves provide the most opportunities for the participation of different types of political actors, and which actors are in the best position to be included when different types of waves are covered in the news media. Four major hypotheses are developed that focus on both the nature of the wave and the individual characteristics of the political actors who are competing for exposure. Among the most important individual traits are charismatic communication skills, political standing, and the extent to which the individual can be thematically linked to the wave topic. The research employed two primary sets of data. The first set of data came from a content analysis of news articles that appeared in two major Israeli newspapers over one full year. Thirty-nine separate waves emerged from this analysis. The second set of data contains individual assessments of 91 legislators who were elected to 14th Knesset. All of the major hypotheses were confirmed.

Mediated Public Diplomacy: A Strategic Contest over International Agenda Building and Frame Building

This study focuses on the competition over international agenda building and frame building as one central strategic activity of public diplomacy processes. It is the first analysis of a multi-actor contest over agenda and frame building in foreign media focusing on two strategic acts with evident mediated public diplomacy objectives and implications: Israels disengagement from Gaza and the general elections in the Palestinian Authority. The success of the actors in promoting their agenda and frames in the U.S. and British news media is analyzed, revealing a complex media arena that includes the antagonists, foreign governments, and the media themselves as actors, each trying to promote its own agenda and frames. Cultural and political congruence between a foreign country and an adversary gives that antagonist an advantage over its rival actor. However, the antagonist actor still has to compete with the agenda and frames of foreign governments and media organizations.

Charismatic Skill and Media Legitimacy An Actor-Centered Approach to Understanding the Political Communication Competition

The charismatic skill approach developed here attempts to fill a theoretical and methodological lacuna in political communication through analyzing the competition in the political communication arena from the point of view of political actors. In a situation of an accelerated process of personalization, this approach examines the resources that help political actors pursue their goal in this arena. This goal is defined as achieving media legitimacy, which represents the success of the actors in obtaining access to the media and controlling media framing. It is hypothesized that charismatic and political resources of actors can explain media legitimacy. This hypothesis was strongly supported after it was tested on 95 members of the Israeli Knesset.

Political Information Opportunities in Europe: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study of Thirteen Television Systems

This study examines the supply of political information programming across thirteen European broadcast systems over three decades. The cross-national and cross-temporal design traces the composition and development of political information environments with regard to the amount and placement of news and current affairs programs on the largest public and private television channels. It finds that the televisual information environments of Israel and Norway offer the most advantageous opportunity structure for informed citizenship because of their high levels of airtime and a diverse scheduling strategy. The study contributes to political communication research by establishing “political information environments” as a theoretically and empirically grounded concept that informs and supplements the comparison of “media systems.” If developed further, it could provide an information-rich, easy-to-measure macro-unit for future comparative research.

Two routes to personalized politics Centralized and decentralized personalization

This article describes two opposing types of political personalization: centralizing and decentralizing personalization. The first implies the centralization of political power in the hands of a few leaders, while the latter indicates a diffusion of group power among its components: individual politicians. We start by proposing definitions of the types and subtypes of centralized and decentralized personalization and review the literature in search of evidence of their occurrence. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed typology by examining personalization trends in various aspects of Israeli politics and conclude with a discussion of the challenges that personalization set for liberal democracies.

Party Systems and Oppositional Voices in the News Media A Study of the Contest over Political Waves in the United States and Israel

This study explores those factors that raise the level of access for oppositional voices in the news media. The Politics—Media—Politics principle argues that cross-national differences in the role of the news media in most political processes can be best understood by examining how variations in political environments affect media performance, which in turn leads to different types of effects on politics. Based on this principle, it is argued that the news media operating in polarized multiparty democracies will allow greater access to oppositional voices than those in two-party democracies. This thesis is examined by comparing the news coverage of major news stories in the United States and Israel in 1984, 1990, and 2000. These two countries provide a useful comparison because they have similar media systems but polar opposite political systems. The results provide strong support for the thesis.

Functional Theory and Political Discourse: Televised Debates in Israel and the United States:

This study applied functional theory, developed for political campaigns in the United States, to six televised debates in Israel and compared debates in both countries. In both countries, acclaims were the most common function, followed by attacks and then defenses. Policy was addressed more often than character. Incumbent candidates in both countries acclaimed significantly more and attacked less than the challengers. Incumbents used past deeds significantly more often to acclaim—and less to attack—than the challengers. The similarities discovered suggest that candidates for elective political office may employ common discursive practices that transcend national borders.