Personalization, privatization, and campaign strategies in newspaper coverage of two Chilean presidential elections, 1989-2009

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of the coverage of political campaigns in Chile, through a content analysis of the issues highlighted in four national newspapers in the 1989 and 2009 campaigns. We seek to determine the increases of two types of personalization and the coverage of the candidates’ strategies. We focus on personalization, understood first as “competences” (the coverage of political-personal characteristics of the candidates) which differ from the “privatization” (highlights the private lives of the candidates). Results show an expected increase in the space allocated to privatization and strategies, but no change in the coverage of the political traits of the candidates.