Candidate-Centered Communication

The Visibility of Candidates and Party Leaders

A growing number of observers suggest one of the key factors contributing to the personalization of campaigning is greater media visibility, especially with [Page 81]the emergence and spread of television. Election campaigns in most democracies are fought mainly on television, which provides contestants with an opportunity to communicate directly with millions of households. Office seekers have, over the years, become adept at utilizing this technology, and as a result their routine appearances have rendered them familiar to a mass audience of voters. It could be argued that leading politicians have even gained the status of celebrities.

Television has provided leading politicians with an increasing number of outlets on which to appear. In many democracies televised debates between the leading contestants have become a permanent feature of campaigns. Research by Pippa Norris found that of 24 OECD democracies examined in the mid-1990s, 16 had televised candidate debates. In addition, there are political advertisements, news bulletins, and non-news outlets, such as talk shows. The first appearance of a candidate on a talk show came in the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign, when both John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were guests on Jack Paar's television show. By the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, the television talk show had become a routine campaign stop for presidential candidates. Liesbet van Zoonen and Christina Holtz-Bacha observe that the appearance of party leaders on the talk show sofa is now a feature of campaigns in parliamentary democracies too. In addition to television exposure, representatives and parties in many democracies maintain a permanent Web presence. For example, Pippa Norris notes that a 2000 comparison of 1,244 parties in 179 countries found that 39% had developed their own Web site. The home page can be seen as a cost-efficient self-advertisement, where office seekers are free to construct and present an image of themselves to voters.

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