Discussion

~party_id*~president*~m_private 0.435897 0.179487 0.944444

~tabloid*~commercial*~years*~boomer*~m_private 0.282051 0.076923 1.000000

~party_id*~tabloid*~commercial*~centrist*~president 0.256410 0.051282 1.000000

~party_id*~tabloid*~commercial*~centrist*~boomer* 0.230769 0.076923 1.000000

~m_private

7.3. Discussion

Based on the findings from the fsQCA, there are several interesting points that need to be discussed in greater detail. Firstly, these analyses can be seen as another piece of evidence that suggests that personalisation is neither connected to solely media-related nor to politically-related variables. There was one causal path which was based solely on politically-related causal conditions, that which helped explain why political leaders are reported as not willing to communicate information about their personae. However, all other solutions related to both media reporting and leaders’ mediated communication, and also related to all examined dimensions of personalisation (person-, persona, and private persona-centred communication),

a combination of media and politically-related factors. This supports the hypotheses of those considering personalisation to be a complex phenomenon associated with a range of conditions that stem from both the political and media system (e.g. Downey

& Stanyer, 2010; Maier & Adam, 2010; Swanson & Mancini, 1996). Accordingly, these findings speak against theories suggesting that either political or media-related factors should be seen as main drivers of personalisation, since it appears as though the answer lies less in the either-or relationship, and more in the interaction between these two types of factors.

Secondly, it seems that the personalisation in leaders’ mediated communication is indeed more leader-specific than personalisation in media reporting, as was suggested before. Specifically, there are fewer causal paths explaining higher and lower degrees of all dimensions of personalisation in media reporting than in leaders’ mediated communication. This might mean that conditions associated with personalisation in media reporting are more durable or might have longer term influences, while different leaders (re)act to certain causal conditions as they see fit, and not by following the practices of their predecessors or other leaders working in similar conditions as they are.

Thirdly, some of the factors that were included based on the review of the communist and post-communist literature, such as the degree of authoritarianism in the society and the characteristics of a journalistic culture, were shown to be important. Specifically, findings revealed that a high degree of authoritarianism is connected to the higher degree of leaders’ person-centred communication, in both a communist and post-communist setting. In other words, it seems that there is some merit to the theory suggesting that leaders tend to put the focus on themselves rather than their parties because the society prefers strong leaders over strong institutions. In addition, the ways in which the characteristics of journalistic culture were connected to different dimensions of personalisation were also as expected based on existing theories. Specifically, the findings showed that both deferential and autonomous media can be connected to the person-centred media reporting and leaders’ mediated communication, arguably because deferential media in communism were putting the focus on the leader due to instructions from the political elite, and in post-communism because they were following media logic which is partly characterized by the focus on individuals rather than abstract collectives. Also, the analysis showed that autonomous journalistic culture, that in which the media act according to their own logic, are a necessary condition for the increased persona-centred media reporting. This means that autonomous media do indeed tend to focus more on leaders’ personae, perhaps because they consider

them more newsworthy. In addition, it was suggested in Chapter 5 that the media focused less on Tito’s persona and more on connecting things/issues/places with his name in order to create a perception of Tito’s omnipresence and importance in the society, in line with the leadership cult idea. The findings from fsQCA showed that deferential media were in communism connected with lower prominence of Tito’s persona. Hence, the deferential communist media can again be seen as participating in the building of Tito’s leader cult, although being only one of the factors that are connected to the degree of his persona-centred media reporting.

However, it is interesting to note that not all combinations of variables associated with the ways in which media reporting and leaders’ mediated communication was personalized in communism and post-communism differ significantly. On the contrary, some combinations of factors connected to personalisation in communism seem similar to those found in post-communism, or at least something that might be expected in democratic systems. For example, the low prominence of Tito’s private life in the media was connected to factors such as the weak tabloid and commercial sector, strong privacy and libel laws, lower degree of television reach etc. Somewhat surprisingly, deferential journalistic culture was not connected with this outcome. Hence, although the causal conditions connected to the same outcome in communism and post-communism usually differ, they are not completely different and the variables associated with personalisation in media and leaders’ mediated communication in communism are at times not that different from the factors connected to the same outcomes in post-communism.

Furthermore, in relation to the person-centred media reporting (i.e. the focus that is in the media content put on the leader instead on the collective such as a party or a government), this analysis highlighted some important relationships between political systems and the actors that work in them. Specifically, while the type of the political system is usually considered as one of the most important causal conditions contributing to the greater focus on the individual, this analysis shows that the political system is important mostly in relation to the position that the actor has in the system. In other words, Presidents are usually presented in a more person-centred way no matter whether they rule in a parliamentary or a presidential system, arguably because they are considered more powerful as individuals who do not depend greatly upon their parties. On the other hand, the media visibility of Prime Ministers can be seen as depending on the political system in which they operate since the analysis showed that party-centred media reporting is associated with Prime Ministerial positions only when the Prime Minister rules in a

is important to distinguish between political actors when the degree of person-centred media reporting in a certain system is measured and explained, especially if a system is characterized by dual leadership as many post-communist systems are. It also showed that the influence of the type of the political system should not be overstated, since it seems relevant only relative to the position that the political actor has in the system.

With relation to the persona-centred political communication, the often discussed influence of television reach was confirmed. Although there seems to be an agreement that the introduction of television has increased media’s focus on leaders’ personae, both the political and the private (Jamieson, 1988; Langer, 2011;

Maier & Adam, 2010; Meyer, 2002; Meyrowitz, 1985; Patterson, 1993), television reach is surprisingly rarely considered as a factor when explaining personalisation, perhaps because studies trying to explain personalisation look only at recent decades in which television was already a major media factor in established Western democracies. It was possible to examine the influence of television reach in this study given that only around 60% of Croatian people watched it in the 1970s (Robinson, 1977), so there was a significant growth in television reach.

Consequently, the analysis showed that the spread of television is a necessary factor connected to the increase in persona-centred media reporting. This shows support for theories formulated by Meyrowitz (1985) about the influence of television on the media exposure of politicians’ personae, and also on other media outlets, such as newspapers, that also adopted this kind of communication. Given that the solution which explains the causal conditions connected to the higher degrees of persona-centred leaders’ mediated communication in post-communism also includes widespread television reach, this analysis can be seen as also confirming the hypothesis put forward by Jamieson (1988) who claimed that politicians needed to adapt to the new media environment and this meant increasingly communicating information about their personae.

7.4. Conclusion

The aim of this chapter was to determine the ability of the new method in media studies, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, to explain trends in personalisation(s) in media reporting and leaders’ mediated communication that were observed in communist Yugoslavia and post-communist Croatia.

Although fsQCA is claimed to be able to reveal causality (Ragin & Rihoux, 2004a), its language connotes that the relationship between tested variables is one