Intimate Politics

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.

Review

'An extremely useful book for those who are interested in the world beyond the level of bar-room gossip.

' 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