Despite personalization continuing to be an often postulated phenomenon both in political and communication studies, only few studies so far have attempted to overcome the vast divergence of findings provided by the majority of (predominantly cross-sectional, single-country) studies. This paper answers to some of the most often posed methodological and explanatory questions unresolved in personalization research: Whether and under which conditions personalization in a specific realm (media, campaign, voting, or a mix or all of the former) would be increasing, remains a puzzle and can only be clarified by research carried out in a framework providing for 1) coherence in measurement and for 2) a causal explanation going beyond references to macro-processes (usually: modernization, medialization). Necessarily, such analysis requires a longitudinal and comparative perspective. Focussing on the realm of media personalization, this paper conceptualizes the phenomenon along five-dimensions (presence, accentuation, centrality, detachment, de-politicized portrayal) as a dynamic artefact of a news culture’s ‘commercialism’ which varies along structural contexts of the respective political communication system. Case selection for this study allows testing this hypothesis. The paper builds on original data from a comparative content analysis carried out on a 1980-2009 sample of British, Dutch, German, Italian, and U.S. national daily newspapers (comprising quality and tabloid papers and campaign and routine coverage). Results address the questions of a) how (and how uniformly across cases) media personalization is developing and b) to which extent media personalization dynamics can be explained by differences in news culture.
