Charismatic skill and media legitimacy: An actor-centered approach to understanding the political communication competition

The charismatic skill approach developed here attempts to fill a theoretical and methodological lacuna in political communication through analyzing the competition in the political communication arena from the point of view of political actors. In a situation of an accelerated process of personalization, this approach examines the resources that help political actors pursue their goal in this arena. This goal is defined as achieving media legitimacy, which represents the success of the actors in obtaining access to the media and controlling media framing. It is hypothesized that charismatic and political resources of actors can explain media legitimacy. This hypothesis was strongly supported after it was tested on 95 members of the Israeli Knesset.