Leaders first, countries after: Mediated political personalization in the international arena

This study is the first comparative analysis of mediated political personalization in the international arena; its contribution to the research in the field is twofold: (a) through a longitudinal analysis, it shows that media coverage of foreign countries focuses increasingly on state leaders rather than on the countries per se; and (b) it accounts for variations in the level of mediated political personalization between pairs of countries: the greater the distance between a pair of countries, in terms of values, political interests, economic relations, and geographical distance, the more their news coverage of each other focuses on the foreign country's leader at the expense of other political aspects.