In the television era, politics has become a TV show, broadcasted in primetime and watched live by various groups within the general public, between a day-time entertainment programme and the evening movie. Citizens have been transformed into passive viewers, and their involvement in political and media space is reduced to the vote itself and to the audience’s measurement. Highly receptive to this state of affairs, politicians seek no more their legitimacy inside political parties, but rather in TV studios. Political careers are no longer at stake within the parties; it’s rather one’s presence in the spotlight, that’s more susceptible to attract notoriety, being increasingly preferred to a party’s slow pace. One’s value as a politician is not automatically associated with experience; a telegenic aspect becomes a benchmark. Political actors play their role thinking less ideologically and more about the fact that any deviation from the rules imposed by television will quite likely lead to their own exclusion from the political life.
International Journal of Cross-Cultural Studies and Environmental Communication 