"Doe nou maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg!"

In a vital democracy, the news media play a pivotal role between the electorate and their representatives in the parliament. The last few decades there’s much to do about these news media, because due to the highly competitive news market, they more and more seem to be interested in reaching their commercial goals, instead of informing the public to warrant the public interest. This results in framing political news in a sensational and personalised way, which is one of the three characteristics of medialogic. In most western democracies, as for the Netherlands, there seems to be an ongoing personalization of politics. Preliminary research on this topic is mostly based on analyzing media content, without researching the people that this topic is about, namely politicians. The objective of this thesis is to gain insight in the dynamics of press and politics, by researching what role politicians themselves play in this process of personalization. Fourteen (former) members of the Dutch parliament took part in in-depth interviews. The research question was: How do Dutch politicians view personalization and how do they respond to it? Dutch politicians are aware of personalization, which they see as a ‘political reality’. They try to stay away from sharing personal information, because it makes politicians vulnerable. Moreover they find that politics is not about the politicians, but about the issues. Politicians see personalization as a media practice, of which politicians and electorates are ‘victims’ because of the simplified coverage of political news. Politicians feel that the only way to reserve their public profile is to be strategic in their participation in media items and to be well prepared for these performances. This is needed to contain an ‘ideal’ profile of a politician who is decisive, upright, authentic and recognizable for the public.