This study develops and tests the hypothesis that physically attractive politicians receive more news coverage. The physical attractiveness of Members of the 16th Israeli Knesset (MKs) was assessed by students abroad, who did not know they were evaluating Israeli politicians. The number of times each member appeared on national television news at the time of study was obtained and used as a measure of television news coverage. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that, over and above controls for a host of factors, the physical attractiveness of the MKs was associated with their coverage in television news.

Media coverage plays an important role in the political career of politicians. The news media attention that politicians receive depends not only on political and socio-demographic variables, but also on their communication skills and personal characteristics such as physical appearance. This study explores the effect of facial attractiveness on the tone of the televised news coverage of Israeli parliament members. Results demonstrate a positive association between facial attractiveness and the overall coverage. In addition, each unit increase on the attractiveness scale was associated with an increase of 34 percent in the expected number of favorable appearances on TV news, but this association was slightly above the accepted 0.05 criterion for hypothesis testing. There was no significant effect of facial attractiveness on unfavorable or neutral coverage. These findings are interpreted. Implications for journalistic practices, political consultants, and access to the public sphere are discussed.

This chapter presents a critical discussion of the symbiosis between media and politics in Israel. Theoretically, the Israeli media operate in a pluralistic, democratic, and advanced sociopolitical climate, but in fact most of the media suffer from fragmentation, economic instability, and heavy political pressures. These elements are reflected, for example, in homogeneous news supply, massive cross-ownership, and recently by increasing governmental intervention. These elements have rapidly invaded social and online media as well. The first section of this chapter offers an overview of the structural, political, and economic characteristics of the Israeli news media. The second part outlines characteristics of the Israeli media coverage of political news, election campaigns, and political satire, such as framing, mediatization, negativity, personalization, and political bias.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of politicians’ facial attractiveness on their online popularity as reflected in audience engagement with their Facebook posts during the 2015 Israeli election campaign. Design/methodology/approach Using Israel’s 2015 election campaign as the case study, the authors analyzed all messages posted (n=501) on 33 politicians’ official Facebook pages during the week leading to Election Day. Findings The results demonstrate that audiences do engage more with posts of the more facially attractive politicians. These posts generated more shares, more comments and more participants in their discussions – but not more likes – relative to posts of less attractive politicians. These effects became even stronger when the posts were accompanied by one or more visual image, and remained significant even after controlling for other engagement predictors, such as a politician’s gender, seniority or the timing of a post’s publication. Social implications The findings emphasize the importance of attractive looks for politicians. The findings highlight that attractive politicians’ posts attract more attention, allowing them to better spread their ideas. Thus, politicians should aim to post aesthetic images and visuals to promote better engagement with their ideas on social media. Originality/value The study expands our understanding of online presentations of politicians, focusing on the effect of politicians’ facial attractiveness on their online popularity. Recent studies have demonstrated that physically attractive politicians enjoy more and better media attention on television news, but not in non-visual media such as radio and newspapers. This effect has not been examined in the social media environment, a central arena for today’s political debates and one that involves many visual messages.