ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a tentative political concept, "media style," which could be used to define the way in which a political actor builds his image in the media for the purpose of projecting this image onto a mass audience. The "media style" concept could also be utilized to define any themes in the leader's message or actions that might be consistent with a particularly specific theory emanating from the classic literature of political science, which could be obvious in the leader's use of dramatic techniques. The chapter illuminates and defines, through a case study, the media strategies of one of television's first symbolic leaders and issue advocates, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. As scholars broach the issues of significance about modern day symbolic leadership, it argues that it is the leader's media style—his interactions with the media to convey his message—that essentially shapes, molds, and casts the symbolic image of the individual leader onto the public mind.
