Alena Macková

A Winding Road from “Likes” to Votes

This case study analyzes the use of social media in the campaign for the historically first direct presidential elections in the Czech Republic in January 2013. Following a brief outline of the political context and outcomes of the elections, this study explores and compares the strategies of campaign communication of the nine presidential candidates on the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Apart from mapping the dynamics of the campaign and the responsiveness of Facebook and Twitter users, we have used content analysis to examine basic formal characteristics of over 1,000 messages posted on Facebook in the course of the campaign by the candidates and their teams. Additionally, this chapter also examines more closely the place of social media in the campaign of Karel Schwarzenberg, the eventual runner-up of the presidential race, whose team distanced all other candidates in both the extent as the level of sophistication of communication carried via the social networking sites. Overall, the presidential elections have revealed both the potential as well as limits of electoral mobilization through social networks, while at the same time it has demonstrated the continuing importance of more traditional means of campaign communication in the Czech Republic.

‘Žít Brno’: Czech online political activism from jokes and tactics to politics and strategies

The paper presents a case study of the Czech online activist group Žit Brno. The group that challenges local representatives and employs tactics of political satire, parody and culture jamming, evolved from a spontaneous one-off event to an ongoing political project and eventually became an institutionalized political actor. The case study, based on interviews with group members, content analysis of the project website, longitudinal observation of the groups activities and other additional material, enables us to research the limits and the potential of online tactics and the way online practices are intertwined with a more traditional repertoire of collective action. Building on debates about online political participation and the broadening concept of the political, we interpret the groups protest as a reaction to the crisis of institutionalized local politics and we discuss the actual role of new media in such a protest. The conclusion is that online protest and new media, despite their criticized action-less character, could enable a functional bridge to “real” politics but at the same time they do not play an exclusive role in successful protest politics and have to be interpreted within the context of a particular political action.

Nová média jako nástroj politické kampaně v České republice: případová studie krajských a senátních voleb 2012

Analýza založena na datech o uživani nových medii kandidaty v senatnich a krajských volbach v roce 2012 se zaměřenim na uživani socialnich medii (Facebook, Twitter a YouTube) a webových stranek kandidaty v těchto volbach. Výsledky ukazuji, že mladsi kandidati v regionalnich volbach tyto online nastroje uživaji extenzivněji než kandidati starsi. Obecně vsak byla v senatnich volbach tato media uživana vice. Nejcastěji kandidati v obou volbach využivali webove stranky a online socialni siť Facebook. V ramci velkých politických stran se mezi kandidaty nenasly přilisne rozdily, výjimkou jsou pouze kandidati KSCM, kteři tato media uživaji v kampani velmi sporadicky.

Euroscepticism the Czech way: An analysis of Václav Klaus’speeches

Research on political speeches is commonly undertaken in countries where the president has a powerful position, typically in the United States. In the Czech Republic, too, political speeches are an important instrument for influencing public opinion. Meanwhile, few politicians are so known for their fiercely held opinions on the European Union as former President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus; his speeches about the European Union are the subject of this article. Our research is based on quantitative and qualitative content analyses of the speeches posted on the former president’s website (http://www.klaus.cz) from 1995 until the end of his presidency in March 2013. Our goal was to identify the changes over time in how he spoke about the European Union, and whether and in what way his positions and vocabulary on the subject evolved.

Trust in alternative and professional media: The case of the youth news audiences in three European countries

Abstract This exploratory paper applying cross-cultural and developmental perspective analyses and discusses trust in alternative media and its relation to trust in professional media, seeking to identify the national specifics of media trust and its developmental patterns. Employing 2016 survey data of Czech, Estonian and Greek youth (aged 14–25, N = 3654) collected as part of the international CATCH-EyoU project (Horizon 2020), the study outlines the typology of media trust, comprising trust in alternative and professional media, and compares social and political predictors influencing media trust in the three countries. The study illustrates the diversity of relations between the two types of media trust, concluding that differences in selected predictors of media trust and the distribution of media trust types across national sub-samples illuminate the strong role national context plays, illustrating the varying pathways development of media trust follows in these varied contexts along socioeconomic and cultural lines.

Citizenship’s tangled web: Associations, gaps and tensions in formulations of European youth active citizenship across disciplines

Abstract How does academic literature across various disciplines conceptualize and empirically address active citizenship? What are the potential benefits and dangers of dominant epistemological and ideological perspectives on ‘good citizenship’? Our paper engages with these questions by drawing on literature across 12 disciplines. We used textual analysis software T-LAB to quantify and visualize co-occurrences, word associations and thematic clusters in the abstracts of 770 texts gathered by eight country teams and original in-depth qualitative analyses of ideological positions and discourses taken up in a selection of key texts across the corpus. Our paper elaborates the findings: that many of the key themes surrounding young people and citizenship in the literature share little or no connection with European citizenship; that there is a significant gap in the literature on young European citizens; and that studies connected to internal, status-based factors connected to citizenship are far more prevalent than those examining external, practice-based factors or dissidence and dissent. Our conclusions examine the potential normative implications of the disjuncture between dominant conceptions and critical accounts of youth active citizenship.

Interpreting hashtag politics: policy ideas in an era of social media, by Stephen Jeffares

At first glance, the title of this book can be confusing and misleading. Written by Stephen Jeffares, a lecturer in the School of Government and Society at the University of Birmingham, Interpretin...