Roman Hájek

Faithful confidants or fickle coat-changers? Audience's perceptions of celebrities in political campaigns before the first direct presidential election in the Czech Republic

As the first of its kind, the direct vote for the Czech presidency in 2013 was an exceptional event. In terms of political campaigning, an interesting aspect of the election was in the unprecedentedly high involvement of celebrities. Based on data from focus group research, the aim of this article is to analyse audiences’ perceptions of, and attitudes towards, the presence of celebrities in the campaign. Using Bourdieu’s field theory, two different attitudes of the respondents towards the blending of the field of politics with the field of popular culture are identified – the strict rejection of this blending and its acceptance as part of the contemporary conditions of political communication. Furthermore, differences in audience’s perception between the inhabitants of different localities are explored with attention to their possible impacts on people’s trust in celebrities’ political behaviour and in the functioning of politics as such.

Alternative mainstream media in the Czech Republic: beyond the dichotomy of alterative and mainstream media

The notion of alternative media is confronted with endless discussions about its key features and practices, which allow academics and media practitioners to differentiate alternative media from mainstream media. This article critically contributes to this debate by deconstructing and complicating the dichotomy between alternative and mainstream media. In a first part, the defining components of alternative media are discussed, looking at their relationship with the social context, their content and their organizational structure. At the same time, some of the tensions embedded in the concept of alternative media are laid bare. In the second part of the article we present an analysis of three local Czech magazines which are perceived and labelled by their publishers as ‘alternative’, though, as we show, they hardly meet the criteria described by alternative media theory. The ambiguity in the alternativeness of these media organizations not only raises questions about their labels (and whether we should accept their self-definitions), but more importantly also raises the issue how alternative media theory can deal with this type of organization. Instead of describing these media as hybrid, we suggest that they remain positioned within the category of mainstream media, though at the same time they are different from the ideal-typical conceptualization of mainstream media. The notion of alternative mainstream media is proposed, together with a plea for alternative media theory to protect the alternative media signifier more and to further unpack the notion of mainstream media.

Immunophenotyping in Multiple Myeloma and Others Monoclonal Gammopathies

Clonal plasma cell disorders (PCD) including mostly monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and multiple myeloma (MM) are characterised by expansion of abnormal (clonal) plasma cells (PCs) producing monoclonal protein (M-protein, MIG). Although multiparametric flow cytometry (MFC) allows identification and characterisation of these neoplastic PCs, this approach is used in routine diagnostics of monoclonal gammopathies (MGs) complementarily, mostly in unusual cases. The technological development of flow cytometry (FC) in connection with new findings reveal the need for MFC in clinical analysis of MGs. The main applications of immunophenotypisation in MGs are (1) differential diagnosis, (2) determining the risk of progression in MGUS and asymptomatic MM (aMM), (3) detection of minimal residual disease in treated patients with MM, and (4) analysis of prognostic and/or predictive markers. MFC is also very useful also for research analyses focused on different aspects of B and plasma cell (PC) pathophysiology in term of MG development as well as in looking for potential myeloma-initiating cells. MFC thus should be included as a routine assay in monoclonal gammopathy patients. Clinical significance, usefulness and examples of MFC analyses in MGs are reviewed in this chapter.

Regulatory Cells and Multiple Myeloma

Large evidence is available in hematological malignancies and solid tumors for elevated level of various regulatory and suppressor cells which impede anti-tumor responses. Therefore, targeting the regulatory cells could be a useful strategy to enhance the anti-tumor immunity. Approaches of depletion or inhibition of regulatory cells showed countable benefits in pre-clinical and clinical studies of some cancers including renal cell carcinoma, metastatic melanoma and colorectal carcinoma. Targeting regulatory T cells in a non-specific approach might cause detrimental autoimmune toxicities which is the key issue. Further studies are necessary to identify tumor associated regulatory cells which will enhance the depletion of specific regulatory cells but not the global population of regulatory cells.

The Ukraine conflict and the European media: A comparative study of newspapers in 13 European countries:

The crisis in Ukraine was one of the dominant topics in international news coverage of 2014 and the following years. Representing a conflict along the lines of an East-Western confrontation unprecedented since the end of the Cold War, the news reporting in different European countries with different historical backgrounds is an essential research topic. This article presents findings of a content analysis examining coverage of the conflict in the first half of 2014 in newspapers from a diverse set of 13 countries: Albania, Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as Ukraine and Russia. Drawing on prior literature on news values, key events, and news cycles in foreign coverage, this study maps the evolution of the conflict in the course of four key events and identifies specific characteristics of the coverage in different newspapers. The results show that attention for the conflict varies considerably across the countries, which might be traced back to different degrees of geographical and cultural proximity, domestication, and economic exchange, as well as lack of editorial resources especially in Eastern Europe. Russia dominated the news agenda in all newspapers under study with a constant stream of conflict news. Contradicting prior literature, media sought to contextualise the events, and meta-coverage of the media’s role in the crisis emerged as a relevant topic in many countries with a developed media system.