The aim of this study was to find out how the war in Afghanistan is framed both in national and international context. This was conducted by comparing the national tv channel TOLOnews from Afghanistan with the international tv channel SVT Nyheter from Sweden. A qualitative text analysis as well as a semiotic photo analysis were implemented on four news articles and two photos from each channel respectively. Framing theory, agenda setting, and news values provided the theoretical background to be able to carry out the study. The significant findings of the study show that SVT Nyheter uses various secondary foreign sources for their articles in comparison to TOLOnews which uses only first-hand sources as can be expected of international and national tv channels. Furthermore, SVT Nyheter concentrates mostly on facts such as the number of people killed in attacks whereas TOLOnews concentrates more on the personal stories of the local people affected by the attacks. Finally, the study discusses what could be the underlying reasons of the findings of the study and thereby the differences of the framing of the war in Afghanistan by the two tv channels.

The Thesis deals with two issues closely associated with the end of life. It explores the reasons and attitudes of healthcare workers, legislators and general public who are supporting implementation of euthanasia in the Czech legislation. The key impulse for taking up this issue as the topic of the Thesis was initiation of its discussion by and under the guidance of Zlatuška on the proposal of the "act on dignified death". Additionally, the meeting stirred by Hamerský held in the Parliament on March 8, 2017 became another impetus for the work. As is elucidated further, activities of Hamerský, the assistant to Zlatuška, whose name is mentioned in the Thesis quite often, are closely related to the explored topic. The Thesis tries to unveil the exact reasons of the key actors and supporters for inducing some form of legislatively covered euthanasia, namely whether their effort is based on their true conviction. We will consider possible consequences should the euthanasia be introduced to the Czech legislation and analyse the reasons which lead to final rejection of the proposed act. The closing part of the Thesis will describe qualitative research done as an unstructured interview with two groups of physicians differing in the length of their medical practice by several years. Medical profession has...

The doctoral thesis focuses on the People's Republic of China's influence in international relations. It follows two main research objectives, a theoretical and an empirical one. The first goal is to more firmly establish the concept of influence and distinguish it from power, the second is to analyze China's influence in the Czech Republic before, during and after the 'restart' of Czech-China relations in 2012. The thesis rests on the idea of a conceptual 'filter' through which power (conceptualized as ability) passes on its way to becoming influence. As a result, the effects of policies implemented by an actor who aims to exert a power on another actor are co-dependent not only on its power, but also the perception of the actor which is being influenced. The thesis claims that in case of a significant distance (defined geographically or otherwise) between 'the sender' and 'the receiver', perception matters more as it has greater ability to amplify or decrease the effects of the sender's power - i.e. the influence. The latter objective aims at explaining the methods the People's Republic of China uses to impose its interests on others and the receivers' reactions to such efforts. The thesis uses a case study of the Czech Republic as a country where China's influence is just getting established and...

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to theoretically sound concept of Peace Journalism, which combines theoretical foundations from two spheres: conflict and peace studies and media studies. Influence of journalists as intervening force and explaining factor with regard to (violent) conflict is neglected. However, Peace Journalism is not theoretically strong and builds upon dualistic definition vis-á-vis so-called War Journalism. The concept of Peace Journalism has to overcome this delamination in order to reflect theoretical underpinnings of conflict transformation theory and conflict analysis. Moreover, Peace Journalism has to differentiate media according to an involvement of given societies in a conflict. This offers an opportunity to specifically and accurately analyse news coverage of conflicts. Case studies analysing Czech coverage of Cyprus and Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts illustrates this approach. The coverage is essentially flat, distorts a reality of the conflict, pays attention to visual and physical aspects of the conflict and closes the conflicts in arbitrary time boundaries.

The thesis deals with the election of the Director General of Czech Television in 2017. The topic is viewed from the perspective of the media agenda of print and online media. The researched media was chosen by the key of the highest readership in the period from the beginning of January to the end of April 2017. The thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical part deals with the specifics of the effects of media, which categorizes into three types. Furthermore, the theory mentions the concept agenda-setting, which belong to the long-term effects of the media, and which includes the examined media agenda. The theory also defines the concepts of public service and public service media, related terms and basic legal anchoring. The theoretical part also presents the Czech Television institution and its supervisory body, which elects the General Director, the Council of Czech Television. The practical part, through the analysis of news outputs that were published for the election in the defined period, using quantitative content analysis and qualitative analysis of the frameworks, shows how the choice was displayed in the media environment and what topics it raised. The quantitative part defines the codes that were most frequent in the news output. The qualitative part...

Topic of the thesis is the image of Czech far-right parties in Czech media prior to Elections to Chamber of Deputies in 2017. Aim of the thesis is to investigate how media displays far-right parties prior to the Elections in 2017, what the topics of media coverage are in regards of far- right and how the topics changed in the Elections in 2017 comparing with Elections in 2013. Using quantitative content analysis and theory of agenda-setting the thesis monitors texts with far-right topics in national daily newspapers Mladá fronta DNES, Lidové noviny, Právo and Hospodářské noviny in the periods prior to the Elections to Chamber of Deputies in 2017 and 2013. Author also uses qualitative analysis of opinion texts based on theory of framing. The parties followed in thesis are chosen based on definition of far-right by Cas Mudde and definition of right wing populism by Hans-Georg Betz. In the period prior to the Elections in 2017 the followed parties are: Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti; ROZUMNÍ - stop migraci a diktátu EU - peníze našim občanům, důchodcům, dětem, zdravotně postiženým; Svoboda a přímá demokracie - Tomio Okamura; Blok proti islamizaci - Obrana domova; Sdružení pro republiku - Republikánská strana Československa Miroslava Sládka and Řád národa - Vlastenecká unie. In the period prior...

This diploma thesis investigates the evolution of news coverage of water-related issues in the Czech daily press from 2014 to 2019. Its theoretical part describes the relationship between mass media and the environment. The characteristics of environmental news are explained more in detail and in the context of environmental topics' features, journalistic routines, news normative demands and economic pressure in the media industry. The topic of the thesis is linked to the media theories about news values, gatekeeping, agenda-setting and framing as well. There is also a review of the studies examining news coverage of the environment and a brief description of the water management situation in the Czech Republic. The methodical part introduces the research goal and previous studies which were used as a base for the method in this paper. The results of the content analysis enabled to describe the news about water issues quantitatively and to explain its features and development according to the theoretical framework and previous findings. This thesis concluded that Czech dailies do not treat the topic of water issues as very important, they are event-oriented, dependent on the official sources and focused on risk-related topics. This can limit public awareness of the problem with decreasing water...

The thesis provides an insight into corporate agenda-building process in the Czech media. Using the Czech division of Deloitte as an example, the thesis will demonstrate the common practices companies use to get their topics published in media, how they are successful and how they really influence the media agenda. To answer these questions, the thesis uses quantitative content analysis of 248 pieces of news from Mladá Fronta DNES, Hospodářšké noviny, Lidové noviny, Právo, television stations ČT24, Nova and Prima and also radio station Český rozhlas - Radiožurnál. Besides that, the thesis will provide an insight into the way journalists work with sources of information and their autoregulative techniques, as well as into the work of PR professionals, who are significant actors in the agenda-building process. The aim of this thesis is to introduce the corporate sphere as an influential actor in the agenda-building process and to uncover the influences journalists have to face in their work.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of first- and second-level agenda setting as well as issue ownership in the 2020 Democratic primary debates and whether there is a relationship between using strategies based on these theories and qualifying for future debates. The study seeks to answer three research questions: What is the relationship, if any, between a candidate whose statements focused primarily on the three issues considered most important by the public according to opinion polls and whether this candidate qualified for future debates? How did candidates use frames to redraw the attention of issues? What is the relationship, if any, between the extent to which a candidate’s statements discussed performance issues more than Republican-owned or Democratic-owned issues and whether this candidate qualified for future debates? The study draws mainly on the first and second level of the agenda setting theory, as well as the theory of issue ownership, and analyzes what issues candidates focus on, what attributes of these issues they emphasize, and whether they discuss performance issues like the economy or foreign policy more than issues owned by either the Republican or the Democratic Party. Through a quantitative content analysis of four candidates’ (Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, & Andrew Yang) statements from three of the eleven primary debates held in the 2020 primary process, the study found no direct relationship between focusing on the public’s three most important issues and qualifying for future debates. Similarly, no such relationship was found between emphasizing certain attributes and qualifying for future debates, although the results suggest that candidates may have benefited from avoiding framing issues economically, which concurs with previous findings (Boydstun, Glazier, & Pietryka, 2013a; Boydstun, Glazier, & Phillips, 2013) and supports Vavreck’s (2009) theory that insurgent candidates should not emphasize the economy. Findings also demonstrated the contrasting ways three of the candidates framed the same issues, where Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar tended to emphasize economic frames when discussing Medicare while Bernie Sanders emphasized effectiveness. Lastly, the findings support previous research on issue ownership since findings showed that most candidates discussed Democratic-owned issues more than other issues, while the eventual presidential nominee, Joe Biden, overall discussed performance issues more than issues owned by either party. This suggests that focusing on such issues may be beneficial for challenging candidates during an election cycle where the sitting president has been criticized for not being able to handle the job. Thus, no direct relationship could be found in the case of RQ1 or RQ2 but discussing performance issues the most overall may have benefited one candidate, suggesting there is a relationship in the case of RQ3. / Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka förekomsten av första och andra nivån av dagordningsteorin samt av issue ownership i Demokraternas primärdebatter 2020 och huruvida det finns någon relation mellan att använda strategier baserade på dessa teorier och att kvalificera sig för framtida debatter. Studien undersöker tre frågeställningar: Vad är relationen, om någon, mellan en kandidat vars uttalanden under debatterna fokuserade främst på de tre frågor som väljarna ansåg var viktigast enligt opinionsundersökningar och huruvida denna kandidat kvalificerade sig för framtida debatter? Hur använde kandidaterna ”frames” för att kontrollera diskussionen kring frågor? Vad är relationen, om någon, mellan den utsträckning en kandidats uttalanden under debatterna diskuterade så kallade ”performance issues” mer än frågor ägda av det republikanska eller demokratiska partiet och huruvida denna kandidat kvalificerade sig för framtida debatter? Studien bygger huvudsakligen på den första och andra nivån av dagordningsteorin, liksom teorin om issue ownership, och analyserar vilka frågor kandidaterna fokuserar på, vilka attribut de betonar när de talar om dessa frågor och om de diskuterar performance issues såsom ekonomi eller utrikespolitik mer än frågor som ägs av antingen republikanska eller demokratiska partiet. Genom en kvantitativ innehållsanalys av fyra kandidaters (Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar och Andrew Yang) uttalanden från tre av de elva primärdebatterna som hölls under primärprocessen 2020 fann studien ingen direkt relation mellan att fokusera på de tre frågor som väljarna ansåg var viktigast och att kvalificera sig för framtida debatter. Det hittades inte heller någon sådan relation mellan att betona vissa attribut och att kvalificera sig för framtida debatter, även om resultaten tyder på att kandidater kan ha haft nytta av att undvika att betona ekonomiska attribut, vilket överensstämmer med tidigare resultat (Boydstun, Glazier, & Pietryka, 2013a; Boydstun, Glazier, & Phillips, 2013) och stöttar Vavrecks (2009) teori att så kallade ”insurgent candidates” drar nytta av att inte diskutera ekonomin mer än nödvändigt. Resultaten visade också hur olika kandidaternas inramning av en specifik fråga var, då Joe Biden och Amy Klobuchar hade en tendens att betona ekonomiska attribut när de talade om frågor gällande Medicare medan Bernie Sanders fokuserade mer på effektivitetsattribut.  Slutligen stöder studien tidigare forskning om issue ownership då resultaten visade på att de flesta kandidater diskuterade frågor ägda av det demokratiska partiet mer än andra frågor, medan den kandidat som slutligen skulle få det demokratiska partiets presidentsnominering, Joe Biden, totalt sett diskuterade performance issues mer än frågor ägda av något av partierna. Detta tyder på att ett fokus på sådana frågor kan vara till nytta för att utmanande kandidater under en valcykel där den sittande presidenten har kritiserats för sin hantering av arbetet. Således kunde ingen direkt relation hittas när det gällde RQ1 eller RQ2, men resultaten tyder på att en kandidat kan ha gynnats av att diskutera performance issues mest över lag, vilket i sig tyder på att det finns en relation gällnade RQ3.

"Changes of Media Representation of Agriculture in Press" This diploma thesis is focused on the changes in teh media representation of agriculture in the Czech press on the example of two national dailies - Hospodářské noviny and Právo. The study uses a quantitative research method, content analysis, to detect changes in both the final representation of farmers and mechanisms of news construction in the period from the early 90 of the 20 century to today. The theoretical part presents a brief development of agriculture, basic principles of the media studies theory and mechanisms of news construction (agenda setting, work with information sources, the news values concept, the framing concept). The analysis examines the media attention that is devoted to agriculture but also the use of mechanisms of news construction and the change of representation of farmers in the press. Key words: agriculture; farmers; mechanisms of news construction; content analysis; media representation; agenda setting