The purpose of this study is to investigate the constructed vision of social reality that the Sweden Democrats define and thus defend and legitimizes through their climate and environmental policy. With a focus on the power relations that are constitutive of the Sweden Democrats' definition of social reality, the intention is to clarify the Sweden Democrats' position on the issue of climate change and to make visible what underlies their actions concerning the ratification of the Paris Agreement. To achieve the purpose, critical discourse analysis is used as a method where political documents concerning the Sweden Democrats' climate, environment, and energy policy during the period 2018-2021 constitute the empirical material. The results show that the Sweden Democrats' definition of climate change is both ambiguous and ambivalent, where Sweden's self-image and Swedish interests are prioritized over climate measures. The result also shows that the Sweden Democrats' definition of climate change is constituted by underlying power relations to preserve the power of the nation-state and the subordinate position of developing countries. One conclusion that can be drawn is to reduce the Sweden Democrats to just being climate change deniers is to simplify because their attitude to climate change is characterized by ambivalence and self-interest rather than skepticism and denial. Another conclusion is that the Sweden Democrats' attitude to climate change is more about defending and preserving existing power relations and less about questioning the existence of climate change. A third conclusion that can be drawn is that the Sweden Democrats' action regarding the Paris Agreement is more about opposing a social change that entails increased equality and about legitimizing the nation state's continued relevance in a globalized world, and less about opposing the content and implementation of the Paris Agreement.

This diploma thesis is focused on the analysis of the political communication of two politicians in the Czech Republic: from the "ANO 2011" was chosen Andrej Babiš, and for the "SPD" was chosen, Tomio Okamura. The communication of selected politicians was examined on the social network "Facebook", which is the most commonly used social network among Czech politicians. The above-mentioned politicians use the new internet platforms relatively more than other politicians. Therefore, the author of this diploma thesis assumes that there will be in their communication present some new forms of political communication. Based on the defined criteria, which arose from the theoretical part of the thesis, a detailed analysis of the political communication of both politicians is performed and then compared. The political communication was examined based on the content of posts, the sound of shared posts, the form of the communication, the relevance of the shared messages, and the argumentation strategy. The shared posts were also assessed whether they are populist and if there are elements of personalization in the communication of Andrej Babiš and Tomio Okamura. This work aims to find out whether the elements defined above are used in the Facebook communication of the above-mentioned politicians.

[pt] Este projeto se insere no campo da Comunicação Política e tem como objetivo realizar uma análise comparada das mensagens veiculadas no Twitter por Jair Bolsonaro e Andrés Manuel López Obrador durante as últimas eleições presidenciais do Brasil e do México. Espera-se, assim, contribuir com os estudos do populismo na América Latina e com a discussão sobre como atores políticos populistas fazem campanhas eleitorais no contexto das regiões estudadas, se atentando, em especial, aos usos dados às oportunidades comunicacionais oferecidas pelos ambientes digitais. Primeiro, será apresentada uma contextualização teórica sobre o populismo, passando pela definição do conceito, pelo desenvolvimento histórico do populismo latino-americano e pela compreensão do populismo enquanto fenômeno comunicacional. Na sequência, o método de análise qualitativa de conteúdo informado pela teoria dos enquadramentos e utilizado neste trabalho será apresentado. Por fim, os resultados encontrados serão discutidos a partir de seus contextos e da teoria do populismo. / [en] This project belongs to the field of Political Communication and aims to do an comparative analysis of the messages posted on Twitter by Jair Bolsonaro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador during the last presidential elections in Brazil and Mexico. It is expected, therefore, to contribute to the studies of populism in Latin America and to the discussion on how populist political actors carry out electoral campaigns in the context of the studied regions, paying special attention to the uses given to the communication opportunities offered by digital environments. First, a theoretical contextualization of populism will be presented, passing through the definition of the concept, the historical development of Latin American populism and the understanding of populism as a communicational phenomenon. Next, the qualitative content analysis method informed by the framework theory and used in this work will be presented. Finally, the results found will be discussed through their contexts and the theory of populism.

This thesis investigates how a change in the municipal asylum seeker share affects voting for the Sweden Democrats (SD), a far-right anti-immigration party, in both national Parliament and Municipal Council elections in Sweden. To circumvent the endogeneity problem, I use an instrumental variables strategy where the share of available apartments in Allmännyttan is used as an instrument for the municipal share of asylum seekers living in Migration Agency provided accommodation (ABO). I have exploited municipal level panel data on municipality characteristics, allocations of asylum seekers and national elections. I am not able to find support for any effect of a change in the municipal share of asylum seekers on voting for the Sweden Democrats. Consequently, I cannot provide any support for either the group position theory or the contact hypothesis.

This diploma thesis analyzes the coalition ties that have been established within the anti- Islamic scene in the Czech Republic. The analysis includes the most important counter- Islamic entities in the Czech Republic, namely the National Democracy, the Workers' Party of Social Justice, Dusk and its followers, and the Bloc against Islam and its followers. The theoretical basis of the thesis is the theory of coalitions. The aim of the thesis is to answer the questions why the anti-Islamic subjects of the coalition or other forms of co-operation follow up and why they do not follow them, even if they are offered because of their situation. Another aim of the thesis is to point out the possibility of using part of the theoretical approaches of the theory of coalition with certain modifications to the specific environment of the anti-Islamic scene in the Czech Republic, which is quite different from the national environment, for which the concepts of coalition theory were predominantly created. The thesis is divided into two parts. The theoretical part introduces theoretical concepts and approaches that have been used in the work. The second, empirical, part presents the development of individual subjects and, above all, the established coalition ties and cooperation. The last chapter summarizes the...

The increasing popularity of populist parties in Europe, demonstrated in particular by their electoral success, is attracting increasing attention from the academic community. Although the phenomenon of populism is nothing new and has already been reviewed from a number of different perspectives, it still represents a diverse field for deeper analysis. The thesis deals with the case of the French National Front and its changes during its most successful election campaigns, that is in the presidential elections in 2002 and 2017. Specifically, the thesis also focuses on political communication and especially on the change it has gone through at its management level. By comparing the performance of both leaders and their agenda, the work allows a closer insight into the problem of transforming the ideological base as well as the ways of political communication. The outcome of this work is the analysis comparing the election campaign of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine, the current party leader. The work also contributes to the debate around dédiabolisation, or the de-demonization of the National Front launched under the leadership of Marine Le Pen.

(in English): This thesis deals with the phenomenon of populism on examples from contemporary France. Regarding the complexity of the concept and also the fact that scholars couldn't find a consensus on its definition, the author decided to examine it through Ernesto Laclau`s theory of populism which centers the construction of the people. Being oriented in French modern history and politics, the author chose for her analysis the current political movements - La France Insoumise and the National Front, which are discourses are centered on the construction of the people. Within the period between 2016 and 2018, she observed the way in which the notion of the people was constructed by the main representatives of both movements (especially the chairman of the National Front Marine Le Pen and the chairman of La France Insoumise Jean-Luc Mélenchon) with the aim to trace whether these movements differed and what role their leaders played. To illustrate her discourse analysis, the author conducted several semi-structured interviews with activists of the investigated movements and participated in organized public events. She concludes that there exists a difference between the construction of the people by National Front and by La France Insoumise same as their leaders often disagree with its activist...

In the last decade, we have witnessed a new stage in the mainstreaming and normalization pro­cess of populist radical right policies and ideas in the Western world. This has resulted in in­creasing politicization of issues related to immigration. In Sweden, this politicization took off when the radical right-wing populist (RRP) party the Sweden Democrats (SD) was voted into the parliament in 2010. Even though the party was isolated by the mainstream parties, its presence in the parliament still contributed to the politi­cization for a long time. Additionally, increased “gang”-related shootings have pushed the po­liticization even further since the shootings in the public and political discourse have often been connected to immigration. Apart from this, certain mainstream right-wing parties, especially the Moderates (M) and the Christian Democrats (KD), have questioned the isolation of SD lately, which led to the presentation of a collaboration between the three parties in the fall of 2021. With this collaboration as a background, the aim of this study is to show the particular roles M and KD play in the process of mainstreaming and normalization of the RRP discourse, espe­cially related to immigration and its alleged connection to criminality. The study draws on crit­ical discourse analysis of political and public discourse in the context of RRP to analyze how M, KD, and SD construct themes and arguments around immigration, immigrants, and crimi­nality on their official Facebook pages. The study argues that there is an ongoing process of normalization of RRP policy and ideas in Swedish public and political discourse. Largely, SD is the strategical enacting actor in this pro­cess. How­ever, both M and KD take part in the process by contributing to gradually changing the existing discourse on immigration towards new forms and new norms. This is conducted by employing strategies, concepts, and rhetoric well-known from RRP discourse.

In this paper, the question of whether Christian preaching is implicated in the growing movement of populism is posed. The paper has identified three critical issues that call for investigation in homiletical hermeneutics. The first issue addresses the problem of biblical interpretation for homiletic practice. The second issue has to do with the impact of social media that often distorts the truth. Alarming dependence on the smart phone suggests that the task of the preacher in this rapidly changing visual and high tech culture is to deliver sermons that are critically aware of visual culture rather than literary culture. Finally, the paper calls for an approach to preaching that seeks to reveal missing, hidden and distorted truth as a way to speak against the demonic power of the profit-driven capitalism and the epidemic of gender-based violence against women and sexual minorities.

This essay researches the link between populism and political trust by comparing the development of these two phenomena in Sweden and Italy. Populism is defined as a political strategy in which one appeals to the people and uses anti-establishment rhetoric. The purpose of the study is to analyze if voters that are less politically trustful are also more prone to vote for anti-establishment populist candidates. By using a temporal comparative analysis with a historical perspective in mind, the development and linkage of political trust and populism is analyzed in the cases’ most recent four elections.  The Swedish case is distinguished by relatively high levels of political trust but have in the latest decade seen an ever-growing proportion of their electorate turning to the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats. Italy, comparatively, is currently distinguished for low levels of political trust and has seen populist politicians thrive in the electorate ever since the 1990s ‘Mani Pulite’ scandal, and over a majority voted for the two populist parties Lega Nord and Five Star movement. The main research findings suggest that political trust, while not being a crucial determinant for contemporary populist successes, certainly helps populist parties gain attention and attraction. It also shows indications that the relation between populism and political trust can go in two directions. Sweden resembles a case where increased support for the SD have led to decreased political trust. In contrast, Italy’s political scandals, volatile voters and drastic decreases in political trust seems to have sparked increased support for populists.