This dissertation thesis follows from a wide stream of considerations of the relationship between the mass media, public and politics; in particular detail, it deals with a specific concept which attempts to grasp, model and empirically examine this relationship. The main goals of the thesis can be in short divided into two interrelated areas. The first aim is to introduce the concept of agenda setting to the Czech academic environment, with its theoretical, terminological and research frame for an analysis of relationships between the mass media content, dynamics of public opinion, and the political sphere. The second aim is to analyze how agenda setting processes are theoretically grounded and studied in the Czech social studies. The theoretical part of the thesis is structured according to two perspectives: diachronic and synchronic. In the diachronic perspective, I try to grasp the social context and historical origins of agenda-setting as a concept, its development, main trends, and developmental lines. This way, I move forward to the synchronic perspective and describe academic grounding of agenda-setting; I give a detailed analysis of the present level of the agenda-setting research and the main research areas through available classifications. The second fundamental area of the dissertation consists...

Master Thesis "Criteria for selection of news from the European Parliament into the Czech media" deals with the factors that affect the classification of reports about events in the European Parliament in the Czech print and online journals as well as defining characteristics that are typical for these reports. In the theoretical part presents political and media communication and logic and goes to the main concepts of news production, such as agenda setting, framing and priming. This Thesis is also about media and intermedia agenda and presents the information already known concerning the relationship between the European Union and the media. Research is a part of practical section. It's aim is to map by content analysis the characteristics typical for reporting about the European Parliament as a specific institution of the European Union. Further aim is the verification of assumptions based on previously conducted research abroad focusing on the theme of the EU. Trying to better determine what characters show mass media content which is to the Czech public the main source of information about European structures by large extends. The Thesis also tries to answer the question often discussed the lack of presentation of the European agenda in news media agendas, the communities of the European Union...

This study is a critical analysis of translation-mediated Arabic news items on the “Arab Spring”. It explores the influence of social, historical, political, localic, and socio-ideological aspects of news translation via certain media agendas, by applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and qualitative descriptive methods in the analysis of the localised news items, interviews with translators, and a corpus of comments by the Arabic-speaking readership. The data analysed in this case study comprise a four-year (2010-2014) collection of news items that were localised by Al Jazeera and published on its website, as well as readers’ commentaries on said localisations, and interviews with two of Al Jazeera’s translators. Making use of this rich source of data, this study aims at finding answers for the questions: Are there discernible patterns in the translated texts? If so, how and for what purpose are they produced and re-produced through localisation in Al Jazeera’s translation-mediated Arabic news articles? Whose interests are served and whose interests are annulled by the reproduction and localisation processes? The three sets of data were thematically coded; then their most salient points and arguments were analysed. The localised news items were examined for clues to the localisation techniques, ideologies, and the agenda(s) of Al Jazeera. The readers’ comments were probed for the influence that the localised news items had on Al Jazeera’s target readership, and were examined to find out which of Al Jazeera’s ideologies resonate with which readers to form Al Jazeera’s target locale(s). The analysis of the interviews with Al Jazeera’s translators was undertaken with the aim of delineating the tasks of these translators, specifically to see to what extent journalism and translation meld, as suggested in much of the research done so far on translating news items. The tripartite analysis has provided a more comprehensive understanding of the processes involved in the production of translation-mediated news items as well as their effect on the readership. It also suggests relatively new insights into viewing the term localisation as a good alternative to acculturation in accounting for news translation. Within the umbrella of the social turn in translation studies (TS), this study suggests that current approaches to studying news translation question large-scale concepts such as culture and acculturation, and proposes they be replaced with the small-scale concepts of locale and localisation. Hence, this study suggests using localisation to extract and understand the underlying particulars of the processes involved in producing translation-mediated news items. The results of the analysis show that Al Jazeera ostensibly promulgates three major ideologies: anti-regimism, Islamistism, and pan-Arabism and embeds these ideologies in the messages it delivers to its target locales through the localised news items. The study concludes that Al Jazeera’s localisation techniques reflect the viewpoints of its benefactor the State of Qatar whose goal is to create a solipsistic identity that distinguishes it from its immediate rivalling neighbours within a dichotomy of the Same and the Other. These localisation techniques are driven by motives associated with the sociopolitical and sociohistorical circumstances of the founding of the State of Qatar and Al Jazeera.

This dissertation asserts that American political culture faces a crisis of virtue and explores the role of citizens, journalists and politicians in fostering it. The historic election of Barack Obama on a platform of hope and change in 2008 suggests that Americans yearn for an infusion of virtue into political life. I assert, however, that we have lacked a lexicon of political virtue, or any systematic understanding of which virtues we value and which matter most to us. Nor have we understood whether groups who constitute key elements of our democracy—citizens, journalists, politicians, men and women, Democrats and Republicans—value virtues in politics similarly or differently. Without a working knowledge of the anatomy of virtue in the body politic, what is to prevent us from having to change again? By charting the virtue systems of these key groups, I have made explicit what is implicit to reveal that political virtue is more valued—and more present—than Americans likely realize. This exploration, I believe, contributes to the scholarship of political communication by enabling a fuller and more useful understanding of American political culture—and of the contradictions, curiosities, and surprises that enrich it. / text