The Parliamentary election in Russia held in December, 2011 caused vote fraud scandal and resulted in a wide-scale protest movement which spread all over the country. The Western media repeatedly compared political situation in Russia to ‘Arab spring’. Russian media, in their turn, got divided in two opposite camps regarding their reporting on the issue. This study examines news coverage of the political conflict in two Russian media outlets and interprets the findings within the framework of propaganda. The analysis incorporates two main levels: institutional and textual. In-depth interviews with the journalists were conducted in order to establish what internal and external factors, such as censorship or state control, shaped news reporting and promoted ideological bias. The comparative analysis of news coverage involved two media outlets Russia Today and Radio Liberty, which adhere to different ideological perspectives. The results show that both media represented contrasting versions of the situation and used information selectively in order to pursue certain goals. Nevertheless, the analysis allows to conclude that Russia Today explicitly supported the views of the Russian authorities and oppressed undesirable facts and opinions. Its news policy also evokes an idea of cold war, as it repeatedly appeals to the image of external enemy – the USA. Radio Liberty, in contrast, provided various opportunities to the discontent part of the Russian society to speak out, which can be considered as an attempt to represent the other side of the story, as it was excluded from the news agenda of the state owned media. However, news policy of Radio Liberty also implied certain propagandistic objectives. The study confirms the assumption that propaganda arguably exists within any political doctrine, but can take explicit and implicit forms which are difficult to detect without thorough scrutiny of overall news reportage of certain media. Further research should look at the role of social media in a series of political scandals and protest movement awakening in Russia, as many media experts link the political situation with emergence of new means of communication. It could also compare news representation of the current political conflict in several Russian domestic independent media to detect distinctions and similarities and try to evaluate what kind of an ideology they communicated to the audience.

This thesis aimed to investigate and describe the influence that certain socioeconomical, demographical, and geographical variables had on the election results for the three parliamentary party groups in the 2018 Swedish parliamentary election on the municipal level. The study also aimed to compare the difference in effect of the variables between two different geographical study areas: Norrland and the Greater Stockholm area. The study has been conducted via a regression analysis.  The results indicated that income, education, population density and average age all have a noticeable influence on the election results for the different party blocks. Income was the factor with the overall largest influence on the election result. There was a difference in influence from different variables between the three different party blocks. The study also found that there was a difference in effect between Norrland and Greater Stockholm. Certain variables had more of an effect in Norrland, and vice-versa. Most notably, income and average age had the opposite effect in Norrland compared to Greater Stockholm. The reason for this is not clear, but differences in culture between the study areas may provide an explanation.

Industry bias is the bias associated with polling estimates, and that is caused by systematic errors. We aim to test for its presence in Swedish political polling from 2010 to 2022 and simulate industry bias as a consequence of nonresponse bias. We estimate industry bias per party as the mean error of the last polls per polling house before an election and calculate the probability of observing the number of polling underestimates and overestimates per party and election year. Our results indicate that industry bias is present to varying degrees in each Swedish parliamentary election year from 2010 to 2022. Moreover, our results indicate that polls with and without industry bias as a consequence of nonrespondent bias can be replicated.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the importance of personal election for candidates of foreign background. I made this, first, by map and comparing the candidates of foreign background in the recent Swedish and Finnish parliamentary election. Second, I analyze what conceptions candidates of foreign background, who was nominated in the 2006 municipal election in Örebro, have about the personal election. The result from the first study shows that personal election had a negative impact on candidates of foreign background in both the Swedish and Finnish parliamentary elections. The result from the second study shows that candidates of foreign background have both positive and negative conceptions about the personal election.

Diploma thesis "True reasons which lead people into polling station" is tasked to detect motivation which affects an electoral behaviour of citizens, concretely their active participation in an election of their political representatives, considering the matter of fact that elected incumbents are those who work out all measures of public policy. There is enforced the legitimizing character of election, which displays the decreasing voter turnout as pathological phenomenon destroying the basics of democratic society, and sight on elections as an institution mediating between citizens and shape of implemented public policy. The theoretical part of thesis gives an overview of various concepts interpreting a voter turnout as an effect of endogenous and exogenetic factors. The paradigm are the theory of sources and the theory of representation, accenting on importance of the endogenous factors, and contextual theory, theory of motivation and racional choice theory, referring to key influence of the exogenic element. The empirical part of thesis, making use of personal research, verifies practically the theoretical knowledge and produces factual predication about motivational elements of electoral behaviour in one municipality in district of Hradec Králové. The confrontation of theoretical knowledge and...

Ämne: Valaffischer som en del av politisk kommunikation och teorin kring ideologins död. Syfte: Syftet är att fastslå graden av politisk ideologi och/eller överideologi som är närvarande i riksdagspartiernas valaffischer inför riksdagsvalet 2014. Teori: Utifrån semiotik och retorisk analysera valaffischer med teorin om ideologiernas död som utgångsperspektiv. Metod: Kvalitativ innehållsanalys med semiotisk utgångspunkt i text och bild av valaffischer. Resultat: Studien visar att politisk ideologi är närvarande i alla respektive åtta valaffischer, ändock i varierande grad. I många fall visar de verbala och visuella elementen på flera olika, ibland motsägelsefulla, ideologier även om en dominerande kan fastställas. Valaffischerna är till sin karaktär slagkraftiga och enbart tendenser av teorin om ideologins död har förekommit. Många ideologiska element platsar inte in i kriterierna för någon av de tre klassiska ideologierna, vilket möjligen kan innebära att nya ideologier uppstått med andra grundvärderingar och förslag till konkret handlande. Överlag går det att utröna politiska ideologier hos valaffischerna. I de flest fallen har ideologierna varit av traditionell karaktär, eller i en ny kombination av dem. Trots att överideologiska tendenser framkommit har dessa varit i mindre grad. / Subject: Election posters as part of political communication and the theory of the death of ideology. Purpose: The purpose is to determine the degree of political ideology and/or signs of the death of ideologies, which are to be found in the parliamentary parties’ election posters for the general elections in 2014. Theory: Based on the theory of the death of ideology, the election posters will be analyzed in a perspective rooted in semiotics and the rhetorical argumentations model. Method: Qualitative content analysis based in semiotic, analyzing the verbal and visual elements of election posters. Results: The study reveals that political ideology is present in all of the analyzed election posters, although to a varied degree. In many cases the verbal and visual elements in various, sometimes contradictory, ideologies although a dominant one can be determined. Election posters are by nature powerful and show only tendencies of the theory of the death of ideology. Many ideological elements do not match the criteria for any of the three classical ideologies. This could possibly mean that new ideologies have arisen with other values and proposals for concrete actions. Furthermore, the result in the analysis of the visual elements around and on the party leader can have different functions. They reinforce firstly the textual messages and secondly build support for it through visual features that signal safety and security.

This thesis addresses the topic of the breakup of Czechoslovakia into two independent Czech and Slovak republics at the beginning of the year 1993. With the help of secondary literature, the first section is dedicated to chronologically interpreting the history of the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. The section also discusses the accounts of leading Czech, Slovak and other international historians relating to the end of Czechoslovakia. In the second section, the author of this thesis firstly focuses on the analysis of selected printed media, including the Czech newspapers 'Rudé právo' and 'Mladá fronta/Mladá fronta DNES', and Slovakian 'Pravda' from the months around the time of the so-called Hyphen War at the beginning of 1990. The final chapters focus on the analysis of the above-mentioned newspapers from the time of the elections to the Federal Assembly in 1992 and examine reference methods relating to the issue of the Czech- Slovak misunderstanding.

This diploma thesis is devoted to Václav Majer (January 22, 1904 - January 25, 1972) and his public work, particularly in the period of the Third Republic of Czechoslovakia. Václav Majer was a social democratic politician and he was a leader of the right wing within the Czechoslovak Social Democracy. The main issue which was being discussed inside the Social Democratic Party at that time was the question of cooperation between Social Democrats and Communists. Majer was a main proponent of independent policy of the Social Democratic Party. Sometimes it is hard to analyze the meaning and the course of various political affairs without knowing their roots. In that case, it is necessary to study the background of these events which in many cases lies at the previous period. This is the reason why this very essay actually starts right after the Munich Agreement was negotiated and signed. This thesis informs about Majer's road to exile and his political activities during the World War II. The main interest of this thesis lies in the era of the Third Republic and informs about Majer and his policy during this very period.