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.

The current paper examines the dissimilarities that have occurred in news framing by state-sponsored news outlets in their different language versions. The comparative framing analysis is conducted on the news coverage of the Russian intervention in Syria (2016) in RT and Radio Liberty in Russian and English languages. The certain discrepancies in framing of this event are found in both news outlets. The strongest distinction between Russian and English versions occurred in framing of responsibility and humanitarian crisis in Syria. The study attempts to explain the identified differences in a framework of public diplomacy and propaganda studies. The existing theories explain that political ideology and foreign policy orientation influences principles of state propaganda and state-sponsored international broadcasting. However, the current findings suggest that other influence factors may exist in the field – such as the local news discourse and the journalistic principles. This conclusion is preliminary, as there are not many studies with the comparable research design, which could support the current discussion. The studies of localized strategies of the international media (whether private networks or state-funded channels) can refine the current conclusions and bring a new perspective to global media studies. / <p>This thesis was supported by the Swedish Institute (Svenska Institutet) </p>

The presented text is concerned with the development of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in the period from the late 1980s to mid-1990s. The main aspiration of this Diploma Thesis is the introduction of these specific radio projects in a new era with new missions. RFE/RL gained great popularity during the Cold War period as they were powerful tools in the fight against communist regimes in Europe and the Soviet Union. However, with the fall of Iron Curtain, it was generally anticipated that their tasks were complete. Both Services had to fight against these general assumptions and prove that their mission had yet more functions. Thus, they focused on promoting ideas and principles of democratic and liberal societies. This type of educational broadcasting proved to be very much needed in the post-communist countries which sought to implement the norms of the Western world. This paper describes the overall, somewhat complicated story of RFE/RL, its mission and further developments in broadcasting, which were fundamentally influenced by plans for budget cuts and resulted in the relocation of RFE/RL's operations from Munich to Prague. For more thorough understanding of these issues, the paper also draws on broader historical context of RFE/RL's development from the very beginning of its operations in...

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The disertation is focused on development and importance of the Czechoslovak desk of the Radio Free Europe in period between 1950 and 1994. This broadcasting have gained in time of strong censorship significant and till now unresearched importance. In February 1948 the Communist party took power in the Czechoslovakia. After that Czech and Slovak democratic politicians had left country to the West. They wanted to break the isolation of people living behind the Iron Curtain and promote restoration of democracy in their homeland. In 1949 was in the USA established the National Committee for Free Europe as fomally independent citizens association. As its most known activity had became the Radio Free Europe (RFE). This radio station had became an important tool for political strugle between two blocks in time of the Cold War. The basic qestion is what real position RFE broadcasting have reached in this struggle. The estabilishing of foreign broadcasting to the Czechoslovakia was very difficult task. RFE started its activity as exiles platform for purpose of liberation the Czechoslovakia from rule of the Communistic Party regime. The programming position of the RFE was in reality influented by american politicians and was depending on changing global political conditions as well. The unique position of...