This dissertation argues that the mass media have played a critical but misunderstood role in the variety of national political responses to economic globalization around the world since the 1960s. More specifically, quantitative as well as qualitative methods across three article-length studies demonstrate how mass media have played a variety of anti-democratic roles in the domestic politics of economic globalization since the 1960s, in ways which have gone largely unnoticed by political scientists. The first article, "Mass Media and the Domestic Politics of Economic Globalization," argues that the mass media make welfare spending less responsive to domestic groups harmed by economic globalization. Statistical tests on state-level economic data as well as individual-level survey data are found to be consistent with this theory. The second article, "Media Ownership and the Social Construction of Economic Globalization," argues that the response of mass publics toward the global economic exposure of their country varies according to the degree of foreign ownership in the national media market. Statistical analysis of state-level media ownership data and aggregate public opinion data, combined with qualitative analyses of newspaper con- tent, provides mixed evidence for the theory. The third article, "Why are the Most Trade-Open Countries More Likely to Repress the Media?" argues that different components of economic globalization exert contradictory pressures on state-media relations. Statistical analysis of economic data and media freedom data combined with process-tracing in Argentina and Mexico pro- vide evidence for the theory. / Political Science

The diploma thesis deals with the problem of media oligarchization and its influence on the ethics of journalism. Based on the synthesis of existing theoretical concepts, a narrower definition of the terms oligarch and media oligarch is presented in the text. On this theoretical basis, the situation in 31 selected European countries from the point of view of media oligarchization is evaluated by comparing the methodologies of three media indicators - Freedom House's Freedom and the Media, Reporters Without Borders's Press Freedom Index and Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom's Media Pluralism Monitor. This is considered primarily a problem of post-communist and post-colonial countries, and the diploma thesis tests this assumption. The problem of ethics of journalistic work within the scope of media oligarchization is presented on a theoretical as well as practical level, based on a chronological comparison of ethical codes of three selected media groups - MAFRA, Vltava Labe Media and Czech News Center, which changed ownership from a multinational group to an oligarch or an oligarchic group.

The main goal of this thesis was to determine how projects Echo24 and Reporter work with journalistic photography using comparative analysis of their visual content. Both projects were found in 2014 as a reaction to a dramatical change of ownership of the Czech media. These changes also had an impact on journalistic photographers, because the new owners tend to save their costs on photography. This is also one of the reasons why I chose to analyze projects that started in 2014. To explain the broader context, in the first part of this thesis I describe the context of journalistic photography and the Czech media market development from the year 1989. In this work, I also describe other projects similar to Echo24 and Reportér. In the second part of the thesis, I use quantitative content analysis to describe the usage of the photographs in the printed version of Echo24 and Reportér. I also compare the collected data with answers from questionnaires with members of the editorial of the projects and photojournalists. In this paper, I found out that the project Echo24 represents the opposite approach towards photography than Reportér. Echo24, like other media, tends to save their cost on photography. Reportér on the other side can be defined as the protector of journalistic and photojournalistic values....

The diploma thesis deals with intermedia relations and agenda-setting in the case of the purchase of one-crown bonds of the company Agrofert by its owner Andrej Babiš. The news story took place in the first half of 2017 and its research was ended on the date of filing of a motion to remove Andrej Babiš from the position of Minister of Finance in the then government of Bohuslav Sobotka. The subject of quantitative analysis of media content is the determination of the influence in intermedia relations, the development of the story coverage over time and the degree of use of links to social networks in news articles. The case study then uses the grounded theory method to identify the variables that represented the media inputs, political context, and political outputs that occurred during the development of the story, and also to look for relationships between the phenomena observed. The work is based on the theory of agenda-setting and a model of contingency of the mass media's political agenda-setting power. The thesis is divided into four parts. The first chapter contains a summary of theoretical concepts and results of empirical studies related to the media agenda building and agenda- setting and the relationship between the media and political agenda. The second chapter focuses on the research...

This study compares the impact of media ownership, regulation and policy, and technology adoption on the introduction of digital terrestrial television in the United States and Mainland China. Through the use of a case study approach, a qualitative and quantitative examination is given. The results indicate that private group ownership throughout the U.S. digital terrestrial television industry and state ownership in China's television industry lead to the different paths to digital transition. Both governments, however, are deeply involved in respective digital initiatives and play an important role in the implementation from analog to digital. The technical standard adoption in the two countries places the underpinning for the future development of digital television (DTV), which also results in China lagging behind the United States by almost ten years. The differences of technological environments in households and income among consumers in the two countries further predict the intention to DTV adoption.

This thesis is about development of Czech media market after 1989 in the context of political economy of the media. It tries to find practical impacts of the pressures of commercial sphere on media content in Czech serious daily press, on the basis of theories applied in the research part of the work. These pressures include media owners and media market ownership concentration, advertisers, expert opinions makers and think-tanks and public relations. A quantitative content analysis and journalists interviews are used for this purpose. The results confirm an existence of commercial influences in Czech dailies, especially from advertisers. A significant dominance of opinions supporting right-wing (conservative) thoughts has been also confirmed. Brought knowledge and research findings both leave and open substantial space for a future research of this topic.

The diploma thesis Analysis of the political instrumentalization of the periodic press Mladá fronta DNES in the period before elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2013 examines, if leader of the political party ANO Andrej Babiš used his position of the owner of the media group MAFRA to influence media content in the periodic press Mlada fronta DNES during the period before elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2013. Theoretical framework briefly describes the basic concepts of political communication and geopolitical division of the models of political communication including the Czech media scene. Focus is primarily on the development and possible ways of instrumentalization of printed media operating in the Czech media market after 1989. Results of quantitative research showed that four other political parties gained more media attention then political party ANO which ended up second in the election. The title pages of the Mlada fronta DNES therefore was not used to increase promotion of Andrej Babis and his political party. The final part of the research interprets the results of quantitative analysis regarding the possible instrumentalization in terms of political topics presented on the front pages of the...

The dissertation analyses changes in the role of editors-in-chief in ten leading Norwegian and Swedish media houses – today owned by either Bonnier or Schibsted – in light of the potential tensions between journalistic ideals and market demands. This duality is studied over a period of 30 years, from 1985 to 2015. The most defining changes in the structural framework under which editors-in-chief work are the ongoing technological revolution, the transformation from an analogue into a digital society, and structural, economic changes related to this development. Methodologically, the study builds on data from qualitative in-depth interviews, mainly with 33 past and present editors-in-chief. It also contains a study of how the role of editors-in-chief has been reported and discussed in the magazines of two media branch organisations. The changing role of editors-in-chief is analysed within an institutional perspective. The main empirical results are as follows: (1) Owners and company management have considered the recruitment of editors-in-chief to be highly important throughout the period, and they have used their influence actively. Internal recruitment processes are a standard procedure. Very few of those chosen are women; men recruit other men. The last decade shows a recruitment process becoming more centralized and professionalized. (2) Most editors-in-chief represented in the study have a background in the newsroom. This has traditionally been the main qualification. (3) Regular meetings have structured most of the working hours for editors-in-chief. From an institutional perspective, meetings have played a norm-setting and ritualised role. During the last decade, some of those meetings have included not only journalists but also employees from other departments. (4) Those respondents who were active during the last period investigated perceive the increased speed of work on a daily basis and the more complex editorial role as the main changes and challenges. (5) Many of the respondents are so-called ‘silent’ editors. Due to a lack of time, they do not write much in their own papers. Lately, this has changed to some extent, especially among Swedish editors. This finding is one of the major differences between Norwegian and Swedish editors-in-chief. (6) Editors are still responsible for journalistic content, but demands on the part of commercial management have gradually become more important, and strategic decisions have become more centralized. The metaphor about the need to balance the demands of the ‘Marketplace and Cathedral’ has been replaced by the metaphor ‘We are all in the same boat’. The journalistic institution is under pressure. (7) Despite the immense technological and economic changes in the business and in the structural framework, there is also stability in the role due to the robust nature of journalism as an institution. The role of editor-in-chief is complex, and during the last 30 years, it has become even more so. The structural conditions have affected the role in various ways. While the basic tasks of editors-in-chief remain rooted in editorial work, downsizing and market demands have simultaneously undermined the autonomy and power of editors-in-chief, especially in relation to central media group management.

This thesis explores how massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), as an exemplary new media form, disrupt practices associated with more conventional media. These intensely social games exploit the interactivity and networks afforded by new media technologies in ways that generate new challenges for the organisation, control and regulation of media. The involvement of players in constituting these games - through their production of game-play, derivative works and strong social networks that drive the profitability of the games - disrupts some of the key foundations that underlie other publication media. MMOGs represent a new and hybrid form of media - part publication and part service. As such they sit within a number of sometimes contradictory organising and regulatory regimes. This thesis examines the negotiations and struggles for control between players, developers and publishers as issues of ownership, governance and access arise out of the new configurations. Using an ethnographic approach to gather information and insights into the practices of players, developers and publishers, this project identifies the characteristics of the distributed production network in this experiential medium. It explores structural components of successful interactive applications and analyses how the advent of player agency and the shift in authorship has meant a shift in control of the text and the relations that surround it. The integration of social networks into the textual environment, and into the business model of the media publishers has meant commerce has become entwined with affect in a new way in this medium. Publishers have moved into the role of both property managers, of the intellectual property associated with the game content, and community managers. Intellectual property management is usually associated with the reproduction and distribution of finished media products, and this sits uneasily with the performative and mutable form of this medium. Service provision consists of maintaining the game world environment, community management, providing access for players to other players and to the content generated both by the developers and the other players. Content in an MMOG is identified in this project as both the 'tangible' assets of code and artwork, rules and text, and the 'intangible' or immaterial assets of affective networks. Players are no longer just consumers of media, or even just active interpreters of media. They are co-producing the media as it is developed. This thesis frames that productiveness as unpaid labour, in an attempt to denaturalise the dominant discourse which casts players as consumers. The regulation of this medium is contentious. Conventional forms of media regulation - such as copyright, or content regulation regimes are inadequate for regulating the hybrid service/publication medium. This thesis explores how the use of contracts as the mechanism which constitutes the formal relations between players, publishers and developers creates challenges to some of the regimes of juridical and political rights held by citizens more generally. This thesis examines the productive practices of players and how the discourses of intellectual property and the discourses of the consumer are mobilised to erase the significance of those productive contributions. It also shows, using a Foucauldian analysis of the power negotiations, that players employ many counter-strategies to circumvent the more formal legal structures of the publishers. The dialogic relationship between players, developers and publishers is shown to mobilise various discursive constructions of the role of each. The outcome of these ongoing negotiations may well shape future interactive applications and the extent to which their innovative capacities will be available for all stakeholders to develop.

This thesis is dedicated to the significant change in media ownership in the Czech Republic which occured during the Global crisis in 2008 - 2013. In this period almost all foreign owners sold their media to the local enterpreneurs, who took over almost all media houses. This shift happened under generally less comfortable matket conditions, which have hit mostly the printed media. The local enterpreneurs are naturally much more interested in local politics. This text describes these changes and uncovers the economic reasons that led to it, including the extensive research into publicly available, yet not analysed annual reports of media companies. The conclusion is that the foreign owners generally earned well in the Czech market and that they have decided to use the crisis as a good moment to sell. The arrival of new domestic owners caused worries about their possible interference with kontent and by 2017 there are some hints suggesting that they may use the media against the opponents. But there is a fact that may prevent them: the thesis proves how worth the position on the market is. And this should at least limit these efforts.