Der Begriff Kontingenz avancierte seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre zu einer Art Leitbegriff der Sozialwissenschaften und erreichte vor allem in Form der postmarxistischen These von der „Grundlosigkeit des Sozialen“ axiomatischen Status in linker Politik- und Sozialtheorie. Dass es vor allem mal explizit, mal latent dezisionistische Theorieprogramme waren, die dem Kontingenzbegriff zu erneuter Popularität verhalfen, ist die ideenhistorische Grundsituation, die im vorliegenden Beitrag als Problem gestellt wird und folgende Frage provozierte: sind die historisch gleichzeitigen Renaissancen von Kontingenz- und Dezisionsbegriff zufällig oder verweisen die Begriffe von Grund auf aufeinander und bilden ein notwendiges Verhältnis? Zunächst soll hierfür augezeigt werden, dass die Semantik des Kontingenzbegriffs durchaus vielschichtig ist und je nach theoretischem Kontext variiert. Zwei Extremformen werden dabei separiert. Eine dieser Extremformen des Begriffs, die gegenwärtig häufig gebrauchte, wird in einem zweiten Schritt als dem Dezisionismus entsprechende Kontingenz ausgewiesen. Zu guter Letzt wird diskutiert, warum dezisionistische Argumentationsketten für Theorien mit progressivem Anspruch überhaupt problematisch sind. / From the mid-1990’s on, contingency developed into one of the leading key concepts of the social science and achieved an axiomatic status in leftist political and social theory, first and foremost through the central postmarxist thesis of the “Lack of Foundations in the Social”. That the Renaissance of contingency is embedded in the historical parallel rise of decisionistic theories, which helped make the concept popular again, is the historical situation from where the argument in the article starts and which provoked the following research question: are the historical parallel renaissances of contingency and decision based theories coincidental or is their logical relation necessary? The goal of the first chapter is to outline the semantic complexity of contingency andits context-dependent varieties. Two extremes of the concept will be separated from each other. One of those extremes, today’s popular one, will be identified as decisionisms corresponding contingency. The discussion of why decisionistic arguments are a problem within theories with progressive intentions, will conclude the article.

The thesis called Qualitative Analysis of Media Discourse of the Far-right Blog cz.altermedia.info deals with the discourse analysis of the Czech version of an international project Altermedia.info. Discourse analysis aims at differences between the discourse of the founding editor and the current one and analyses the neo-fascist nature of the blog. The theoretical framework of the analysis is based on the postmarxist theory of discourse introduced by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The theoretical part of the thesis summarizes the findings of researchers who are engaged in discourse analysis (structuralism, poststructuralism, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk). The thesis also examines how specific meaning is constructed within the nationalist discourse of Altermedia and to what extent a new team of authors contributed to the change of discourse. The analysis identifies the main nodal points, which are involved in the construction of discourse, and examines the antagonistic processes within the two different editors. Discursive analysis reveals particular inclination of the current discourse of Altermedia for the neo-Nazi ideology, and thus indicates the fundamental antagonism between the founding editors and current one.

Diploma thesis "China in the Czech Press: Comparing Representations of Authoritarian Political System in Democratic Media System" uses qualitative content analysis to examine attributes ascribed to China by selected Czech mainstream newspapers in selected periods, systematizing and categorizing the findings into instituted categories. The analysis serves as a basis for answering the key question: How media representations of political and social system - which is unacceptable in the system where the media work - can be ideologically adapted? Brief insight into history and contemporary problems of China and interpretation of the term "ideology" based on description of the development of this term firstly in its negative definition of Marxist line stay before presentation of results of the qualitative research. The thesis includes also extensive part full of graphical supplements which denote image of China in discourse of dailies Lidové noviny and Právo in five selected periods. It allows easy comparison of separate partial discourses, so distinctions among the partial images of China are well discoverable.