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Media Context of the Czech Foreign Policy

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Social Sciences |
2014

Abstract

The chapter describes, based on a content analysis of news content in 2013, the tendency of Czech media in dealing with foreign policy topics using a combination of quantitative content analysis and qualitative case studies of selected foreign policy events. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis, part of a longitudinal project aimed at identifying prevailing characteristics of the news coverage of Czech foreign policy, prove that the coverage of political events in the media is highly personified, viewed through the prism of personal or political interests of Czech political elites and their mutual disputes.

The print media tend to present major political events as power-based conflicts between individuals or groups, rather than negotiations on public affairs supported by arguments. As in the previous years, Czech media use similar narratives and schemes and repeatedly stress national sovereignty of the Czech Republic in the context of its membership in international communities as an important topic.

Nationalism became and important frame in the coverage of the two selected events.