Facebook as an instrument of election campaigning and voters’ engagement: comparing Czechia and Poland

Adding to the growing scholarship on the use and role of social media in election campaigning, this article examines and compares the character and determinants of Internet users’ engagement with political party communication in 2013 and 2015 Parliamentary election campaigns in Czechia and Poland. Apart from the relationship between the thematic focus of party-produced content and the level of users’ interactivity, the study also explores the way the tonality of users’ comments is influenced by different types of party communication, as well as by users’ gender. The results suggest that the level of support for a party status is largely independent of the content of the message in both countries. The type of content has, however, an effect on the intensity of criticism by the users, with policy-related subjects generating more negativity than mobilization- or campaign-oriented statuses. Finally, the study points to both gender gaps and gender as a strong predictor of user negativity, as female users – while constituting a minority of participants in both countries – tend to be significantly less negative in their comments towards the home party. Overall, the comparative study reveals both similarities and differences in the way Czech and Polish parties utilize Facebook as campaign platform, as well as in their respective Internet users’ engagement with parties messages

Globalization, Reality TV and Cultural Inclusion: the Case of the 2005 Czech Search for a Superstar

This paper examines the relationship between reality television, representations of national identity and mechanism of cultural inclusion, as manifested in the 2005 Czech Search for a Superstar, a local version of the global format Pop Idol

Struggling with diversity: objectives, outcomes and future of the European quota policy in context of the television scene in the Czech Republi

This chapter deals with the main legislative instrument of the EU audiovisual policy, the Television without Frontiers Directive, and focuses on critical examination of its cultural goals, with a special attention devoted to its application in context of the Czech television landscap

Commonalities and differences: How to learn from international comparisons of children's online behaviour

This article sets out to analyse and critically reflect upon the challenges, procedures, and results of the international comparisons which have been conducted in the framework of “EU Kids Online”, a research consortium composed of scholars and researchers from 21 European countries

Public Service Television in the European Union Countries: Old Issues, New Challenges

This chapter overviews the status of public service television in the European Union with a focus on the post-communist countries, and discusses the policy implications of the transformation of the television landscape with regard to the future of public service media

‘“New” and “old” Europe: explaining competing ideologies across Europe’

This chapter examines the newspaper debates on the EU Constitutional Treaty in seven European states: the Czech Republic, Germany, France, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the UK