Exploring and explaining participation in local opposition: brown coal mining in Horní Jiřetín

This book summarizes a three-year research project on local opposition to coal mining in the Northwestern part of the Czech Republic. The research focused on the relational dimensions of the opposition movement and the political context in which the movement operates

Exploring and explaining participation in local opposition: brown coal mining in Horní Jiřetín

This book summarizes a three-year research project on local opposition to coal mining in the Northwestern part of the Czech Republic. The research focused on the relational dimensions of the opposition movement and the political context in which the movement operates

What's next for the European coal heartland? Exploring the future of coal as presented in German, Polish and Czech press

This article addresses the future of coal in the European coal heartland, i.e. in the area of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, which together account for nearly 57% of coal consumption and 87% of coal-mining jobs in the EU. It approaches the problem within the interpretative tradition of social research and explores the coverage of the future of coal in major newspapers and political magazines in the three countries. The results show that despite similar material conditions, the issue is presented in a fundamentally different manner as the media tend follow the dominant energy policy paradigm in their countries: in Germany, they facilitate the phase-out policies; in Poland, they act as an inhibiting factor; while in the Czech Republic, their coverage echoes the political uncertainty around lignite mining in the northwest part of the country. The results also suggest that the media act mainly as a platform for the countries’ decision makers and energy policy stakeholders to voice their perspectives. The prevalent media coverage thus simultaneously enable and constrain policy options by promoting dominant discourses and preventing alternative views from surfacing

Increasing Incidence of Geomyces destructans Fungus in Bats from the Czech Republic and Slovakia

BACKGROUND: White-nose syndrome is a disease of hibernating insectivorous bats associated with the fungus Geomyces destructans. It first appeared in North America in 2006, where over a million bats died since then. In Europe, G. destructans was first identified in France in 2009. Its distribution, infection dynamics, and effects on hibernating bats in Europe are largely unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We screened hibernacula in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for the presence of the fungus during the winter seasons of 2008/2009 and 2009/2010. In winter 2009/2010, we found infected bats in 76 out of 98 surveyed sites, in which the majority had been previously negative. A photographic record of over 6000 hibernating bats, taken since 1994, revealed bats with fungal growths since 1995; however, the incidence of such bats increased in Myotis myotis from 2% in 2007 to 14% by 2010. Microscopic, cultivation and molecular genetic evaluations confirmed the identity of the recently sampled fungus as G. destructans, and demonstrated its continuous distribution in the studied area. At the end of the hibernation season we recorded pathologic changes in the skin of the affected bats, from which the fungus was isolated. We registered no mass mortality caused by the fungus, and the recorded population decline in the last two years of the most affected species, M. myotis, is within the population trend prediction interval. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: G. destructans was found to be widespread in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with an epizootic incidence in bats during the most recent years. Further development of the situation urgently requires a detailed pan-European monitoring scheme

Slovak MPs’ response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in light of conspiracy theories and the polarization of political discourse

Abstract The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine received widespread international condemnation. In Slovakia, the invasion became a subject of much political discussion with large number of MPs openly advocating Russian interests. This study investigates Slovak political discourse on Facebook in the weeks before and after the invasion began. We examine the discourse through the lens of Discourse Network Analysis, combining qualitative content analysis of MPs’ Facebook posts with quantitative bipartite social network analysis. During the two weeks, we retrieved all (n = 1880) posts from all (n = 117) MPs who had an active public Facebook page. We manually coded all posts and created a bipartite discourse network consisting of MPs connected to each other via shared discourse codes in two timepoints. We performed a series of exploratory analyses that identified the content of the political discourse, the structure of the political discourse network, and the mechanisms driving the change of the political discourse network. Our results show that the invasion dramatically changed political discourse in Slovakia, with the domestic coalition-opposition struggles losing prominence among the invasion-related topics. The structure of the political discourse network showed a strong coalition-opposition split. While coalition MPs had largely pro-Ukrainian sentiments, opposition MPs largely communicated pro-Russian propaganda. A cluster of opposition MPs consistently spread conspiracy theories both before and after the invasion began, supporting a “conspiracy singularity” theory—the tendency of actors to spread multiple different conspiracy theories and interconnect various conspiracy theories into one overarching narrative. The change of the discourse network at the beginning of the invasion was largely driven by the agenda setting of several parties, agenda reinforcement, and increasing political polarization. We discuss our findings in relation to the previous research on the spread of conspiracy theories among politicians and the polarization of political discourse during the invasion, and we suggest implications for future research