This open access book provides the first systematic analysis of the role of the media in the rise of illiberalism, based on an original theoretical framework and extensive empirical research in ...Eastern Europe – a region that serves as a key battleground in the global advance of illiberalism. Liberal democracies across the world are facing a range of challenges, from the growing influence of illiberal leaders and parties to deepening polarization and declining trust in political elites and mainstream media. Although these developments attracted significant scholarly attention, the factors that contribute to the spreading of illiberalism remain poorly understood, and the communication perspective on illiberalism is particularly underdeveloped. Štětka and Mihelj address this gap by introducing the concept of the illiberal public sphere, identifying the key stages in its development, and explaining what makes illiberalism distinct from related phenomena such as populism. Their analysis reveals how and why the changing communication environment facilitates selective exposure to ideologically and politically homogeneous sources, fosters changes in normative assumptions that guide media trust, increases vulnerability to disinformation, and goes hand in hand with growing hostility to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. The findings challenge widespread assumptions about digital platforms as key channels of illiberalism and suggest that their role shifts as the illiberal sphere progresses. The arguments presented in this book have important implications for future research on challenges to liberal democracy, as well as for journalists, media regulators and other professionals committed to rebuilding media trust and containing the forces of polarization.
Existing research on factors informing public perceptions of expert trustworthiness was largely conducted during stable periods and in long-established Western liberal democracies. This article asks ...whether the same factors apply during a major health crisis and in relatively new democracies. Drawing on 120 interviews and diaries conducted during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Serbia, we identify two additional factors not acknowledged in existing research, namely personal contact with experts and experts’ independence from political elites. We also examine how different factors interact and show how distrust of experts can lead to exposure to online misinformation.
Over the past decade, the rights of people whose sexual orientation does not conform to prevailing norms have become a divisive issue in many countries. Despite a long tradition of research on media ...and sexual minorities, the role of the media in these recent backlashes remains poorly understood. We argue that this is partly because work in this area is often underpinned by a simple, linear narrative that unambiguously links visibility to empowerment. We highlight the ambivalent impact of mediated visibility and argue that in the context of elite-driven polarization, illiberalism and low levels of media freedom, visibility can become a vehicle of control. To explore this proposition, we examine the link between media and public attitudes to same-sex relationships in four east European countries, combining a population survey with semi-structured interviews. The results confirm the need to consider the conditions of mediated visibility in particular socio-political contexts, showing that where control over the conditions of visibility remains in the hands of homophobic elites, specific types of media, which are controlled by ruling elites, including Public Service Media, can contribute to negative attitudes, while digital media play a more ambiguous role.
In recent years, links between selective news exposure and political polarisation have attracted considerable attention among communication scholars. However, while the existence of selective ...exposure has been documented in both offline and online environments, the evidence of its extent and its impact on political polarisation is far from unanimous. To address these questions, and also to bridge methodological and geographical gaps in existing research, this paper adopts a media repertoires approach to investigate selective news exposure and polarisation in four Eastern European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. Using a combination of population surveys, expert surveys and qualitative interviews, the data for the study were collected between November 2019 and May 2020. We identify five types of news repertoires based on their relative openness to counter-attitudinal sources, and show that selective news repertoires are present in 29% of the entire sample. Our findings also reveal significant cross-country differences, with the more selective news repertoires more prominent in countries characterised by higher levels of polarisation. Furthermore, while the selection of news sources is in line with people's electoral (and to a lesser extent ideological) preferences, our findings show that exposure to counter-attitudinal sources can also be strongly correlated with political and ideological leanings. Our qualitative data suggest that this is because exposure to counter-attitudinal sources can reinforce attitudes, and potentially contribute to polarisation. Qualitative data also highlight the influence of environmental factors (e.g., family), and suggest that selective news consumption is associated with normatively different conceptions of media trust.
The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of ...comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals in 17 European countries. Our aim is to (i) profile different types of news consumers and (ii) understand how each user profile is linked to political knowledge acquisition. Our results show that five user profiles – news minimalists, social media news users, traditionalists, online news seekers, and hyper news consumers – can be identified, although the prevalence of these profiles varies across countries. Findings further show that both traditional and online-based news diets are correlated with higher political knowledge. However, online-based news use is more widespread in Southern Europe, where it is associated with lower levels of political knowledge than in Northern Europe. By focusing on news audiences, this study provides a comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of how contemporary European political information environments perform and contribute to an informed citizenry.
This article examines the relationship between online political expression and offline forms of political participation in the context of the 2013 Czech Parliamentary elections. It draws on the ...rapidly growing but still very much inconclusive empirical evidence concerning the use of new media and social network sites in particular for electoral mobilization and social activism, and their impact on more traditional forms of civic and political engagement. The theoretical framework of the paper is inspired by the competing perspectives on the role of social media for democratic participation and civic engagement, the mobilization vs. normalization thesis, as well as by the popular concepts of clicktivism or slacktivism (Morozov, 2009), denouncing online activism for allegedly not being complemented by offline actions and having little or no impact on real-life political processes. With the intention to empirically contribute to these discussions, this study uses data from a cross-sectional survey on a representative sample of the Czech adult population (N=1,653) which was conducted directly following the 2013 Parliamentary elections. The study was driven by the main research question: Is there a link between online political expression during the election campaign and traditional forms of political participation among Czech Facebook users? Furthermore, the analysis examined the relationship between online political participation and a declared political interest, electoral participation and political news consumption. The results obtained from an ordinal logistic regression analysis confirm the existence of a significant positive relationship between the respondents’ level of campaign engagement on Facebook and their political interest, political information seeking as well as traditional (mainly offline) participation activities, including voting.
This paper develops the idea that recent “networked” social movements are driven by emotions and provides an analysis of the role of emotions in movement mobilization. The case study focuses on the ...2013 protests against a “coup” within the Czech Social Democratic Party. The protests had an immediate impact, resulting in a series of demonstrations, mainstream media attention and a successful overturning of the “coup”. The movement’s Facebook page served as an important catalyst for the protest. We argue that the movement’s success can be explained by its emphasis on perceived issues of morality. As people tend to gather on Facebook to express their feelings, social media become a primary conduit for emotional protest, which can be subsequently taken to the streets.
This article presents an analysis of the citizens' engagement with the 2013 Czech Parliamentary Elections campaign on Facebook. While many studies primarily focus on the intensity and forms of ...adoption of social networks by political actors in campaign communication, we attempt to explore both political parties' use of Facebook as well as the extent and ways of citizen participation on the online election campaign. The empirical base for this study consists of all communication archived over the course of three weeks (before and after the elections) on the Facebook profiles of ten most important Czech political parties. Using quantitative content analysis, we first present an overview of the dynamics and intensity of users' engagement with the campaign, illustrating that some of the small as well as populist parties have managed to mobilize significantly larger part of Facebook population than more established parties. Following that descriptive part, we first turn to the analysis of the actual content of communication, examining primarily the tone of users' comments, and than we move on to a more in-depth, qualitative examination of communication on the profiles of two selected political parties which were very successful in their online mobilization. The results indicate that most party profiles have displayed a rather surprising level of heterogeneity, allowing for dissenting voices to be displayed in what is generally seen as a heavily managed communication environment.
This paper elaborates on the authors’ previous research on the relatively unexplored area of the gender aspects of online political participation. Quantitative content analysis is used to analyse ...communication on selected Czech political parties’ Facebook profiles during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in 2013 and 2014. The article focuses on women’s presence in political discussions and the relationship between their presence and the negativity of the communication in the forum, and presents a literature review offering possible explanations for the surprising difference in both the activity of men and women and the differences in the activity of female participants on the profile pages of different parties. The results of this research challenge some established assumptions about the alleged narrowing of the gender gap in the Internet environment and in social media specifically, as men turn out to be much more active than women.
Cílem článku je nastínit některé možnosti aplikace obecného sociologického konceptu vymístění na teoretickém poli konstrukce a symbolické reprezentace národní identity. Za použití několika příkladů z ...dějin moderního českého národa autor popisuje nekončící bitvu o hegemonickou verzi národní historie a identity, která se vede skrze vynalézání, reprodukování a vymisťování jejich symbolických reprezentací. Snaží se demonstrovat, že bez ohledu na to, jak úspěšné může vymístění fyzických atrubutů symbolů být, je jejich význam obvykle nesen v kolektivní pamětí po mnohem delší čas a slouží k problematizaci současných "kanonických" verzí národní identity.
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