Efektivita negativní kampaně v prostředí České republiky

Bc. Lucie ŠATROVÁ

Master's thesis

Negative Campaign Effectiveness within Czech Republic Environment

Abstract:

Práce se zabývá otázkou, zda v prostředí České republiky, v kontextu specifické české politické kultury i dalších odlišnostech, může negativní kampaň mobilizovat voliče, jako je tomu například ve Spojených státech Amerických. Práce se zabývá teorií negativní kampaně a v aplikované části analyzuje některé politické události parlamentních voleb do PS PČR v roce 2010, konkrétně negativní kampaň v tisku, na billboardech, na webu či v rámci předvolebních televizních debat. Tato práce je zaměřena především na negativní kampaň ČSSD v kontextu předvolebních preferencí a volebních výsledků.

Abstract:

Negative campaigning is a relatively new phenomenon in the Czech environment, although it has been used in the Anglo-American environment for more than 50 years. Even though certain aspects of negative behavior against an opponent appeared in the early 90?s, the great boom of using the professional political marketing, especially the negative campaign, did not arise until the elections in 2006 and 2010. The first party to use this type of campaigning was the Czech Labour Party (Česká strana sociálně demokratická) just before the elections in 2006. In 2010 this phenomenon grew exponentially and became used by other parties, foremost by the ODS. This paper is focused on the case study of the utilization the negative campaigning by the Czech Labour Party (ČSSD). The main aim is to find whether negative campaigning might exist in the Czech environment and if it fulfills its purpose. The time before elections in 2010 was studied. Several political events, when negative campaigning was obviously used along with the help of political marketing tools, were picked. Particular research elements were created in order to detect clear negative announcements. These were printed advertisement, negation on the billboards, negation on the internet and amounts of negative references of the politicians in pre-election television discussions. Then analysis of pre-election meetings as an exhibition of the party?s power followed. In all of these studies only one key political participant ? Czech Labour Party, was observed. For the comparison, ODS party was observed as well in order to show the differences in utilization of negative campaigning. The results showed that the Labour Party brought the highest ratio of the negation to the elections in 2010. On the basis of the pre-election preference poles which showed the Czech Labour Party to win the elections, and of the repulsive effect affecting the electorate, it was deduced that the negative campaigning is ineffective in the environment of the Czech Republic. In spite of knowing that decision making is a very wide and complicated process affected by a very wide scale of other factors, I would summarize this paper in this manner. This paper describes the particular study which may be the basis for other future research.

Keywords

politický marketing, negativní kampaň, ČSSD, ODS.

Language used: Czech

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 30. 4. 2012

Accessible from:: 31. 12. 2999

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Doc. PhDr. Michal Kubát, Ph.D.

University of West Bohemia

Faculty of Philosophy and Arts

Master programme / field:
Political Science / Political Science