Thèses sur le sujet « Mass media – European Union countries »

The focus of this thesis is on the vertical Europeanisation of the online public debate and more specifically on the EU's online public communication strategy, i.e. the top-down process of the unmediated, direct, online communication between the EU and the general public. The empirical data has been collected in four stages, namely public communication policy-making; public communication policy implementation online; online public communication policy impact on key Internet audiences; and interviews with key senior Commission officials. The review of the EU public communication documents has shown that the Commission has unambiguously committed to facilitate direct communication with the EU public as part of the process of building the EU citizens' trust towards its institutions and in addressing the issues of transparency and democratic legitimation of the EU's decision-making process, while the Internet is seen as a key tool in facilitating direct communication. However, after monitoring three of the EU's official websites for a year and analyzing the views of 221 Internet users on the EU's Information and Communication strategy online, it has become evident that the Commission has not yet fulfilled these commitments. The interviews with key Commission officials have revealed that behind this gap between policy and online implementation lie: a) an institutional culture which conflicts with the aims of the Commission's public communication strategy; and b) constant institutional restructuring in the last six years. Very recently the Commission has begun to address some of the shortfalls in the online implementation of its public communication strategy, yet there is no indication that the results of the online debate regarding the EU's future will be incorporated in the decision-making process, while further study is required in the future in order to assess any change in the institutional culture in relation to its public communication strategy.

El principio de publicidad de las actuaciones judiciales se encuentra consagrado como un derecho fundamental en el artículo 24.2 de nuestra Constitución. Este derecho no es de carácter absoluto y se encuentra sometido a ciertas limitaciones previstas legalmente. La publicidad del proceso penal implica que tengan conocimiento de las actuaciones, no solo los propios interesados, sino también extraños al proceso. Esta actividad de difusión de la noticia, garantía de funcionamiento del Poder Judicial en una sociedad democrática, se efectúa principalmente por los medios de comunicación. El problema se produce cuando se informa sobre un hecho noticiable que se encuentra sub iudice y los Mass Media, a través de un “juicio paralelo”, pretenden, de forma continua y sesgada, examinar y valorar el proceso judicial, las pruebas y las personas implicadas en los hechos y asumen así el papel de juez e inducen a éste a un veredicto anticipado de culpabilidad o inocencia ante la opinión pública. Esta actividad colisiona con posiciones subjetivas de los individuos, que también tienen la consideración de derechos fundamentales como son los derechos a: (i) un proceso justo; (ii) un juez imparcial; (iii) la presunción de inocencia y (iv) recibir y comunicar información. Con esta tesis doctoral se ha procedido a estudiar dicha problemática así como las respuestas que la legislación, la jurisprudencia y la doctrina dan, en nuestro Ordenamiento jurídico y en derecho comparado, para conciliar estos derechos fundamentales con los intereses mediáticos de le prensa, así como las garantías previstas legalmente en el ámbito penal, civil y contencioso- administrativo para la salvaguarda de los mismos. En la parte final del trabajo se apuntan posibles soluciones al problema de los “juicios paralelos” que puedan dar respuesta al interés general de la sociedad en su pretensión de obtener una justicia eficaz en la represión del delito a la vez que respetuosa con los derechos de todos los ciudadanos que se pueden ver involucrados en el proceso judicial.
El principi de publicitat de les actuacions judicials es troba consagrat com un dret fonamental en l’article 24.2 de la nostra Constitució. Aquest dret no és de caràcter absolut i està sotmès a determinades limitacions previstes legalment. La publicitat del procés penal implica que tinguin coneixement de les actuacions, no només els propis interessats, si no també estranys al procés. Aquesta activitat de difusió de la notícia, garantia del funcionament del Poder Judicial en una societat democràtica, és realitzada, principalment, pels mitjans de comunicació. El problema es produeix quan s’informa d’un fet que és notícia i que es troba sub iudice, i els mass media, mitjançant un “judici paral·lel”, pretenen de forma continuada i esbiaixada examinar i valorar el procés judicial, les proves i les persones implicades en els fets, assumint el paper de jutge, induint a un veredicte anticipat de culpabilitat o innocència a aquest en front de l’opinió pública. Aquesta activitat topa amb posicions subjectives dels individus que també tenen la consideració de drets fonamentals com són els drets a: (i) un procés just; (ii) un jutge imparcial; (iii) la presumpció d’innocència i (iv) rebre i comunicar informació. Amb la present tesis doctoral s’ha procedit a estudiar la referida problemàtica així com les respostes que la legislació, la jurisprudència i la doctrina donen en el nostre Ordenament Jurídic i en dret comparat, per tal de conciliar aquests drets fonamentals amb els interessos mediàtics de la premsa, així com les garanties previstes legalment en l’àmbit penal, civil i contenciós – administratiu per a la salvaguarda dels mateixos. En la part final del treball s’apunten possibles solucions al problema dels “judicis paral·lels” que poden donar resposta a l’interès general de la societat en la seva pretensió d’obtenir una justícia eficaç en la repressió del delicte a la vegada que respectuosa amb els drets de tots els ciutadans que es puguin veure involucrats en el procés judicial.
The principle of publicity of judicial actions is set forth as fundamental right in article 24 of the Spanish Constitution. Nevertheless, this is not an absolute right: it has some legal limitations. The publicity of the criminal procedure implies that not only those directly affected by the procedure know the state of acts but third people. Information disclosure, which serves as a warranty of the functioning of the judicial system, is done in a democratic society by the media. The problem arises when mass media start a parallel trial while reporting on case which is still sub iudice, assessing and judging with a biased viewpoint the procedure, its participants and the evidences submitted, assuming the judge’s role and, therefore, trying to induce him/her to an anticipate judgement before the public opinion. Such activity collides with the position of the defendant, who has his/her own fundamental rights such as the right to (i) a fair trial; (ii) an impartial judge; (iii) the presumption of innocence and (iv) receive and communicate certain information. In the present thesis, the problem of parallel trials and the collision of rights have been studied taking into account the solutions provided by Law, case law and scholars both of Spanish Legal System and comparative Law in order to reconcile such fundamental rights with media’s interest and also the legal guarantees for defendants in civil, criminal and administrative procedures. In the final part of this thesis, there are some possible solutions to the problem of parallel trials which try to give an answer to society’s general interest to find an efficient justice system in punishing crimes which also respects the rights of all citizens which may be part of the process.

Defence date: 12 June 2019
Examining Board: Prof. Alexander Trechsel, University of Lucerne (Supervisor); Prof. Giovanni Sartor, European University Institute; Prof. Luigi Curini, University of Milan; Prof. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Lund University
A Public Sphere and a demos are intrinsic key elements of any democratic society. The literature has pointed out that social media platforms can play an important role in developing direct interactions between users and creating a sense of community. Can Twitter contribute to the emergence of a transnational networked European Public Sphere and European demos? This thesis examines the contribution of the European Political Twittersphere to this question. I divide the question into three articles. In each I use a different theoretical framework and methodological approach to two datasets of two issue publics (the Schengen agreement and the transatlantic trade partnership, TTIP) collected through the public Twitter Streaming API from August 2016 to April 2017. In the first article I explore the actor level of the networks created from the Twitter data. I investigate whether these Twitter networks constitute networked publics where non-elite actors receive attention and play an important role by the number of mentions and retweets. In the second article I explore the question of the constitution of European transnational networks. To do so, I geolocate the accounts involved in the two networks to identify the type of interactions the users establish, whether national or transnational. In the third article I analyse the content of these networks by extracting what sentiments the users express for the topics, and whether they see themselves and the topics as national or European. The three articles capture three features of the European Political Twittersphere. First, the results indicate the presence of transnational European networks. Second, built from the bottom-up where non-elite actors receive most of the attention. And third, composed of a multilingual demoi where the users see themselves and the topics as European. However, although these mapped Twitter networks contribute to some extent to transnational interaction and a sense of community, the deliberative quality of these networks is low.

This doctoral thesis explores under what circumstances executive actors, political parties and interest groups gain visibility in EU (European Union) related debates in the Spanish media for the period 2005-2015. The case of Spain allows exploring aspects so far subjected to little empirical investigations. For example, the motivations of Europhile parties’ to pay attention to the EU, to what extent parties use an EU frame to achieve political goals in a multilevel system of government, or the changing patterns of politicization of EU issues in one of the countries more seriously hit by the euro crisis. The analysis relies on the content analysis of 40.000 stories and 354.000 claims of political actors published in El País and El Mundo from 2005 to 2015. The first chapter, devoted to the analysis of executive actors and political parties, corroborates that political actors react to top-down pressures. Executive actors, those with more media visibility, mainly react to the approval of new EU normative and events, such as European Council meetings, while the visibility of political parties is more associated to European parliament elections. Yet, the thesis shows that political actors do not react only to EU processes and events. Even if European integration is not a politicized issue in Spain, the analysis of public debates on EU affairs show that parties use Europe strategically, as part of their competition to each other in the domestic political arena. Results also illustrate that the euro crisis did not redistribute significantly political actors’ visibility in the media. Even if challenger parties were very critical of most decisions adopted to overcome the crisis, their visibility on EU related public debates did not significantly increase during this critical juncture. Finally, even if European integration is not a politicized issue, as far as the EU is associated with domestic political debates, patterns of media political parallelism emerge. For example, the visibility of secessionist Catalan parties in EU related debates only increases parallel to increasing support for independence in El Mundo. The second chapter, devoted to the analysis of interest groups, corroborates that in this case top-down processes do not play an important role in explaining their visibility in EU related debates. Interest groups do not obtain more media coverage when new normative is discussed at the EU level, not even on those policy areas where the EU has more competences. Yet, stories where new EU regulation in the fields of energy, environment, labor and social issues is discussed, show higher diversity of interest groups than policy domains of economic nature, which are monopolized by few groups. The analysis also shows that debates related to the European parliament and the European Commission are generally associated with a more pluralistic patterns, involving interest groups of different types, than those where the European Council participate. The visibility of interest groups does not increase neither during the approval of new EU normative, nor when their implementation is discussed at domestic level. Interest groups with a role in the implementation process have no visibility in public debates on European affairs, not even on highly politicized issues. Regarding the impact of the euro crisis, it did raise attention to previously excluded groups in EU related debates, such as labor unions or citizens groups. Yet, important differences exist between El Mundo and El País. The analysis of interest groups further corroborates that the media are not passive actors but may be actively involved in the process of giving some actors more attention in public debates to support their political allies.
Aquesta tesi doctoral explora les circumstàncies en les que actors de l'executiu, partits polítics i grups d'interès obtenen visibilitat en els debats relacionats amb la UE (Unió Europea), publicats pels mitjans de comunicació espanyols durant el període 2005-2015. El cas d'Espanya permet explorar aspectes poc investigats des d’un punt de vista empíric fins ara. Per exemple, les motivacions per les quals els partits euròfils presten atenció a la UE, fins a quin punt utilitzen un emmarcat europeu per a aconseguir objectius polítics en un sistema de govern multinivell, o els canvis en els patrons de politització dels assumptes europeus en un dels països més afectats per l'Euro crisi. L'estudi es basa en l'anàlisi del contingut de 40.000 notícies i 354.000 afirmacions d'actors polítics, publicats en El País i El Mundo entre 2005 i 2015. El primer capítol, enfocat en l'anàlisi dels actors de l'executiu i els partits polítics, corrobora que els actors polítics reaccionen a pressions top-down. Els actors de l'executiu, aquells amb més visibilitat mediàtica, reaccionen principalment a l'aprovació de nova normativa i esdeveniments europeus, com, per exemple, reunions del Consell Europeu, mentre que la visibilitat dels partits polítics està més associada amb les eleccions al Parlament Europeu. No obstant això, aquesta tesi mostra que els actors polítics no només reaccionen a processos i esdeveniments europeus. Fins i tot si la integració europea no és un assumpte polititzat a Espanya, l'anàlisi dels debats públics sobre assumptes europeus mostra que els partits utilitzen Europa de manera estratègica, com a part de la competició partidista en l’arena política domèstica. Els resultats il·lustren que l'Euro crisi no va implicar una redistribució significativa de la cobertura mediàtica dels actors polítics. Malgrat els partits challenger van ser molt crítics amb la majoria de les decisions adoptades per a superar la crisi, la seva visibilitat en els debats públics relacionats amb la UE no va augmentar significativament durant aquesta conjuntura crítica. Finalment, la tesi mostra que tot i que la integració europea no és un assumpte polititzat, en la mesura en que la UE s'associa amb debats polítics domèstics, emergeixen patrons de paral·lelisme polític en la cobertura mediàtica. Per exemple, la visibilitat dels partits catalans secessionistes en debats on es fa referència a la UE només augmenta paral·lelament a l'increment del suport a la independència a El Mundo. El segon capítol, centrat en l'anàlisi dels grups d'interès, demostra que els processos top-down no juguen un paper important a l’hora d’explicar la seva visibilitat en els debats relacionats amb la UE. Els grups d'interès no obtenen major cobertura mediàtica quan es debat nova normativa europea, ni tan sols en aquells àmbits en els que la UE té més competències. No obstant això, notícies sobre l'aprovació de nova regulació europea en àmbits com l'energia, el medi ambient, el treball o els assumptes socials mostren una major diversitat de grups d'interès que aquelles sobre assumpres econòmics, monopolitzades per pocs grups. L'anàlisi també mostra que els debats relacionats amb el Parlament Europeu i la Comissió Europea, generalment es troben associats amb patrons més plurals, involucrant diferents grups d'interès, que aquells en els quals participa el Consell Europeu. La visibilitat dels grups d'interès no és elevada durant la discussió de normativa a nivell europeu ni tampoc durant el procés d’implementació a nivell domèstic. Els grups d'interès amb un rol en el procés d'implementació no obtenen visibilitat en els debats públics sobre els assumptes europeus, ni tant sols en assumptes molt polititzats. Respecte a l'impacte de l'Euro crisi, aquesta va augmentar l'atenció a grups prèviament exclosos dels debats sobre la UE, com, per exemple, sindicats i grups de ciutadans. No obstant, existeixen diferències importants entre El País i El Mundo. L'anàlisi sobre els grups d'interès corrobora que els mitjans de comunicació no són actors passius, sinó que participen activament en el procés, donant més cobertura mediàtica a determinats actors amb l’objectiu de donar suport als seus aliats polítics.
Esta tesis doctoral explora las circunstancias en las que actores del ejecutivo, partidos políticos y grupos de interés obtienen visibilidad en los debates relacionados con la UE (Unión Europea), publicados por los medios de comunicación españoles durante el periodo 2005-2015. El caso de España permite explorar aspectos poco investigados desde un punto de vista empírico hasta el momento. Por ejemplo, las motivaciones por las que los partidos eurófilos prestan atención a la UE, hasta qué punto usan un enmarcado europeo para lograr sus objetivos políticos en un sistema de gobierno multinivel, o los cambios en los patrones de politización de los asuntos europeos en uno de los países más afectados por la Euro crisis. El estudio se basa en el análisis del contenido de 40.000 noticias y 354.000 afirmaciones de actores políticos, publicadas en El País y El Mundo entre 2005 y 2015. El primer capítulo, centrado en el análisis de los actores del ejecutivo y los partidos políticos, corrobora que los actores políticos reacciones a presiones top- down. Los actores del ejecutivo, aquellos con más visibilidad mediática, reaccionan principalmente a la aprobación de nueva normativa y eventos europeos, como, por ejemplo, reuniones del Consejo Europeo, mientras que la visibilidad de los partidos políticos está más asociada con las elecciones al Parlamento Europeo. Sin embargo, esta tesis muestra que los actores políticos no sólo reaccionan a estos procesos y eventos europeos. Incluso si la integración europea no es un asunto politizado en España, el análisis de los debates públicos sobre asuntos europeos muestra que los partidos usan Europa de forma estratégica, como parte de la competición partidista en la arena política doméstica. Los resultados también ilustran que la Euro crisis no implicó una redistribución significativa de la cobertura mediática de los actores políticos. A pesar de que los partidos challenger fueron muy críticos con la mayoría de las decisiones adoptadas para superar la crisis, su visibilidad en los debates públicos relacionados con la UE no aumentó significativamente durante esta coyuntura crítica. Finalmente, la tesis muestra que a pesar de que la integración europea no es un asunto politizado, en la medida en que la UE se asocia con debates políticos domésticos, emergen patrones de paralelismo político en la cobertura mediática. Por ejemplo, la visibilidad de los partidos catalanes secesionistas en debates en los que se hace referencia a Europa solo aumenta paralelamente al incremento del apoyo a la independencia en El Mundo. El segundo capítulo, centrado en el análisis de los grupos de interés, demuestra que los procesos top-down no juegan un papel importante para explicar su visibilidad en los debates relacionados con la UE. Los grupos de interés no obtienen mayor cobertura mediática cuando se debate nueva normativa europea, ni siquiera en aquellos ámbitos en los que la UE tiene más competencias. No obstante, noticias sobre la aprobación de nueva regulación europea en ámbitos como la energía, el medio ambiente, el trabajo o los asuntos sociales muestran una mayor diversidad de grupos de interés que aquellas sobre asuntos económicos, monopolizadas por pocos grupos. El análisis también muestra que los debates relacionados con el Parlamento Europeo y la Comisión Europea, generalmente se encuentran asociados con patrones más plurales, involucrando diferentes grupos de interés, que aquellos en los que participa el Consejo Europeo. La visibilidad de los grupos de interés no es elevada durante la discusión de normativa a nivel europeo ni tampoco durante el proceso de implementación a nivel doméstico. Los grupos de interés con un rol en el proceso de implementación no obtienen visibilidad en los debates públicos sobre los asuntos europeos, ni siquiera en asuntos muy politizados. Con respecto al impacto de la Euro crisis, ésta aumentó la atención a grupos previamente excluidos de los debates sobre la UE, como, por ejemplo, sindicatos y grupos de ciudadanos. No obstante, existen diferencias importantes entre El País y El Mundo. El análisis sobre los grupos de interés corrobora que los medios de comunicación no son actores pasivos, sino que participan activamente en el proceso, dando más cobertura mediática a determinados actores con el objetivo de apoyar a sus aliados políticos.

Defence date: 5 November 2015
Examining Board: Professor Giorgio Monti, Supervisor-European University Institute; Doctor Rachael Craufurd-Smith, University of Edinburg; Professor Michal Gal, University of Haifa; Professor Peggy Valcke, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Received the The Institute of Competition Law 2016 Concurrences PhD Award.
EU Competition Law is generally believed to play a negligible role in protecting media pluralism. Three arguments are usually put forward to support this position. First, the application of EU competition law ensures market access, thereby potentially delivering an outcome that is of benefit to media pluralism, but this outcome is entirely dependent on the economic concerns the European Commission attempts to address in each individual case and hence (at best) coincidental. Second, precisely because it is driven by efficiency considerations, EU competition law is incapable of grasping the qualitative dimension of media pluralism. Third, when exercising State aid control, the Commission can (and must) play only a marginal role in the planning and implementation of aid measures aimed at promoting media pluralism. This thesis puts forward the claim that EU competition law has potential that remains unexplored by questioning the accuracy of the above three assumptions. To test this claim, it examines a number of traditional and new media markets (broadcasting, print and digital publishing, online search, and news aggregation) and competition law issues (concentrations, resale price maintenance agreements, online agencies, abuses of dominance, and State aids to public service media). The study demonstrates that if relevant assessments are conducted properly, that is, by duly taking account of the dimensions that drive competition in the media, including quality, variety and originality, and by making appropriate use of the tools provided by the applicable legal framework, EU competition law may go a long way towards safeguarding media pluralism without the need to stretch the limits of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Amidst a deregulatory trend towards the media and given that the likelihood that action with far-reaching implications under other branches of EU law is low, the normative suggestions put forward in this thesis possibly form the only realistic proposal on the contribution the EU can make to the protection of pluralism.

Defence date: 17 May 2005
Examining board: Prof. Bruno De Witte (Supervisor, European University Institute) ; Prof. Rachael Craufurd Smith, University of Edinburgh ; Prof. Roberto Mastroianni, Università Federico II di Napoli ; Prof. Hans Ullrich, European University Institute
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 27 May 2015
Examining Board: Professor Bruno de Witte (European University Institute, Supervisor); Professor Loïc Azoulai (European University Institute); Doctor Rachael Craufurd Smith (University of Edinburgh); Professor Roberto Mastroianni (Università di Napoli).
This thesis explores the legal and institutional settings that contribute to the creation of general preconditions for the freedom of expression and, primarily, genuine pluralism to prosper throughout the European audiovisual media space. Taking into account the intense legislative and judicial activity on audiovisual media matters in the European Union (EU) and bearing in mind the developments brought about by new digital communications and technological convergence, the analysis focuses on the institutional forms and modes of governance for the media that are apt to foster an effective and consistent supranational approach to the fundamental objective of media pluralism and the values it involves, considering notably the role and functioning of Independent Administrative Authorities (IAAs) for the media. To this end, the three Parts into which the Thesis is divided deal with, respectively: the notion of media pluralism and its employment in EU law, highlighting the limits of classical hard-law based approaches (Part I); an examination of the institutional features as well as the operation of three national IAAs for the media – namely, the French Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA), the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) and the Italian Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCom) – selected as case studies to illustrate the role of these bodies in securing media pluralism (Part II); the investigation of EU action in setting the necessary institutional preconditions and some specific related requirements to guarantee attainment of this objective, also looking in some detail at the legislative developments that have occurred in comparable sectors, such as data protection legislation, equality law and electronic communication regulation, before considering the arrangements in place at the supranational level, as well as the incipient ones in the governance of audiovisual media (Part III).

Defense date: 18 December 2009
Examining Board: Adrienne Héritier (EUI/RSCAS), Anker Brink Lund (Copenhagen Business School), Gianpietro Mazzoleni (University of Milan) (External Co-Supervisor), Alexander H. Trechsel (EUI) (Supervisor)
François Mény Prize for the Best Comparative Study of Political Institutions, 2010.
In this thesis, I demonstrate that the degree of political independence that a public service broadcaster has depends on the degree of legal protection given to it, and on the size of the market for news in that country. The latter affects broadcaster independence by creating more standardized and professionalized news, which in turn reduces politicians’ incentives to intervene in the broadcaster. The former affects broadcaster independence by making it less likely that such intervention will be effective. I demonstrate these claims in two ways. First, I conduct a large-N statistical analysis of 36 public service broadcasters (PSBs), in which I demonstrate that legal protection news market size are statistically significant predictors of PSB independence (as I operationalize it), and that other suggested explanatory factors — party system polarization and bureaucratic partisanship — have no effect. Second, I carry out a comparative historical analysis of six European PSBs—Radiotelevisione Italiana, Radiotelevisión Española, Radio Telefís Éireann (Ireland), the British Broadcasting Corporation, Danmarks Radio, and Sveriges Radio and its associated companies (Sweden) — and substantiate the claims made in my statistical analysis. In particular, I demonstrate that where the market for news was bigger, broadcasters capitalised on pre-existing journalistic experience, adopting the house-styles of press agencies and learning from journalists’ associations. Conversely, where the market was small, that experience could not be drawn on, and broadcast journalism attracted political intervention.
Version of thesis published as a book "HANRETTY, Chris, Public Broadcasting and Political Interference, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2011, Routledge Research in Political Communication"

Defence date: 7 January 2005
Examining board: Peter Wagner, EUI (Supervisor) ; Jaap Dronkers, EUI ; Gerard Delanty, University of Liverpool ; Bernhard Peters, University of Bremen
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 09 June 2008
Examining Board: Prof. Peter Wagner, University of Trento and EUI Supervisor Prof. Alexander Trechsel, EUI Prof. Jürg Steiner, University of Carolina Prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, University of Zürich
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
In this work we will attempt to evaluate which of these scenarios is most likely to become prominent in the future by focusing essentially on three issues: 1) the usage of the online forum by observing how diffuse the phenomenon is and who the users of the online debates are; 2) The offer of the online political forum, by analyzing which are the political actors (civil society, media, institutional actors) who are more susceptible to host the online political debates; and 3) the quality of the online debates by assessing their deliberativeness. By elaborating a sophisticated method for measuring the deliberativeness of the online debates and by analyzing a great variety of online debates our objective is to provide an appreciation of the deliberative potential of the web-debates that avoids shortcuts and inappropriate generalizations, but that recognizes that this may be determined by a multiplicity of factors. From a theoretical perspective the results obtained through our investigations contribute to evaluate whether the deliberative model of democracy could be fostered by the virtualization of the political debates and, more generally, it should also contribute to the elaboration of a deliberative model of democracy that is grounded not only on theoretical principles and suppositions, as this tends to be the case, but also on empirical studies that test its adaptability to the 'real life politics'.

Over the last two years the number of refugees and asylum seekers in European countries dramatically increased, with asylum claims mostly originating from countries affected by war and poverty, especially in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. The rapid increase of the mobility of migrants raises contradictory reactions in society and individual countries can not agree on an acceptable solution. Against the background, Western European countries usually approach the immigrants more openly than Eastern European countries. A big role in the question of acceptance of migrants in different countries is played by the media. In contemporary society, the media constitute the main source of information about what is happening in the world and intermediate events in which the public cannot participate directly. Therefore it is important to examine how mass media in Eastern and Western European countries present the issues of solidarity, human rights, and the right to asylum. The aim of this master thesis is to find out what the main differences are in the case of printed mass media and whether the western newspapers create a better image of refugees than eastern media. As a representation of an Eastern European medium one Czech daily newspaper was chosen and from Western newspapers one German medium...