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Differential Portrayal of Refugee Crises: The European Commission's Influence on Member States' Responses and Policy Outcomes
Tsaguria, Lana ; Baizán, Pau (vedoucí práce) ; Stępka, Maciej (oponent)
This paper investigates the EU's response to two major events, the 2015 Syrian Refugee Crisis and the 2022 Ukrainian crisis, using sentiment analysis via Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4), an advanced AI tool. The vital premise of this research is that the EU's way of migration management is inconsistent, that's a longtime concept in academia, whereas the novelty of this studies is that it highlights the role of the European Commission, a notably influential body within the EU, in shaping member states' responses and attitudes toward asylum seekers. The quantitative sentiment analysis found out the emergence of heterogeneous discourses, especially the dichotomy between "fictional" (oblique) and "factual" (direct) discourses. The EU's response to the 2015 crisis was marked by repetitive, delayed, and blame-shifting discourse that targeted a loss of cohesion among member states and the lack of an unified action plan. In contrast, the EU's response to the 2022 Ukrainian Crisis takes the form of factual narratives, encompassing both immediate crisis management and the development of plans to assist those granted protection. The findings improve our understanding of the EU's response to these crises, highlighting the complexities and nuances in its discourses and actions.
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Explaining East-Central Europe's Low Level of Terrorist Activities Compared to Western Europe
Schöppl, Paul ; Augusteijn, Joost (vedoucí práce) ; Stępka, Maciej (oponent)
The aim of this Master's thesis is to explain the seemingly relatively low extent of terrorist activity in the eastern central European states of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1991 and 2019. The region has been comparatively little studied regarding terrorism. Using a variety of data from the GTD database and the UN Population database, statistical methods are used in this Master's thesis to examine the extent of terrorism in European states and predefined regions relative to their populations. The results demonstrate that, on a weighted average per million inhabitants, nine times as many people were killed by terrorist activities in Western Europe as in the four east-central European states. To examine this in more detail, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany as well as the four east-central European states were examined regarding jihadist and rightwing terrorism. A more detailed analysis of the statistical results showed that the differences between the individual states were at least as significant as those between the defined regions. The structured focused comparison of the eight states demonstrated that political opportunities for members of radical social movements could, at least in part, explain the differences in the extent of terrorist activities between the...
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Frontex's Discursive Strategy of Self-Legitimization: A Critical Social Media Discourse Analysis
Babayev, Pasha ; Stępka, Maciej (vedoucí práce) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (oponent)
The thesis will start with the Chapter 1 on background information in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of Frontex necessary for the adequate analysis of the Agency's self-presentation. It will first explain how Frontex has emerged in relation to the existing research on securitization of migration. It will go on to provide a brief account of investigations accusing the Agency of human rights violations, as well as illuminate the paradox between the robust protection of external borders from illegal crossings and the principle of nonrefoulement. The chapter will finish with the discussion of the Agency's lack of accountability and transparency to provide an overview of Frontex's complex working mechanism. Against the backdrop provided in the first Chapter, Chapter 2 will introduce the research problem, justify its relevance, and pose a clear research question regarding Frontex's self-portrayal. Next, Chapter 3 will review the existing literature related to the given research question in academia, specifically exploring Critical Discourse Analyses of Frontex's public 3:9599938873 Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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The Effectiveness of Erasmus+ and UGRAD Soft Power on Armenia During Hard Times (Nagorno-Karabakh War 2020.
Derzyan, Tatev ; Young, Mitchell (vedoucí práce) ; Stępka, Maciej (oponent)
Tatev Derzyan (41794665) The Effectiveness of Erasmus+ and UGRAD Soft Power on Armenia during Hard Times (Nagorno-Karabakh War 2020) Abstract The thesis focuses on soft power and public diplomacy through exchange study programs of the European Union and the United States. Precisely, the thesis studies the influence of the educational exchange programs (Erasmus+ and UGRAD) on the Armenian exchange students in the scope of soft power. After establishing the influence of the exchange programs on the formation of the perceptions about the host countries, the thesis further focuses on the sustainability of the perception taking into consideration the Nagorno-Karabakh Second war which is a 'critical juncture' as it was a dramatic event in the life of the Armenian youth and could have influenced their views of the EU and the US. It is important to note that the academic literature on the exchange students' perceptions does not provide any studies through the lenses of the political events in the participants' home country. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews have been conducted among the Erasmus+ and UGRAD participants from Armenia alongside the content analysis of the documents that the EU and the US released during the Nagorno-Karabakh Second war in order to understand what was the politics of the host...
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Revealing narratives on the SDGs implementation in the Scandinavian countries
Zhuaspayeva, Assem ; Stępka, Maciej (vedoucí práce) ; Oster, Jan (oponent)
The idea of this research is to discover the narratives that the Scandinavian governments and the national NGOs create on the SDGs implementation, whether there are conflicting narratives, whether there is a critique of the SDGs implementation practices, or whether there are success stories. The study will focus both on the government work in sustainable development implementation, and on the NGOs at the national level, focus on the narratives they create in relation to the SDGs implementation, how the NGOs interact with the governments, how they communicate arguments about the SDGs, how they evaluate the implementation of the SDGs. The idea is to study not only the success story of Scandinavian countries, but also discover if there is something they could do better according to the governmental reports and the national NGOs. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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To Emphasise or not to Emphasise? Green Parties' Performance and its Effect on Mainstream Parties' Environmental Agenda
Cherkashchenko, Anastasiia ; Astudillo, Javier (vedoucí práce) ; Stępka, Maciej (oponent)
While most of scholars agree that parties compete by emphasising particular issues and responding to the issues owned and used by their opponents in different ways and based on various factors, there is no compromise on the relationship between niche parties' electoral success and the strategy applied by established parties, particularly in the case of Green parties and environmental issues. This thesis addresses the existing puzzle by examining to what extent and under which circumstances green parties' performance affects environmental issues' saliency on mainstream left-wing parties' agenda. The study is centred around conducting the quantitative analysis of panel data that is based on the Manifesto Project and the ParlGov datasets and includes elections in 23 European Union member states covering the time period of 1980-2018. The findings demonstrate that Green parties' performance measured by share of seats which these parties acquire during elections has a negative effect on established parties' emphasis on environmental issues in the elections which follow. Moreover, different effects for old and new member states are observed. Thus, the results of this research contribute to the previous literature on party competition and issue competition as well as existing debates on relationship between niche...
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