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Combatants, civilians, activists or journalists? The role-orientation of citizen OSINT investigators in participative warfare in Ukraine
Hindrichs, Nils Benjamin ; Dimitrov, Michal (advisor) ; Neag, Annamária (referee)
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has given rise to an unprecedented scale of so-called citizen OSINT investigations. Private citizens from all over the world, organizing online, use publicly available information and data such as satellite imagery, social media, or flight tracking, to investigate human-rights violations, war crimes, misinformation campaigns and troop movements. But what is their role in a context of participative war? Through seven semi- structured interviews, this thesis explores and maps the role-orientation of citizen OSINT investigators in the context of the war in Ukraine, finding that they specifically value and try to follow self-imposed rules of verification, impartiality and responsibility towards themselves and others. Bringing together specialized skills, knowledge, and routines, the findings also point towards a community that consists of "unprofessional professionals", bringing about a comparative advantage of the citizen OSINT community over legacy media. Moreover, based on the interviews, a typology of four different but intersecting cognitive role-orientations is suggested, contributing to the exploration of a phenomenon that yet needs to be examined academically. Keywords OSINT, open-source intelligence, citizen journalism, participative war, journalistic...
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Climate justice discourse in German quality newspapers along the political spectrum
Herber, Rebecca Theresa ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Dimitrov, Michal (referee)
Climate justice is a concept that puts forward the unequal impacts that climate change has on different group and areas. It is stressed in academia, and activism alike, and has been increasingly used in German newspaper coverage. This emphasises the need to understand how the media might contribute to the formation of public discourse on climate justice, which the present study aims to do. Through critical discourse analysis, 32 articles published in taz, SZ, FAZ, and Die Welt were examined to identify the following dominant discourses on climate justice in their coverage: the multi-layered imbalance between the Global South and the Global North, the call for a holistic consideration of climate justice, climate justice as part of activists' agenda and the need for a focus on intranational socio-economic injustice. While there are differences to be found between the political alignments, they turn out to be greater between the more pronounced politically affiliated newspapers on both ends and less pronounced between the more moderately aligned newspapers. It should not be left unmentioned, however, that generally, many articles did not play into any particular discourse at all. Frequently, climate justice coverage remains shallow and does not provide nuanced context on the layers of injustice, their...
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"Not in our name": The Melilla Tragedy as a case study of partisan media coverage of migration in the Spanish southern border
Vidal Rico, Marina ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Macková, Veronika (referee)
The term "Melilla tragedy" is usually used to refer to the events of the 24th of June 2022, when the attempted crossing to the Spanish side of the Melilla border by a group of around 2.000 Sub-Saharan migrants resulted in at least 25 deaths. Hoping to contribute to the understanding of the coverage of migration in polarized media environments, the present study looks at articles focused on these events published by Spanish national media across the political spectrum. Through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis approach, 16 opinion pieces published by El País, El Mundo, El Confidencial, and elDiario.es were critically examined in search of relevant conclusions on the influence of media partisanship in the media's reporting on the Southern border, and differences between the short and long-term reporting on the events. Results of this analysis point to ideology-based differences in the portrayal of migrants and the border and an overall tendency to talk about migration from a political standpoint, even more so in the long term.
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The role played by social media in the migration-related decision- making process in the case of international students of Charles University.
Rodikova, Alena ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Wirthová, Jitka (referee)
The last decades have seen a growing number of international students. States and institutions all around the world are trying to attract students from abroad. Nowadays, to reach the target group they are putting information online. It is foreseeable since the Internet has deeply penetrated our daily life. However, there is still a lack of understanding of how aspiring international students use online sources, and how these sources influence their decision to study abroad. This thesis aims to provide up-to-date information on the influence of social media on the decision-making process of aspiring international students. This study was conducted with qualitative interviews with international students of Charles University. After the data analysis, it became apparent that even though social media does not have a major impact on one's choice to study abroad, it is an important medium that helps one to maintain and create personal networks and disseminate people's influence. Therefore, one can conclude that social network sites facilitate student migration. Keywords social media, international students, student migration, decision-making, aspiring students, student mobility
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The Ecological Impacts of the Decline of Local Media: Climate Action, Perceptions of Climate Tractability, and Media Consumption in Scotland
Boyd-Madsen, Louis ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Turková, Kateřina (referee)
The climate crisis is widely seen to necessitate global action from citizens across the spectrums of power in society. Previous research has highlighted how community integration, collectivist values, social trust, and knowledge of local routes to action are all seen as enabling factors in encouraging civic engagement with 'larger-than-self' problems like climate change. These factors have also been tied to the presence and quality of localised media. Focused on the country of Scotland, this thesis sought to understand how the quality and localisation of consumed climate journalism affects readers' climate beliefs, climate actions, and cultural orientation. Through a survey (n=104) gathering data on Scottish respondents' values, climate beliefs, climate actions, and media consumption - and a quantitative narrative analysis of the climate narratives present in the outlets respondents described themselves reading (n=227 articles) - this thesis suggests that the quality of climate journalism consumed does correlate with greater climate action, but that it is local climate media that more greatly facilitates civic action. The findings of this thesis could add to the discourse surrounding the media industry's response to the decline of local media outlets, and the climate movements solutions to the...
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The Omission of Coercion: A Framing and Source Analysis of the Media Coverage of Religious Conversions in India
John, Arshu ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Lábová, Sandra (referee)
In India, the phenomenon of religious conversion is a deeply political act, rooted in a history of caste discrimination, Hindu nationalism and religious conflicts. Despite a constitutional protection of the freedom of religion, conversions rarely seen as a personal decision, especially when it concerns Hinduism. A pre-Independence, majoritarian resistance to conversions have persisted, and manifested in numerous anti-conversion laws that prescribe a protectionist caution to conversions. Since the election of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, Hindu nationalism-or Hindutva-has seen a sharp surge across social, political and public spheres. Under Modi, India has also witnessed a drop in press freedom in the country. This paper studied the media coverage of religious conversions in India during Modi's first term, from May 2014 to May 2019. It adopted a frame analysis and source analysis to study 250 articles from four mainstream English newspapers-Times of India, Indian Express, The Hindu and The Telegraph. The analysis found the 'Conflict' frame and the political elite sources remained most prevalent. However, the analysis also pointed to the role of Hindu nationalism in the media coverage of religious conversions.
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Sources and framing: a comparison of media coverage of climate change across the world
McCauley, Amina Rhyl ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Němcová Tejkalová, Alice (referee)
in English This paper looks into how climate change is being covered by newspaper media in two Global South countries and two Global North countries - India, the Philippines, Denmark and Australia. While there is some literature on who the main sources are in climate change coverage, as well as how frequently climate change is covered in different countries, there is less literature on how climate change is framed, and how this relates to who the main sources are. Analyzing articles from three newspapers in each country, this content analysis gathered data on what sources are being predominantly used in news articles, and further, how these articles are being framed. It was found that climate change has become a highly politicized issue in the media across most of these countries, and that the main voice in how climate change is becoming to be understood is politicians - except for in Denmark. At the same time, it was found that climate change is mainly being framed as an issue in need of action - except for in Australia.
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Does gender play a role in peace journalism practices? An analysis of the Armenian and Azerbaijani coverage of the 44 days Karabakh war
Di Mauro, Teresa ; Dimitrov, Michal (advisor) ; Neag, Annamária (referee)
This study explores peace journalism practices in the context of the 44 days Karabakh war and whether the reporter's gender matters in applying this approach. The research draws on analysis of eight conducted reconstruction interviews with Armenian and Azerbaijani female and male reporters. The results show that peace journalism faces several challenges in the region: from press freedom restrictions, to the prohibition of accessing the war zone especially for the Azerbajani reporters, to the fear of being targeted as traitors, and to the additional difficulties of those reporters who are refugees themselves. Furthemore, when applying gender lenses to the analysis, the impact of patriarchal norms in the reporters' work is evident. While women were more likely to access war victims, but faced challenges when embedded in the masculine environment of the army, men would be seen as 'weak' for adopting a more peaceful approach in their reporting. Although there is no shared view among the respondents on the role of the reporter's gender in appling peace journalism, the ingrained gender roles of the two societies help explain why female reporters are more likely than their male colleagues to embrace peace journalism. Keywords peace journalism, gender, gender roles, women reporters, patriarchy, women peace...
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The reproduction of structural power through discourses of delegitimation. The portrayal of the climate crisis in Italian newspapers
Torsello, Vittoria ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Němcová Tejkalová, Alice (referee)
Bibliographic note TORSELLO, Vittoria (2022) The reproduction of structural power through discourses of delegitimation. The portrayal of the climate crisis in Italian newspapers, 122 p. Master thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Supervisor prof. Annamária Neag, Ph.D Abstract When experiencing an environmental crisis, legitimacy is necessary. Since the climate crisis is a long-term process that human beings cannot experience directly, journalists must fill this gap by giving an adequate representation of it. In this process, the people who control knowledge and power secure political decisions by legitimising their actions and words in the news media. This study explores the legitimisation discourses, and the sources adopted to refer to the climate crisis in Italian news articles published in 2021. The critical discourse analysis illustrates the mechanisms involved in gaining discursive legitimacy: ideology, hegemony and power. These elements, interacting with each other, help to understand which sources, journalistic practices and discourses achieve dominance in the representation of a crisis. Discursive hegemony in the media is, in fact, able to shift responsibility for the crisis away from the agents involved, protecting their...
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Social media activism: an analysis of how climate activists use Instagram and encourage green behaviour among their followers.
Márkus, Maja Olívia ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Shavit, Anna (referee)
Climate crisis is arguably one of the most pressing issues of our societies currently. As social media has become an important part of our everyday lives and is a tool with the capacity to influence the opinion and behaviour of people, this master thesis wants to explore how climate activists portray themselves on the visual social media platform Instagram and encourage offline green action among their followers. The research is based on the qualitative content analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with young climate activists who use Instagram and the analysis of their posts. The thesis uses Goffman's presentation of self in an online context, internet activism, the personalisation of politics, social media influencers and climate communication as its theoretical framework. Results showed that climate activists not only use social media strategies of influencers on Instagram (often unwillingly), but also heavily rely on the personification of their messages and sharing aspects of their personal lives to establish connections with their followers. Climate activists interviewed qualified as micro-influencers, which allowed them to form deep relationships with their audience because of the small follower base and gave them the possibility to assess the extent of their impact on their audience's...
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