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The impact of brands on fashion and lifestyle blogs
Cirhanová, Jiřina ; Křeček, Jan (advisor) ; Vochocová, Lenka (referee)
This master thesis' main topic is fashion and lifestyle blogs and the impact of the brands and the ideal of beauty that is widely promoted in the media on them. The aim of this thesis is to find out which type of the brands can be mostly found in the blog posts with personal style of the successful bloggers and if there is a type of physical appearance that prevails among them. I am using the quantitative image analysis of Gillian Rose to test these hypotheses on photographs of bloggers. I was inspired by the work of Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins. My hypotheses are tested on photographs from three websites (Lookbook, Chictopia, Bloglovin') where bloggers are hierarchized. Bloggers are opinion leaders. This means it is advantageous for the marketing departments of brands to collaborate with them because bloggers can effectively influence their readers. Brands play an important role in life of people that believe brands can non-verbally tell the character of the brand consumer. In these days the Eurocentric ideal of beauty and the ideal of thin bodies are forced especially on women by media. The thinness is in the advertisements connected with attractiveness and successfulness, which is transferred also in the real life of people. The conclusion of this thesis indicates that there are most often...
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China - a real threat to U.S. hegemony?
Florková, Barbora ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Parízek, Michal (referee)
The main aim of diploma thesis "China - real threat for American hegemony?" is to answer the question whether China is trying to threaten American position of world hegemon. After the dissolution of USSR and the fall of Iron Curtain USA became the only world superpower. Balance of power theory assumes that the occurrence of leading actor in the system will invoke attempts of others to balance the power of the leader, or to weaken him. In current world political system there are powers whose power potential is growing. One of them is China, mainly because its fast growing and prospering economy. Author of the thesis works with the concept of hegemony based on hard and soft power and three types of exercising of power - three faces of power - as means of achieving its goals. Author analyses Chinese use of hard and soft power resources, that can be classified under three types of use of power. All policies are then examined from "balance of power" theory view. Author tries to find out which one of behavior "balancing" attempts to balance, weaken USA or "bandwagoning" - support of USA is prevailing in Chinese policies. According to the prevailing tendency of Chinese behavior towards USA the author is capable to state whether China can be considered as a threat for US hegemony.
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Hegemony struggle according to KSČ
Bruna, Jaroslav ; Vilímek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Slačálek, Ondřej (referee)
(in English) The author tries to describe the transformation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in relation to itself and the surrounding environment, especially in the period from 17th November to 21st December 1989. He will use primarily the articles from Rudé právo and a stenographic record of the unscheduled session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on 24th and 26th November 1989 which was published under the name Poslední hurá. He considers it appropriate to put into context the events of November and December 1989, with political development in Czechoslovakia in January, at the turn of June and July, and in October 1989. This analysis attempt will be based on the principles of general linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The combination of hegemonic analysis and deconstruction will be used as a method of workflow. When analyzing the transformation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the author attempts to rely primarily on three principles deriving from discourse theory. The identity is not a fixed essence but it is created in the political struggles of the content of specific concepts. There have been attempts to fully fixate the identity of individuals, groups, society. But the identity is...
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Catastrophe in America: Critical Discoursive Analysis of Hurricane Sandy in Czech Press
Bednářová, Anna ; Švantner, Martin (advisor) ; Vávra, Martin (referee)
This thesis analyzes the way of presenting the catastrophe called Sandy in the Czech media. The motivation for choosing this topic was the ascertainment that the information about Sandy narrows only on the information about New York in spite of the fact, that this hurricane, sometimes called tropical storm or "superstorm" caused many injuries in the area of Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas and especially Haiti. The analysis is realized by force of critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough, because this method is appropriate especially for analysing mass media texts in the way of offering complex view from the level of social context, through the process of production to the language form of texts. Consequently, theoretical background comes from the methods and concepts of Norman Fairclough, from the definition of media discourse, which is oriented on new media, news and news values. The analysis is oriented on the most readable Czech online news and the on the news web pages of the Czech public service television and the Czech public service radio. The goal of this thesis is primarily the comparison between the way of reporting about the hurricane between the commercial and public service online news articles; revealing ideological and powerful aspects in the way of this reporting; and the...
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Media representation of social inadaptability - critical discourse analysis
Malík, Tomáš ; Vinopal, Jiří (advisor) ; Duffková, Jana (referee)
The theme of this thesis is a conceptualization of media discourse of social inadaptability on example of news reporting on the internet portal iDNES.cz. I am analysing various ideological resources and social conditions which may influence the existence and prevailing of this discourse type. My goal was also to answer the question which social groups and individuals are associated with this label and what characteristics are attributed to them by journalists. The survey examined media texts from 2006 to 2009 within theoretical and methodological framework of the critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough.
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United States and Europe: the causes of the origins and decline of the regional hegemony strategy
Přikryl, Pavel ; Plechanovová, Běla (advisor) ; Karásek, Tomáš (referee) ; Kovář, Martin (referee)
American policy towards European integration process has always seemed equivocal: on one hand it actively supported and encouraged the process, but on the other hand it tried to contain some specific European ambitions and steer the process in a desirable direction. The objective of the thesis is to offer a possible explanation of the long-term US policy towards the European integration and European region in general. The dissertation presents a hypothesis that the American policy towards Europe since the Second World War until current times can be explained within the theorethical concept of "regional hegemony strategy". The concept builds on neorealist and neoliberal interpretations of hegemony, which are applied to the process of formulation of American grand strategy. It identifies a set of independent variables effecting the resulting strategy and operationalizes the expected strategy into particular goals. The empirical part of the dissertation then tests the established hyphothesis in two ways. In the first part it analyzes the identified independent variables and tests the causality betwen their historical evolution and evolution of the American grand strategy, especially in relation to the European region. In the consequent parts, it focuses on the American policy towards the European integration...
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Gender and Media in the Age of Post-Modernity: Revealing Gender Stereotypes in the Contemporary Czech Advertising Discourse
Olbertová, Martina ; Šoltys, Otakar (advisor) ; Reifová, Irena (referee)
ENGLISH SUMMARY The main objective of this dissertation was to provide a complex perspective on the mutual relationship of gender and media in the age of post-modernity with a special attention to the stereotypical gender portrayal presented to us by the contemporary Czech advertising discourse. We chose to demonstrate this problematics through the methods of semiotic analysis on the analytical sample of 5 advertisements (consisting of selected TV commercials) representing various aspects of stereotypical gender images appearing in the today's Czech advertising contents. We then subjected these selected advertisements to analytical methods in pursuit of finding the answers to questions related to the media image of men, women and our society that the stereotypical gender depictions contained in these advertisements help to construct. Although many of these advertisements appear to be openly sexist or even misogynic on the first sight, using the mechanisms of semiotic analysis we came to a rather opposite conclusion proposing the analyzed contents are rather pro-feminine tending toward an extensive masculine critique. This result, however, is based mainly on the mechanisms of oppositional reading of the subjected texts. On the other hand, it is presumable that the "average media consumer" not having access...
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The Fall of the United States as a Global Superpower
Vilímec, Tomáš ; Kozák, Kryštof (advisor) ; Ulík, Karel (referee)
The bachelor thesis The Fall of the United States as a Global Superpower examines the current position of the United States as the only world superpower. Since the end of the Cold War the United States of America is considered as the world hegemonic power. Nonetheless many circumstances have changed since then. The United states are obliged to finance the worldwide war against terrorism, they suffered the worst economic recession since the Great depression and their relations with other countries including their allies are not as bright as they used to be. Moreover their position is no longer unchallenged by other countries. Probably the most visible competitor is China which amazes the whole world by its powerful economic growth. Also other countries are experiencing their steep rise into the position of world power. This thesis will investigate separately the military, economic and political power of the United States and will try to answer whether the hypothetical decline of the United States could be real or not.
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Social work and its place in other helping professions from the perspektive of social workers OSPOD
HOJDAROVÁ, Markéta
This diploma thesis deals with social work and its relative position among other helping professions. Social work is described from the perspective of social workers at OSPOD (Department of Social and Legal Protection of Children). Social work is an interdisciplinary field, which means that social workers often cooperate with other professionals. Cooperation is executed in the form of an interdisciplinary team where it may happen that one of the professions dominates. The domination of one profession over another hegemony. The essence of hegemony is the desire for power while the oppressed group is able to follow the ideology of its own discipline only to a certain extent. Although social work keeps evolving, and so does the approach from the side of professionals, there are cases when social workers experience negative attitude. This is the reason why this thesis is focused on the standing of social work within other helping professions.The objective of the diploma thesis was to map the position of social work in other helping professions from the perspective of social workers at OSPOD. Was set one research question HVO1: What is the status of social work with other helping professions? To secure the integrity and completeness of information, two partial research questions were set and divided into individual categories. DVO1: How does the social workers OSPOD cooperation with the helping professions? DVO2: What factors affect the status of social work? The investigation found out that social work, particularly in the area of social-legal protection of children, is valued equally and social workers have an important role. Most informants had a positive experience with cooperation with other professionals. In case of occurrence of negative attitude, we cannot talk about hegemony but rather about the level of willingness to cooperate. It turned out that the personality of a specific professional affects the position of social work significantly, and equal standing is supported by the role of coordinator held by the respective social worker. The questioned social workers were aware of the changing attitude to social work from the side of professionals who realize the demands of social work and perceive this discipline as an equal profession. However, this fact does not apply to the public because, as the interviewed social workers confirmed, the public's opinion about social workers has not changed yet and it has retained the concept of "evil aunts" who take away children. The thesis can be used as an information material for social workers about their relative position among other helping professionals. It can also be a source of motivation in need to communicate the necessity and importance of social work to the public, but also to other professionals.
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