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How have far-right parties impacted political discourse in the European Parliament from 2013 to 2015?
Coutinho Cunha, Bianca ; Rodón, Toni (vedoucí práce) ; Mejstřík, Martin (oponent)
The present research proposes an analysis of discourse that has impacted different political parties in the European Parliament (EP) to become more susceptible to anti-immigration rhetoric and the far-right agenda. The main hypothesis is that the European refugee crisis of 2015 and its outcomes have impacted far-right political parties' discourse in the EP. This study chose the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to further analyze. This will be done by utilizing critical discourse analysis on EP speeches from these political groups from 2013 to 2015 on the topic of migration, focusing on how the migratory influx might have led to an increase in far-right rhetoric within this institution. The present study will then use speeches chosen after an inductive coding and categorization method to make a descriptive analysis to observe the impact of this discourse within the EP. The findings indicate a significant correlation between the refugee crisis of 2015 and the adoption of anti-immigration rhetoric and far-right positions by the ECR, as well as notable shifts in the S&D discourse, as a direct response to this phenomenon. The radicalization of both ends of the political spectrum was noted through the use of critical discourse analysis and...
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Exploring the Evolution of Media Representations - An Analysis of Russia-German Aussiedler in the German Print Media Surrounding the Ukraine war of 2022
Frank, Paulina Sophie ; Rodón, Toni (vedoucí práce) ; Winiarska-Brodowska, Małgorzata (oponent)
This thesis explores the qualitative shifts in German media discourse following the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, with a specific focus on the Russian-German Aussiedler, a Russianspeaking minority residing in Germany. The study aims to investigate whether these changes in media discourse have influenced public perceptions of this minority group in Germany. Despite the centrality of minority integration in German political discussions, the influential role of media in shaping public perception is often overlooked. Using discourse analysis, a total of 104 articles were examined, with 34 articles covering the period of the Crimean invasion and 70 articles covering the period of the Ukraine invasion, spanning over 15 months. The findings suggest that since the onset of the war, German media discourse has increasingly and critically scrutinized the political attitudes of the Russian-German Aussiedler, leading to the emergence of a negative narrative surrounding this group. Notably, there has been a greater and more intense overall reporting during the Ukraine war, with political discourse occupying a prominent position. In general, Russia-German ethnic immigrants have faced political pressure to justify and position themselves, which hampers their integration process in Germany. The analysis also...
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Speaking for the 'right' women: radical-right populism and women's representation in the European Parliament
Giovannoni, Beatrice ; Palacio Ludena, Maria Gabriela (vedoucí práce) ; Rodón, Toni (oponent)
This research investigates the convergence between feminism and radical-right populism in the field of women's representation in the European Union. Although previous research has explored how populist radicalright actors exploit feminist narratives to advance Islamophobic anti-immigration stances, little has been said about how feminist arguments contribute to radical-right populist attempts to represent women substantively. This is relevant because, through the representative process, populist radical-right parties construct specific views of women's identities, interests, and gender equality that are increasingly becoming part of the European political discourse. As the popularity of radical-right populist parties rises across Europe, so does their ability to use seemingly liberal narratives to leave the political fringes and enter the mainstream. Therefore, analysing the nature and the objectives of a potential convergence between feminism and radical-right populism is crucial to understanding which identities and interests would be advanced, marginalised, or erased if a populist radicalright form of feminism became dominant. This research aims to uncover 1) whether a populist radical-right form of feminism exists and what it may look like; 2) which goals populist radical-right parties pursue when they...
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Media framing of immigration in the United Kingdom: a critical discourse analysis of newspaper coverage of the Windrush scandal between 2018 and 2020
Khannolainen, Daria ; Rodón, Toni (vedoucí práce) ; Broad, Matthew (oponent)
Immigration has historically been a major political issue in the United Kingdom. Older migration waves, dating back to the mid-20th century, have become the subject of news coverage again in the last five years following the Windrush scandal. The present research focuses on the coverage of the events surrounding the Windrush scandal in the United Kingdom in 2018-2020 and how the media's political leanings impacted the framing of Commonwealth immigration. The data sources include the media's online platforms and third-party newspaper archives within the six chosen media among three subgroups (right-wing/Conservative, left-wing/Labour, and centrist). The research applied a critical discourse analysis approach to the texts of the newsprint media covering the issue. It was found that there is considerable variation in immigration coverage and the presentation of the government's response to the Windrush scandal between differently ideologically aligned newspapers. The right-leaning media were the most negative in framing non-Commonwealth immigration and the least critical of the government's response to the scandal, whereas the left-leaning and centrist newspapers showed the opposite tendencies. This study contributes to the scholarship on migration framing by media in the context of a political scandal.
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Dual multiscalarities: The effect of economic inequality on the populist radical right vote at different electoral levels
Zijlma, Jonah Guido ; Augusteijn, Joost (vedoucí práce) ; Rodón, Toni (oponent)
The primary theme of this thesis is bringing together the multiscalarity of locally determined economic inequality with the multiscalarity of different electoral levels. It asks how economic inequality-between contiguous neighbourhoods, within districts, and within municipalities-affects populist radical right voting at different electoral levels-in European Parliament, national parliamentary, and provincial elections in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2019. This thesis' academic contributions are twofold. Firstly, it innovatively places scholarship on economic inequality and populist radical right parties in the context of the literature on second-order elections, which by itself already sees little rigorous cross-electoral analysis (but cf. Cabeza, 2018). It thereby adds a novel dimension to discussions in urban studies on locally restricted contextual factors predicting populist radical right voting and polarisation (Gravelle et al., 2021). Secondly, it adds to established economic inequality literature: first, by re-emphasising the significance of a consistent psycho-perceptual causal mechanism through which effects arise, and furthermore by following Cremaschi et al. (2022) in expanding the study beyond classic indicators of inequality to encompass public service access, too.
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No better place than social media: Georgian Party Politics and Networked Rivalry
Abramishvili, Lika ; Rodón, Toni (vedoucí práce) ; Mejstřík, Martin (oponent)
The academic literature has extensively discussed the increasing role of traditional media in polarisation as well as different social media strategies pursued by political parties. However, this literature tends to ignore the timeframe for parties' social media use, which could inform academic debate on the contextual conditionings of social media's effects on polarisation. Similarly, this literature often disregards the role of other political factors, which have followed a similar upwards trend over the last years. This research addresses both the time trend and the role of personalisation by examining Facebook use of the two biggest Georgian parties between 2016 and 2020 Parliamentary Elections. Relying on qualitative content analysis of 564 Facebook posts and in-depth interviews with relevant experts, the upward trend of rising polarisation and negative tone in social media communication were confirmed. As for the personalisation, the upward trend in parallel with polarisation was only partially confirmed. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Entering the European Stage? Roles in Enlargement
Paetz, Lennart Carl Hubert ; Góra, Magdalena (vedoucí práce) ; Rodón, Toni (oponent)
Enlargement is one of the EU's most significant and successful policies with an external dimension. Throughout the years, the EU has helped transform the states of southern Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. For years now, it has stalled, fallen into fatigue that paralysed the European side and removed any incentive for the candidates' side. Among the candidate countries, Montenegro is the most promising candidate, the frontrunner. Using the role theory framework, this thesis is going to analyse what motivates EU enlargement. The fundamental roles, value-based and interest-driven roles will give way to an analysis of key obstacles to enlargement and how the EU's policy performance concerning that is motivated by either or both of the roles. Generally speaking, both roles play a crucial role in enlargement. They often build up on one another and are closely interlinked. Nevertheless, a key question remains with regards to the overall dominance of either interest-driven or value-based motivators. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Understanding Corruption Tolerance: Does Personality Matter?
Salmanova, Aygul ; Rodón, Toni (vedoucí práce) ; Sekerdej, Kinga (oponent)
Attitudes towards corruption have been attributed to a broad range of macro-level and, to a limited extent, micro-level antecedents. Neglected is academic research on the effect of individual-level psychological factors on the attitudes toward corruption. To fill this gap, this article aims to explore the impact of individuals' personality traits on their willingness to justify corrupt acts, drawing on data from World Values Survey Wave 6. By applying fixed effects models, the study finds that two of five personality traits - consciousness and agreeableness are significantly and negatively associated with individuals' willingness to justify corrupt exchanges. Additionally, the study results show that the association between the personality traits and corruption tolerance varies from country to country: openness to experience, for instance, was significantly and negatively associated with corruption tolerance in Germany, whereas this trend was not observed in the Dutch sample. Among the control variables, age and sex were significant predictors of corruption tolerance as well as the Dutch were less willing to justify corrupt acts than Germans. The study provides empirical and practical implications as well as suggestion for future research.
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E-government Performance in the EU: Does Trust Matter?
Akimova, Alena ; RODÓN, TONI (vedoucí práce) ; Oster, Jan (oponent)
Digitalization of daily life of citizens, businesses and state institutions has also incentivized transformation of the ways how governments interact with their citizens. However, despite considerable changes in functioning of front- and back-offices of governments and public administrations, the actual usage of e-services remains low. The latter leads to poor e- government performance at the country level, and this paper is aimed at explaining the role of trust as a factor contributing to it. Following recent updates of technology acceptance model and other frameworks derived from the theory of reasoned action, this research applies a time-series cross-sectional analysis to study the EU member states over the last nine years. The results show that in contrast to our expectations, the role of trust in the Internet and trust in government cannot be explicitly confirmed, whereas users' behaviour tends to be the dominant factor in explaining e-government performance at the aggregate level. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Civil Society Organisations as Agents of Europeanisation in Armenia
Gevorgyan, Gayane ; RODÓN, TONI (vedoucí práce) ; Pożarlik, Grzegorz (oponent)
The accelerated expansion of democracy in the 1990s, turn the Western countries into the main democracy promoters worldwide. Existing literature identifies several dimensions or policies of democracy promotion in the post-Cold War period, as well as two distinctive agents for it: the state and the civil society. It is widely argued that the EU became involved in the promotion of democratization and Europeanization in its Neighbourhood by providing democratic assistance to the governments of the target countries and then gradually turned towards the civil society sector. It is believed that the ''bottom-up'' approach of Europeanization and democratization might have opened new avenues for EU's engagement with wider society in these countries and have subtly accelerated the process of democratization there. On the example of Armenia, the study at hand aims to verify this claim and assess the effectiveness of EU-promoted policies in the country from a new perspective, particularly by considering, first, whether EU-funded local NGOs might have contributed to the democratic transformation happened in Armenia in 2018, and, secondly, by looking into the way people change their attitudes towards the EU after interaction with these NGOs. After having conducted a survey with participants of an EU-funded project in...
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