Journal Czech Society Archive

Karaščáková, Zuzana. 2013. „Prvá priama voľba prezidenta v Českej republike na Twitteri." Naše společnost 11 (2): 41-52,

This article examines the use of microblogging service Twitter during the period of presidential election 2013, in the Czech Republic and aims to contribute to a development of an emerging research field to which only a marginal interest of academics have been devoted so far, especially in the Czech Republic. A multi-method approach is used to analyze the dataset of tweets, which have contained predefined hashtags within a course of four weeks period – including both, the first and the second round of elections. The findings indicate that the debate on Twitter "copies" events in mainstream media (mainly presidential TV debate), while linking to information sources in posts does not necessarily lead to the official media sources. The analysis also reveals that tweets most often refer to Karel Schwarzenberg, in comparison with the names of other candidates, and that among the themes of tweets and retweets the most frequent topics are the campaign and political preferences which suggests the potential of Czech Twitter to form a basis of online political communication.

The aim of this review article is to assess the use of different research methods in empirical studies on the influence of new media on journalism. It analyses all articles related to the topic which were published between 2006-2013 in three selected prestigious academic journals – Journalism, Journalism Studies and New Media & Society. Employing the principles of systemic review, the articles are grouped in three temporal categories according to the methods applied in the research they present. It is concluded that mostly traditional research methods were used in the analysed period, only with minor adaptation to the new communication environment. Only from 2009 some tendencies towards a change of classical methods (software analysis, various combinations of methods) and techniques (using of special software which helps to study new internet phenomena such as social networks sites Facebook and Twitter) are evident.

The paper focuses on the intergenerational and intragenerational transmission of religion in the Czech Republic. The authors start from the general statement that self-reported religious affiliation in Czech society continued to decline during the second half of the 20th century. This trend has usually been explained by secularization theory and by specifics of Czech social history, especially with regard to the anti-religious policies of the Communist regime. In their analysis of data from ISSP 2008 – Religion, the authors aim at a more detailed inquiry into the factors responsible for the decrease in self-reported religiosity in the Czech Republic. The results show that the key factor lies in de-conversion, which is not compensated sufficiently by conversion in either type of transmission, inter- or intragenerational.

The author of this review article introduces the relatively new social science field of human-animal studies, focusing on its sociological dimension. Her aim is not a particularized compilation of existing publications on the topic, but a synthesis of the key ideas behind the sociological perspective on human-animal studies. The author includes references to crucial works and selected web portals where one can find more detailed information. She introduces the fundamental premises and theoretic assumptions of the field and contextualizes it in a wider interdisciplinary framework. She presents a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. She provides an elementary outline of the historical development of this field and its successive establishment within academic centres, universities and scientific journals. The author also introduces selected topics which this complex field examines today and, finally, outlines its possible future prospects.

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The article reflects the position of a foreign trade enterprise called Artia within Czechoslovak music industry. The primary goal is to reveal the modus operandi of the music industry in international trading on the example of Artia. Given its export orientation, Artia was a specific organization dealing more than other Czechoslovak record companies with commercial success instead of ideological and aesthetical issues in its editorial policy. Such an approach was dramatically challenged in the period of "normalization" (1969-1989) when ideological requirements on record companies were reinforced in the system of management and control of cultural production in Czechoslovakia. Artia, therefore, is a suitable object for exploring the relationship between ideological and commercial aspects of cultural production in Czechoslovakia from a multidisciplinary perspective.

The article evaluates housing satisfaction and its development in the Czech Republic after 2000. Its goal is to help better understand the processes behind this phenomenon by identifying factors that influence how the level of housing satisfaction varies between population groups. In a comparative perspective on cross-sectional data from 2001 and 2013, the authors present the main findings of two waves of a quantitative sociological survey.

The article draws on two comparable datasets stemming from a nationwide sociological survey of attitudes to housing issues implemented in the Czech Republic as “Housing Attitudes 2001” and “Housing Attitudes 2013”. The analysis was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, pairwise correlation analysis was used to identify variables that are significantly associated with a measure of overall satisfaction with one’s current housing situation. In the second stage, multiple linear regression was used to test the significance of these variables. The goal was to find factors that independently predict the respondent’s overall housing satisfaction when controlling for other variables included in the regression model.

Since the beginning of 2004 the Centre for Public Opinion Research of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic have cooperated on a research project called “Social and cultural cohesion in a differentiated society.” The project is financially supported by the Ministry of labour and social affairs of the Czech Republic and it is executed by the employees of the Centre for social and economic strategy (CESES), a research department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University in Prague, and by the employees of the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

As a consequence of historic and social factors, ethnic minorities are represented in the Czech Republic. In democratic countries, all minorities must enjoy identical rights and the possibility to develop their own cultural identity as majority society. Identifying ethnic structure is necessary in order to map where and for whom certain measures need to be developed chiefly in education and social services.

From the end of the Second World War until the beginning of the nineties planed parenthood in the Czech Republic was reduced to termination of pregnancy, that is, to contraception ex post. In the time of highest abortion rate – the second half of the eighties - almost one half of pregnancies ended by induced (unnaturally awakened) abortion. In this almost fifty-year long period there was an inverted relation between fertility and abortion: if the number of abortions increased, the rate of fertility decreased and vice versa (increase and decrease of induced abortion was caused predominantly by changes in the abortion legislation).

Over the past two years, the public finance reform has turned into a dominant topic in Czech politics. Shortly after having been instituted to power, the cabinet of the Prime Minister Špidla announced the reform as a core element on its government agenda for the entire election term. For a long period of time, the very notion of public finance reform has represented one of the notions most frequently exploited in public presentations of coalition and opposition politicians or local political commentaries and major media news.

Undoubtedly, the culture of cooking is one of the elements of human culture. Traditional cuisine differs from region to region. In the past, the use of individual ingredients was closely linked not only to climatic conditions and their gradual changes, but also to human activities – development of trade (overseas travels), discoveries of new cooking technologies (closing of the fireplace).

Cooking skills have traditionally passed from the mother onto the daughter.

Not so long ago, we could see for ourselves one of the important aspects involved in performing public opinion research – the importance of representativeness of the sample file. The Czech Social Democratic Party (Česká strana sociálně demokratická) organised a party referendum in October 2002. Among other things, it was supposed to indicate preferences of candidates for the President of the Czech Republic.

Cross-border cooperation between Czechs and Germans is currently evolving in numerous areas. In recent years, the mining tradition has become the common denominator of cross-border activities in the Ore Mountains region. The study deals with this aspect of Czech-Saxon cross-border cooperation primarily from the perspective of regional development and tourism. It focuses on the Silver Road and its role in contemporary Czech-Saxon cross-border activities. As a symbol of shared heritage, the Silver Road exemplifies the so-called spatial turn, i.e. the cultural-social dimension of cross-border cooperation.
The article seeks to present the Silver Road as an example of cross-border cooperation in tourism/destination management and to enrich that cooperation based on a survey of local residents. It strives to determine the importance of the role in public awareness played by this specific tourism product, namely the Silver Road and the mining heritage as a whole, what Czechs and Saxons know about this local tradition and the neighbouring country’s traditions. It is concluded by summarizing the potentials and deficits of the Silver Road’s destination management.

The process of political socialization, as shown by numerous findings, is characterised as the transmission of political action and behaviour through the generations. In connection with the political changes the Czech Republic experienced since 1945, not only the prospect of generational continuity but also discontinuity come into consideration. The article deals with the influence of parents and other socialization factors on political self-identification in the Czech population. It focuses mainly on the major age groups: young people up to the age of 29, the younger middle generation of 30–44 years, the older middle generation of 45–59 years and individuals aged 60 years or older, and their parents.

The starting point of the considerations is the theory of social change and the interconnection of political socialization on the micro and macro levels.

The paper analyses the circumstances of socialization and its effects on political orientation in a representative sample of Czech population (N = 522). The basis for determining the impact of socialization was set as the intensity of interest in political events together with the main resources affecting political orientation such as self-education and reading, followed by parental influence. The ratio of father’s and mother’s communist orientation plus their interest in politics accounted for the other socialization factors.

The electronic version of the first number of the seventh edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

This article describes the attitudes of the Czech public towards the Velvet Revolution, and towards the social situation preceding and following it. The text deals with the general image of Velvet Revolution in the context of modern Czech history, tracks public opinion on this event, deals with evaluations of the period before and after November 1989, and handles assessments of the whole previous period. The event of the Velvet Revolution in Czech history is seen predominantly as a highlight, and as a positive phase in Czech history. Similarly, the stage that followed is seen in a predominantly positive light, although not so much as the change of political regime itself. However, there is a significant difference between how Czech public opinion judged the first and second decades after the Velvet Revolution. According to the public, not all areas of society have showed improvement during the latter period; in some cases developments are viewed negatively. 
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This research aims at quantitative analysis of time perspectives in the Czech society. For this purpose, Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory was used. The battery consists of 56 items comprising five time dimensions (orientations): Past Positive, Past Negative, Hedonistic Presence, Fatalistic Presence and Future. The data was gathered from a representative sample of the Czech population in the years 2003 and 2008. The factor analysis showed evidence for a multifactor structure which, in principal, does not differ from the original American version of ZTPI nor its adaptations in other countries. On the basis of item analysis, we adjusted the model to suit the Czech data as much as possible. In the Czech sample, orientations on the positive past and on the future were comparatively the strongest ones. Relations of time orientation with age, gender, level of education and religious faith were observed. 
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The publication dissects media perception of environmental issues within Ostrava region. Media are those who pick the stories edit them and throughout their agenda make shifts in ideas of individuals. In 2010 we have experienced skyrocketing of the media coverage of environmental issues related to Ostrava region, mostly attributed by reporting on air pollution. As available researches witnessed, there is a tight relation in public minds in between City of Ostrava, Ostrava region and Moravian-Silesian Region. This fact makes the research easier in the way we could often take in Moravian-Silesian Region figures as to be valid for the City of Ostrava as well as for Ostrava region and vice versa. The objective of the paper is to prove a hypothesis, that media have retained the coverage intensity of a given topic as they did in 2010.

Smoking becames the important and relevant health and social problem in the Czech republic as well as in the world. Tobacco together with alcohol is the first habit forming substance, which the child contacts or which somebody offers to him. The aim of the research is to map the situation of using of legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol, by the children in the basic schools of the region of South Bohemia.

Following text presents some findings concerning the civic culture in the Czech Republic based on results of a special survey conducted in August of 2009 as a part of international comparative research project commemorating the 50th anniversary of realization of G. A. Almond’s and S. Verba’s original survey and their classic study The Civic Culture: Attitudes and Perception of Democracy in Five Nations.

The article deals with developments of the Internet elections project in Norway. The project for the time being peaked with the 2011 municipal and regional elections, in which voters in ten municipalities were entitled to cast their votes over the Internet. The article firstly analyses Internet elections pilot projects and discusses results of surveys focused on key preconditions of the Internet elections within the framework of the digital divide concept. Furthermore, the article is concerned with results of the Internet elections in terms of several key variables: ratio of those, who cast their vote over the Internet depending on their place of residence, party preferences and age. In spite of a high level of Internet penetration in Norway surveys and the Norwegian Internet elections have confirmed existence of two sub-types of digital divide: social divide and democratic divide.

Čermák, Daniel. 2013. „Změny voličského chování ve volbách do krajských zastupitelstev 2012." Naše společnost 11 (1): 15-24, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.2

This paper presents findings about changes in voting behaviour that occurred between elections into Regional Councils 2008 and 2012 in the Czech Republic. The analysis deals with comparison of real outcomes of elections 2012 and the outcomes of elections 2012 estimated by a statistical model called LOCCONTINGENCY. The estimation is based on regional structure of votes for political parties in the previous elections into Regional Councils 2008. The main objective of these analyses is to find out and to explain differences between reality and model estimation. The results help us explain the rise and decline of votes for political parties, especially for regional ones, between elections 2008 and 2012.