Standard Research Grant 14-05575S, 2014-2016, Czech Science Foundation

This project will be focused on the study of the role of social media as instruments of political communication and citizen participation in the Czech Republic. The project will analyze and compare the extent of adoption and strategies of use of social media by political actors (parties, individual candidates and political communicators) in the campaign for the 2014 Czech legislative elections and the 2014 European Parliament elections. Following that, it will examine the intensity and forms of their communication with the voters using social networking sites in the post-election period.

At the same time, the project will focus on examining whether and how the social networking sites are used by the citizens in order to engage with politics and to participate on the democratic political process. In this respect, it will also study the key attributes of the politics-related content on social networks and map the basic characteristics of the politically active Czech social media users, including the relationship between “online” and “offline” forms of political participation.