Germany in Czech Daily press: Stereotypes and the ,,Image of the Other'' in Comments and Opinions in Polls-Year 2017

This thesis bases on an constructivist approach in media studies in context of the role of Germany as a civilian power and hegemon of the European Union and deals with the extent, to which arguments arising from the asymmetric partnership between the Czech Republic and Germany in the past ten years in terms of bilateral relations, foreign policy making of the both states and agenda such as different energy policy conceptions were being reflected in comments and opinions by the Czech daily press in connection with the German parliamentary elections in 2017. In addition to the theory of social construction of reality in this thesis, the concept of role theory serves to explain the role of Germany as a civilian power and the process of shaping its identity. The thesis presents the results of an research, in which a critical discourse analysis (CDA) aimed to formulate hypotheses reflecting the way of image-construction of Germany as "the other," in terms of van Dijk's ideological square "us versus them" and the presence of stereotypes in the comments and opinions in the Czech press. The formulated hypotheses later became the basis for a quantitative content analysis carried out on a research sample of 59 articles published in the daily Mladá fronta DNES, Právo, Lidové noviny and Hospodářské noviny