Interpretation of Pre-election Polls in The Czech Printed Dailies

The diploma thesis Interpretation of Pre-election Polls in The Czech Printed Dailies studyies the ways in which media portrays data from election polls as part of thier news service. The thesis draws from theories of media effects, the research of which indicates a possible influence of media content on the formation of public opinion or even voting behaviour. For this reason, it maz be expected that the media present data in line with certain standards. However, in the Czech Republic, there is no code of conduct that would formulate such requirements. This leads to an ongoing struggle between the research agencies who supply such data and the media who present it to the public, where each party judges the content's quality by different measures. Some of the often criticised errors include misinterpretation of data and an insufficient explanation of the research's background. This paper uses quantitative content analysis to examine 154 articles from Czech printed journals across the three pre-election periods (2010, 2013, 2017) with the aim of determining in which form the results of pre- election polls are presented, and if all necessary data are added. The final analysis looks at the data as a whole as well as examining the trendlines during the studied time period. In conclusion, it evaluates..