Use of the Czech Press Agency for the purpose of propaganda

Diploma thesis Use of the Czech News Agency for the purpose of propaganda analyses the relationship between the Czech News Agency, state and its executive in seven time periods from the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 to its dissolution in 1993, when it got replaced by two separate states - The Czech Republic and The Slovak Republic. The aim of the thesis is to delimitate the status and mission of the Czech News Agency in relation to the state and its executive, considering the legislation, in each of the seven chosen periods by conducting a qualitative content analysis of particular news issued by the Czech News Agency. With the use of the delimitation of the status and mission of the Czech News Agency in relation to the state, and the subsequent qualitative content analysis of the news, I demonstrate how this relationship was reflecting on the news content. For this purpose I use the critical discourse analysis in light of the discourse-historical approach. Besides the analysis of seventy news stories from newspapers, this thesis also includes a comparison of the two analysed periods of Prague spring and perestrojka at the end of the 80s. The comparison focuses on differences or similarities of the way in which the Czech News Agency was used for the purpose of propaganda by the state and its..