The impact of social networks on the involvement of public in politics: a case study of the first direct presidental election in the Czech republic

Nowadays social networks have millions or some even billions of users who spend most of their free time there. Therefore there is no surprise that the potential impact on society becomes part of many experts research. According to some authors, social networks offer an opportunity for political participation especially for those who generally do not participate. Even politicians start to use these networks to mobilize voters. We can observe this new trend in the first direct presidential elections in the Czech Republic 2013, when some of the candidates tried to reach and mobilize voters through social networks. During presidential campaign 2012/2013, users could have participated in various political activities which enabled sharing political views. The aim of this paper is to determine the impact of using social networks during presidential elections, particularly using of Facebook, on interest in politics between users 18- 35 years. The diploma thesis focuses on the impact of Facebook because it is the most popular and used social network in the Czech Republic and also due to the fact that some experts argue that this social network played an important role in the presidential campaign. This paper will be based on quantitative research in form of a questionnaire survey, which was created on the..