Publication details

„Jsme ve válce…“ : pokus o diskursivní analýzu fráze používané v českých médiích v souvislosti s válkou na Ukrajině

Title in English "We are at war..." : an attempt at a discursive analysis of a phrase used in the Czech media in connection with the war in Ukraine
Authors

VEČEŘA Pavel

Year of publication 2023
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference Médiá a text 8 : variácie mediálneho textu
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web celý sborník
Keywords Czech media; war in Ukraine; discourse; discourse analysis; ideology
Description The paper presents an attempt at a discursive analysis of the phrase "we are at war", which began to be used in the Czech media space to an increased extent after February 24, 2022, when Russia militarily invaded neighboring Ukraine. However, this phrase has been present in the Czech media space for much longer, and in recent years it has been used mainly in media products devoted to Islamist attacks, the refugee wave of 2015 and the coronavirus pandemic after 2020. Now its exploitation is culminating in the context of Russian aggression against Ukraine. The aim of this paper is to show how the phrase "we are at war" is instrumentalized in an attempt to present the war in Ukraine as a state of war in which the Czech state and Czech society, or the entire Euro-American community (the West), find themselves. The paper focuses on how "we-group" and "them-groups" are created in selected media products, which individuals and which groups are highlighted or excluded, but also what historical references are commemorated in connection with the war in Ukraine. The text is based on the theory of social construction of reality by sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, according to which every reality is constructed socially, and therefore it is necessary to analyze the processes constituting what is considered "knowledge" in a given society, which is mediated to the public, among other things, with the help of the media. Media content carries an ideological rig that assigns individuals, groups, events or things a certain position, portrayed either positively or negatively. The mechanisms of an institutionalized society, including the use of the media, thus insert into the consciousness of the members of society the preferred systems of ideas, values and beliefs. This paper will use John B. Thompson's theory of ideology offering terminology of discursive mechanisms and strategies.

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