Incumbents’ Strategies in Media Coverage : A Case of the Czech Coal Policy

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F20%3A00115745" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/20:00115745 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2610" target="_blank" >https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2610</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/pag.v8i2.2610" target="_blank" >10.17645/pag.v8i2.2610</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Incumbents’ Strategies in Media Coverage : A Case of the Czech Coal Policy

Original language description

Transitioning to a decarbonized economy is a crucial part of climate change mitigation, with the phasing-out of coal, as the most significant source of carbon dioxide emissions, being the centerpiece of this effort. In the European context, the increasing pressures exerted especially on the basis of the European Union’s energy and climate policy, coupled with the inherent uncertainty of the transition process, encourage various struggles among the involved policy actors over the setting of specific transition pathways. One site of such contestation is media discourse, which may facilitate or limit policy change through agenda-setting, framing, and other processes. Importantly, discursive struggles also include industry incumbents, who have a vested interest in preserving the existing sociotechnical regime. This article focuses on the position of incumbents in terms of their relationship with governing political parties and the discursive strategies they employ. It explores the policy debate on coal mining expansion which took place in 2015 in the Czech Republic, a post-communist country with a coal-dependent economy, a skeptical position on energy transition, and a powerful energy industry. The research employs discourse network analysis to examine a corpus compiled from daily newspapers and applies block modeling techniques to analyze patterns of relationships within and between actor groups. The results show that incumbents successfully prevented policy change in the direction of rapid coal phase-out by exploiting discourse alignment with governing parties and efficiently employing discursive strategies based primarily on securitization of socioeconomic issues.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50601 - Political science

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2020

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Politics and Governance

ISSN

2183-2463

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

8

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

PT - PORTUGAL

Number of pages

14

Pages from-to

272-285

UT code for WoS article

000537467600008

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85089122081