Doctoral Dissertation

MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of International Relations and European Studies Doctoral Dissertation Brno 2018 Lukáš Lehotský MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of International Relations and European Studies Mgr. Lukáš Lehotský Coal Mining and Climate Change in the Czech Republic: Two Cases of Media Narratives Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Břetislav Dančák, Ph.D. Brno 2018 Jánovi Lehotskému a Andrejovi Savuľákovi, ktorí nežili dosť dlho, aby si túto prácu mohli prelistovať Poďakovanie V prvom rade by som rád poďakoval môjmu vedúcemu, Břetislavovi Dančákovi, za vedenie tejto práce, jeho motivujúci prístup a výborné podmienky pre hladký priebeh doktorského štúdia. Následne ďakujem Filipovi Černochovi, Janovi Osičkovi a Petrovi Ocelíkovi za zapojenie do výskumných aktivít, ktoré tejto práci predchádzali, komentáre k dizajnu práce, a nakoniec za komentáre k jej priebežným verziám. Bez tejto asistencie by som prácu nebol schopný dokončiť. Za širšiu podporu počas výskumu a ďalšiu spoluprácu patrí vďaka tiež kolegom Martinovi Jiruškovi, Hedvike Koďouskovej, Tomášovi Vlčkovi a Veronike Zapletalovej. Komentáre k detailom výskumu poskytli tiež Juraj Medzihorský, Sebastian Haunss, Manuel Fischer, Zuzana Ringlerová, Vladan Hodulák a ďalší, ktorým za tieto vstupy ďakujem. Výsledky práce a prípadné chyby sú však výlučne mojou zodpovednosťou. Dizertačná práca vznikla aj za podpory Grantovej agentúry Českej republiky a spolupráce v rámci projektu Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks. Po osobnej stránke v prvom rade ďakujem rodičom Vladovi a Saši, sestre Peti a starým rodičom Máši a File. Podporovali ma počas celej doby štúdia a nikdy nestratili vieru v moju schopnosť túto prácu dokončiť. Špeciálne poďakovanie patrí mojej drahej priateľke Denise Skládalovej, ktorá ma dennodenne podporovala a prežívala proces písania spolu so mnou. Acknowledgement Firstly, I would like to thank Břetislav Dančák, the supirvisor of this dissertation, for his motivating approach and his support throughout my doctoral studies. I would like to thank Filip Černoch, Jan Osička, and Petr Ocelík for an opportunity to participate in research activities related to this dissertation, as well as their comments over the dissertation. I would not be able to write this dissertation without their assistence. I would also like to thank Martin Jirušek, Hedvika Koďousková, Tomáš Vlček and Veronika Zapletalová for their wider support over the duration of the research. Juraj Medzihorský, Sebastian Haunss, Manuel Fischer, Zuzana Ringlerová, Vladan Hodulák and others provided particular comments to the research. I thank them for such input. I am solely responsible for any mistakes in this dissertation, though. This dissertation would not be possible without the support of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and without my interaction with the project Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks. Personally, I would like to thank my parents Vlado and Saša, my sister Peťa, and my grandparents Máša and Fila. They supported me throughout the whole period of my studies and never lost faith in me. Special thanks belongs to my dear girlfriend Denia Skládalová, who has been supporting me on a daily basis. Týmto potvrdzujem, že predkladanú prácu som spracoval sám a prezentovaný výskum je mojim dielom. I hereby declare that I’ve worked independently and that the presented research is the sole result of my own work. Brno, 20. 4. 2018 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Review of the existing research 9 Coal mining 9 Climate change 11 Theoretical grounds 15 Public sphere as an arena for debate 15 Media effects 17 Agenda setting and priming 18 Framing 19 Theoretical debate on relations between models of media effects 21 The role of media effects in this research 23 Media in the formation of policy 23 Methodology 27 Research questions 27 Content-analytic methods 28 Methods used in this dissertation 31 Acquisition of data 31 Pre-processing 31 Latent Dirichlet allocation 32 Selection of optimal number of topics 33 Interpretation of topic models 35 Comparison of topic model results 36 Limits of the research 36 Case 1 – Czech media representation of the coal mining 39 Case description 39 Coal mining and consumption 39 Coal mining industry 41 Territorial ecological limits of brown coal mining 46 Public opinion towards coal mining 53 Case-specific Research questions 53 Analysis of data 54 Descriptive overview of the corpus 54 Statistical fit of topic models 57 Word intrusion 61 Results 64 Substantive interpretation of topics 65 Topic frequencies 68 Evolution of media content over time 70 Discussion and Conclusions 74 Case 2 – Czech media representation of the climate change 79 Case description 79 Official policies 79 International commitments 82 Environmental movement in the Czech Republic 84 Causes and perceived effects of the climate change in the Czech Republic 85 Climate scepticism movement 87 Public perception of the climate change in the Czech Republic 88 Case-specific research questions 89 Analysis of data 90 Descriptive overview of the corpus 90 Topic modelling 94 Results 97 Substantive interpretation of topics 97 Topic frequencies 99 Evolution of media content over time 102 Discussion and conclusions 108 Conclusion 113 Bibliography 115 Annex A – Comparison of model outputs 145 Substantive interpretation 145 Frequencies of topics 150 Development over time 155 Annex B – Stop words 159 List of figures Figure 1 – mining limits variant 1 – status quo limits, as set in 1991 and 2008 49 Figure 2 – mining limits variant 2 – revocation of limits at Bílina mine 50 Figure 3 – mining limits version 3 and 4 – revocation of mining limits both at Bílina and Czechoslovak Army mines 51 Figure 4 – corpus statistics – number of articles per year 55 Figure 5 – corpus statistics – article lengths in corpus (outliers are omitted from visualization) 56 Figure 6 – annual media coverage according to absolute and relative frequency (most frequent in the left) 57 Figure 7 – topic model fit – held-out likelihood 58 Figure 8 – topic model fit – perplexity by Griffiths and Styvers 2004 59 Figure 9 – topic model fit – Arun et al. 2010 60 Figure 10 – topic model fit – Cao et al. 2009 61 Figure 11 – intercoder success – percentages of words coded correctly 62 Figure 12 – intercoder success – boxplot of percentages of words coded correctly 63 Figure 13 – intracoder success – percentages of words coded correctly 63 Figure 14 – intracoder success – boxplot of percentages of words coded correctly 64 Figure 15 – tagged articles – economy category, environment category and limits category 71 Figure 16 – tagged articles – economy category, environment category, and “environment_ecology” topic 72 Figure 17 – tagged articles – energy category, environment category, “energy_nuclear” topic and “environment_ecology” topic 73 Figure 18 – tagged articles – temporal variation of frequency in categories and highlighted topics 74 Figure 19 – corpus statistics – number of articles per year 91 Figure 20 – corpus statistics – article lengths in corpus (outliers are omitted from visualization) 92 Figure 21 – annual media coverage according to absolute and relative frequency (most frequent in the left) 93 Figure 22 – topic model fit – held-out likelihood 94 Figure 23 – topic model fit – perplexity by Griffiths and Styvers 2004 95 Figure 24 – topic model fit – Arun et al. 2010 96 Figure 25 – topic model fit – Cao et al. 2009 96 Figure 26 – tagged articles – causes category, impacts category, energy category 103 Figure 27 – tagged articles – measures category, politics category and economy category 104 Figure 28 – tagged articles – politics category, all topics on domestic politics (“politics_legislature”, “politics_national_politics”, “politics_president”), and “politics_president” topic 105 Figure 29 – tagged articles – politics categoty, and topics on UN and EU politics ("politics_unfccc_negotiations", "politics_eu", "politics_climate_ngo") 106 Figure 30 – tagged articles – science category, “science_scepticism” topic and “politics_president” topic 107 Figure 31 – tagged articles – temporal variation of frequency in categories and highlighted topics 108 Figure 32 – comparison of models – energy category and nuclear topic 156 Figure 33 – comparison of models – energy category and nuclear topic – boxplot of frequencies 156 Figure 34 – comparison of models – environment category and environment topic 157 Figure 35 – comparison of models – environment category and environment topic – boxplot of frequencies 157 Figure 36 – comparison of models – economy category and limits category 158 Figure 37 – comparison of models – economy category and limits category – boxplot of frequencies 158 List of tables Table 1 – Electricity generation mix in 2015 and the expected share in 2040. (International Energy Agency 2016b; Ministry of Industry and Trade 2015a) 6 Table 2 – mining companies, reserves and rate of extraction (International Energy Agency 2016b) 42 Table 3 – corpus statistics – basic annual statistics at the level of articles 55 Table 4 – media included in the corpus (Anopress IT 2017) 57 Table 5 – coding success comparisons – results of Welch two-tailed t-tests 63 Table 6 – topic model results – labels and terms 66 Table 7 – topic model results – labels, frequencies and categories 69 Table 8 – topic model results – frequencies aggregated at the level of categories 71 Table 9 – corpus statistics – basic annual statistics at the level of articles 91 Table 10 – media included in the corpus

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