MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of

Barbora Petrová

Professionalization of political parties’ communication in the Czech Republic

Dissertation thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Lubomír Kope!ek, Ph.D.

Brno 2012

!estné prohlá"ení

Prohla!uji, "e jsem p#edkládanou diserta$ní práci The Professionalization of political parties’ communication in the Czech Republic vypracovala samostatn% a k jejímu vypracování pou"ila jen t%ch pramen&, které jsou uvedeny v seznamu literatury.

V Brn%, dne 20. dubna 2011

Barbora Petrová

I would like to thank to all my friends, colleagues and family for their unceasing support during my work on this thesis. I am also very grateful to the Fulbright Commission and the Chevening Scholarship programme, which allowed me not only to pursue this exciting field of study, but also to gain a lifelong experience during my istays in the US and UK. Last, but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor for his encouragement, advise, patience and generosity.

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„The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one, which was supposed to have died out with appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved in technique, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And co, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.“ Walter Lippman, 1922

4 INTRODUCTION ...... 6 A) POLITICAL ...... 9 ...... 9 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS...... 10 Political public relations activities ...... 12 Origins and subjects of the discipline...... 17 Boost of political public relations...... 18 ...... 20 Origins and expansion of the term ‘’...... 22 Spinning as a problem or solution for democracy ...... 24 B) GLOBAL CONVERGENCE OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION...... 27 CHANGES IN SOCIETY, MEDIA AND ...... 27 AMERICANIZATION?...... 28 SHOPPING FOR IDEAS IN US? ...... 32 PROFESSIONALIZATION? ...... 33 CRISIS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION OR NEW BEGINNING? ...... 34 C) POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC ...... 39 HISTORICAL SKETCH ...... 39 D) RESEARCH METHODS AND QUESTIONS ...... 44 PROFESSIONALIZATION AS USEFUL CONCEPT FOR RESEARCH IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION...... 44 RESEARCH DESIGN ...... 48 Selection of cases ...... 49 Data collection methods...... 50 Time frame ...... 53 E) RESULTS ...... 54 I. PROFESSIONALIZATION OF CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC (CAMPROF INDEX) ...... 54 I. 1. The European Parliament election campaign of 2009...... 57 I. 2. The parliamentary election campaign of 2010 ...... 60 I. 3. Notes on application of CAMPROF index...... 63 II. PARTIES’ PUBLIC RELATIONS ...... 64 II. 1. In between election campaigns: The case of year 2008...... 64 II. 1. 1. The communications team ...... 65 II. 1. 2. The party spokesperson or spin-doctor? ...... 69 II. 1. 3 Communications strategy...... 71 II. 1. 4 Communications tools...... 75 II. 1. 5 Foreign influence...... 83 II. 2 Public relations during the 2010 election campaign...... 87 II. 2. 1 Communications strategy...... 88 II. 2. 2 Communications teams ...... 93 II. 2. 3 The party spokespersons or spin doctors?...... 95 II. 2. 4 Communications tools...... 98 II. 2. 5 Outsourcing services ...... 102 II. 2. 6 Foreign influence...... 105 II. 3. ’ insights...... 107 III. DISCUSSION ...... 110 Permanent campaign? ...... 110 Work intensification ...... 111 Political education and knowledge exchange...... 112 Agenda-setting ability of parties...... 113 F) CONCLUSION ...... 116 LITERATURE:...... 124 ATTACHMENTS (IN CZECH ONLY) ...... 138

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INTRODUCTION

Shamans, manipulators, or advisors behind a curtain. This is what people imagine when they speak about political communication or public relations advisors. Sometimes political PR and communications professionals are also coined as ‘spin-doctors‘. There is a lot of prejudice concerning the professionals, who take care about the image, performance and public relations of politicians. At the beginning of this research stands an initial desire to find out who are, in fact, the people advising the Czech politicians on their image, reputation and relations with media and how big is their power? Shall we imagine them as Tony Blair’s press secretary Alaistair Campbell or George Bush’s adviser Karl Rove, who has been subject to a lot of ? Or, are they rather more like the Westminster public servant James Hacker, who always knows when to say ‘Yes, prime minister’? Or, shall we picture a young charismatic Kasper Juul, who is handling the relations with media for the Danish prime minister in the political series Borgen? After this rather simplified thinking many years ago, I started grasping the field of political communication and public relations both in academia as well as in practice and realized that all the information I was curious about at the beginning are contained in the little black boxes inside the parties and it is not easy to touch or even open them. Therefore, led by curiosity, both personal and academic, I have reviewed the research perspective and decided to examine the way the Czech parties communicate with media and voters and whether they may be influenced by practices from abroad, namely the US.

The goal of this study is to investigate the field of the political communication, and more precisely, the parties’ public relations, looking for better understanding of new trends in the way the Czech parties and politicians approach voters and media. Therefore, the main research question asks: What is the level of professionalization of the Czech parties’ communication? Secondly, I ask: How does ‘a professional’ party’s communication looks like and functions in the Czech Republic? The research is designed as a descriptive multi-case study in the scope of qualitative research.

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To begin with, the study provides a theoretical overview in the field of political communication and political public relations’ concepts and theories. Since the discipline is still quite new within Central European political science, the theoretical part offers a useful and comprehensive clarification of the terminology connected to the political public relations and therefore seeks to prevent potential confusion. In addition, I find it important to provide detailed description of the origins, subjects and activities of the political public relations discipline. Equally, it is crucial to distinguish political public relations from propaganda and describe its relation towards the general political communication theories. A dedicated section of the first chapter is also devoted to the clarification of the neologism ‘spin-doctoring’ and its boost in the political world. I find this clarification particularly relevant, as the journalists sometimes wrongly use ‘spin-doctoring’ as a synonym for political public relations. The second theoretical chapter starts with describing the theoretical debate on the global convergence of political communication practices and a quest to define, describe and capture these processes in the different world democracies. The text guides through the argumentation that the recently observed political communication and public relations trends (and the Czech Republic is not an exception) are consequences of broader and deeper changes in the democratic society and result of technology development, hence it would be a mistake to brand them simply as ‘Americanization’. Finally, the theoretical piece introduces the concept of ‘professionalization’ and discusses its advantages and disadvantages concerning its possible empirical application. I believe this extensive theoretical background to be necessary for the reader to understand reasons leading to the research design. Particularly I find important to introduce the theoretical perspective, which has not been covered by the domestic political science scholars yet. Further on, follows a brief sketch of the consequences during the democratic history in the Czech Republic preceding the county’s current state of the political communication. The chapter illustrates how the Czech politics was adapting to new technologies and media.

This empirical research, based on the concept of professionalization (as defined by Holtz-Bacha 2007), examines the level of professionalization in the field of parties’ campaign communications and political PR practices in the Czech Republic. Therefore, the research is being divided into two major parts.

7 The first one adopts the already existing method and applies the index CAMPROF, which measures the level of parties’ campaign communication professionalization (Römmele, Gibson 2001, 2009), on to the situation of the selected case. The analysis, leading to the parties’ scores in the index should allow for an answer to the question on the level of professionalization of the Czech parties campaign communication. The CAMPROF study includes two election campaigns (2009 campaign for the European Parliament elections and 2010 Czech parliamentary elections). The data were collected through interviews with campaign managers and party press officers in 2009 and 2010. Aiming at more comprehensive picture, in the second part, the research continues on the micro- perspective dealing solely with the parties public relations and examining two specific phases: the middle of the election cycle (middle of 2008) and the general election campaign (2010). By using additional data collected through semi-structured interviews with parties’ spokespersons, the chapter describes the parties press departments’ organisation; the parties’ communication strategy; the individual PR tools used; the personalities of spokespersons; and possible foreign influence on their working practices. Finally, the results from the years 2008 and 2010 are compared among each other and discussed, together with the reflections and insights of the Czech prominent journalists. Being aware of the possible subjectivity and bias of the information provided by the party representatives, I find crucial to include representatives of journalists in the research. The journalists are in fact the primary targets of the parties’ public relations’ efforts. Despite the possible bias also in their views, I believe their statements to be significantly important in order to provide another perspective on the reality of the parties’ public relations.

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A) POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

Political communication

Despite efforts of many scholars (e. g. Wolton 1990 or Blumler, Gurevitch 1995), so far a general and widely accepted definition of the political communication does not exist. Very vaguely we can say that the discipline researches the role of communication in the political process (Chafee 1975); or relations between media and politics in the contemporary western societies (Louw 2005) or all interpersonal and media communication among social actors concerning the politics (Negrine, Stanyer 2007). Similarly, according to Meadow (Meadow 1980) political communication involves the exchange of symbols and messages between political actors and institutions, the general public, and media that are the products of or have consequences for the political system. Furthermore, Denton and Woodward for example see the crucial factor, which makes the communication political, the content and intention of the news, not its source or form (Denton, Woodward 1990). Similarly, Brian McNair points out to the reasons and intentions of the political communication when defining it as a purpose communication about politics, which includes all forms of communication by politicians and political actors realized with a purpose of reaching certain goals; communication towards politicians and political actors from the side of non-political subjects such as voters or journalists; and communication about all these actors and activities in the media (McNair 2007). By its origin, political communication is a multi-disciplinary research field combining knowledge and research of communication studies, political science, , marketing, psychology, history and other. As we have demonstrated above there are multiple definitions, but the core focus on the role and importance of communication in political processes remains clear and common. The discipline links-up to the political persuasion studies and research in campaigns and propaganda methods, which all have a long history in the modern social sciences. According to Margaret Scammell is the modern political communication driven by the idea of increasing media power in politics, which dates back to emergence of the television as a popular mass medium. (Scammell 2008). Following the definitions, we can very generally summarize the political communication research or focus under three basic concepts: what do politicians do with and to the media; what do the media do with or to politics; what are the consequences for the democratic 9 processes and practice. The four areas of deploying political communication are campaign communication, government strategic communication, international communication and interest groups lobbying.

Political public relations

If we look into the essential marketing literature we find Kotler and Keller’s (Kotler, Keller 2006) view on public relations as one of the six major modes of communication within the marketing communication mix (Cwalina, Falkowski, Newman 2011: 65-71). Generally public relations can be defined as the management of mutually influential relationships within a web of stakeholders and organizational relationship. Public relations is enacted and managed through communication (Coombs, Holladay 2007). State leaders, members of parliament and other government officials have all adopted media strategies and thereby they allowed journalistic norms to influence the process of governance. Press relations can hardly be separated anymore from policymaking (Esser 2001). In general, when talking about political public relations we mean a set of strategies and methods aimed at creating the best possible image and impression of a certain politician’s or political party’s actions. At the same time, the same strategies and methods are applied in order to put a negative shade on the activities of the opposition. The professionals in this field are called press agents and sometimes also spin-doctors. Despite its long and prominent history in practice of politics, there is not much theory or research in the field of political public relations. When looking for relevant definition of this discipline, we can go back to 1923, when Edward Bernays in his book Crystallizing Public Opinion speaks and defines for the first time what he calls the press relations counsels. Since then, there has been wide range of definitions, which mixed descriptive, prescriptive and normative elements. Recently, Jesper Strömbäck and Spiro Kiousis (2011) introduced an integrative definition, which will be used for the purposes of this text and which is reflecting very well the actual content of the discipline. Political public relations is the management process by which an organization or individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action, seeks to influence and to establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission and achieve its goals. (Strömbäck, Kiousis 2011: 8) Their definition has ambitions to reflect the broad understanding of the current public relations; encompassing theory and research; without normative elements and in the context of the political

10 communication. For the purposes of their definition, Strömbäck and Kiousis, identify three types of relevant organizations in the context of political PR: 1) Political parties as major actors of communication and policy-making process in most world democracies; 2) Collateral organizations linked to the parties, but with their own political agendas trying to influence the political process such as think-tanks, political action committees, NGOs and interest groups etc.; 3) Governments and public sector agencies.

Political public relations are facing several problem definitions as they are often reduced only to media relations or news management. Sometimes they are simply interchanged with public affairs or lobbying etc. Both news management and media relations are important part of political public relations, however political public relations are broader than just strategies and tactics for influencing media. Also, sometimes the concept is misunderstood and mixed with propaganda or labelled as spin or spin-doctoring. Therefore, we find it important to place the political public relations on the map of other similar disciplines as well as to define and elaborate more concepts of propaganda and spin further in this chapter.

Picture 1: Fields of research and theories related to the political public relations

Source: Strömbäck, Kiousis 2011: 8.

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Political public relations activities In practice, public relations activities include company-sponsored activities and programs designed to create daily or special brand-related interaction aimed internally to employees as well as externally to consumers, other companies, the government and the media. Its success is based on its high credibility, ability to catch buyers off guard and its potential for dramatization. They achieve these through publications, events, sponsorships, news, speeches, public service activities and identity media. (Cwalina, Falkowski, Newman 2011: 65-71) Basic distinction in public relations activities reveals Zipfel (2008: 679) when speaking about: 1) Internal public relations - directed at the members of organization to communicate to them e.g. decisions of the leadership or mobilize members; 2) External public relations - directed at organization’s environment, at the public or special segments that are important for the organization. In both cases, the targeted public can be reached via direct communication (speech, meetings, printed brochures, leaflets, posters etc.) or via indirect communication using different kinds of media. According to Brian McNair (McNair 2007: 121-136), political PR activities could be divided into four categories: 1) Media management - by media management he means a set of methods and practices deployed by politicians with the goal to gain a control and manipulate media and influence public in line with their own political efforts. Among these strategies belong for example creation of quasi- events attractive for media with secured regular attention from journalists and a space for expressing politician’s opinions on the topics they like to comment on. Concerning the relations with media, PR agents‘ main goal is to get their message to media through journalists unchanged, in other words to set their own agenda in the media. Good professionals in this field should: understand the journalists’ routines very well; know the public structures and have detailed information about their target groups; understand or conduct themselves public polling and use the information databases; operate with details about the activities of the opposition; deploy political marketing techniques; have alternative and crisis communications plans available; and focus on the positive image of the politician or the party. Working in between the media and politics, PR strategists, usually former journalists now hired by a party or candidate, are of a great importance for politicians primarily because: they know about the

12 logic of media; they can anticipate and stimulate the journalists’ action; and they know how to control and dominate the news agenda (Esser 2001). As examples of the PR agent’s activities, we can mention writing and distribution of press releases; producing high-quality photos, audio and video releases; organizing of photo-opportunities and medialities attractive for media; providing background information; coordinating and scripting of different political events; availability 24 hours a day and becoming a reliable source for journalists; and leaking of information (McNair 2007).

The same category can be also find at Zipfel’s description of public relations. She calls it news management - the measures aimed at creating favourable conditions and occasions for the media coverage of the organization. As explained above, successful news management requires adaptation to media logic, strategy of agenda building (influence and control topics that become dominant in the public sphere), dethematization (avoiding coverage of disadvantageous subjects or gaining time for internal decisions), personalization (media rather pick up on issue linked with prominent person, which makes it easier to visualize the message) and event management (staging of events that take place purely for media to cover them) (Zipfel 2008: 679). Similarly, Lynch (Lynch 2010: 157-162) speaks about media relations using the term ‘earned media’, which she defines as positive news media coverage of an event, issue, or person, initiated by a campaign. The concept itself is very old, but became common in the late 1980s. Before that, the publicity in the news media was known as ‘free media‘ as opposed to paid advertising. However, as the campaign consultants insisted that active communication with media (executed with press releases, press conferences, books, speeches, interviews, debates, visuals etc.) was not free, because politicians and their teams have to spent non-financial resources that is e.g. to plan ahead and have a good strategy to earn the media coverage. The term ‘earned media’ then appeared for the first time in the Newsweek article in 1988. Lynch identifies three basic components of the earned media: the messenger, the message and the receiver, and a conveyor of the message thought the news media to the public. The dominant concepts among campaign communication nowadays are framing the argument and setting the agenda. George Lakoff (linguist and consultant to the Democratic Party) and Frank Luntz (Republican consultant) independently suggested applications of framing into political language and their concept of framing message, using and avoiding specific value-laden words, and setting the agenda are staples among practitioners of earned media (Lynch 2010: 157 -162).

13 Back to McNair categorization, he further mentions: 2) Image management – this area of political PR is focused on the politician’s and party’s image and ways how to form and change them. These activities aim at establishing credibility and trust that may guarantee long-term support. This area specifically may seem to be close to political marketing. However, besides these, the discipline of political marketing includes much more other activities. 3) Internal communication – by focusing on effective internal communication, the party or any organization is able to stay united, productive and concentrated. 4) Info management1 – although it is important to keep it as a separate category, information management increasingly overlaps with the media management. It deals not only with media, but also with (un)spreading of crucial or confidential information, which might turn to be an effective political weapon, among all different sorts of political actors and the general public. Additionally, Zipfel also mentions two more categories of activities (Zipfel 2008: 679–680): 5) Public affairs – directed at political and administrative decision makers, aiming at influencing the legal and administrative conditions of an organization’s work in the most favourable way (e. g. by lobbying). 6) International communication – public relations might not take place only within one state, but also among several states and nations, aiming and achieving foreign affairs’ goals. Typically, one uses ‘direct media diplomacy’ using the media as a channel to communicate with policymakers of foreign states, or ‘indirect media diplomacy’ to influence decision making in other states by influencing public opinion. In general, media diplomacy is part of public diplomacy, which also includes cultural diplomacy.

Looking from another perspective of cultural studies approach, Liesbet van Zoonen (2003: 108- 122) compared the portrayal of politicians with the development of plot and characters in television soap operas. She argued political communication was about converting politicians into celebrities, with spin doctors the equivalent of Hollywood publicity agents ‘managing the image of, and access to, their stars. She contended that spin doctors wrote the ‘script’ for politicians’ soap opera appearances, with classic elements of the genre represented, including ‘scandal, conflicting, incompetence and spin control’.

1 Zipfel names this cathegory issues management and defines it as permanent identification and observation of issues actually and potentially relevant to an organization’s stakeholders (Zipfel 2008, 679). 14 Alternatively, Ivor Gaber (Gaber 1999: 264-265) distinguishes two categories of PR activities: above the line (traditional press office tools and methods) and below the line (rather hidden, more strategic).

Table 1: Public relations activities as distinguished by Gaber

Source: Gaber 1999: 264 265

The crucial concept connected to the political PR in our context is the one of public or publics. Despite the fuzziness about what kind of group does the word public stands for, it is highly relevant concept. The situational theory of publics by Grunig and Hunt is based on Dewey’s (Dewey 1927) distinction that for a group to be considered a public, it should a) face a similar

15 problem; b) recognize that the problem exists; and c) organize to do something about it. Grunig and Hunt (Grunig and Hunt 1984) defined four types of publics (nonpublic, latent public, aware public and active public) with the key independent variables: problem recognition, constraint recognition and level of involvement. Therefore, organizations should monitor their environment and identify their key publics and adjust their communication strategies. As obvious from its name public relations are mainly associated with relationships. Strömbäck and Kiousis underline the importance of the relational perspective of the public relations as it also helps to move from influencing opinions or propaganda and persuasion towards establishing, building and maintaining relationships that are mutually beneficial to an organization and its publics. Results of PR activities could then be measured by quality of established relationships with each type of public rather than with public opinion change. In this case, the quality is characterised by trust, control mutuality, satisfaction, openness, involvement, investment and commitment. (Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011: 18-21). Grunig and Hunt (1984 and 1992, 2001) also describe four models of public relations according to their function: 1) The press agency/publicity model – PR agents‘ goal is to maximize positive publicity and minimize the negative one; shape the public opinions through promotion, propaganda and persuasion. 2) The public information model – the goal of PR is to spread information between organization and its publics with any further interests or feedback. 3) The two-way asymmetric model – the aim is described as scientific persuasion during which practitioners use all available theories and research on attitudes and behaviour to persuade the public. Feedback is a very important part of the process. 4) The two-way symmetric model – the goal is achieved by mutual understanding between organization and its public, with both sides treated as equal and their power being balanced. This model is normatively superior to the others and seen as the most effective one.2 A response to the Gruning and his collaborators was ’the contingency theory of public relation’ postulated by Cancel and Cameron (1997). They claim that in practice it is impossible to put the PR activities in these four boxes. In fact, depending on situation and context the PR practices move on a continuum from total advocacy for an organization to total accommodation of a public. (Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011: 18-21).

2 In practice all the four models are put in use with the publicy model being the most common. In the government institutions, the public information model prevails. 16 Origins and subjects of the discipline Research and scholarship in the political public relations build on foundations of early approaches in five fields: media effects studies, agenda setting research, uses and gratifications, and rhetorical and critical approaches (see also Lin In Kaid 2004: 69-72). effects research and the work of its pioneers reflect the paradigm of strong media, also known as magic bullet or hypodermic needle model, and their experience from the world wars propaganda. Edward Bernays, one of the very early public relation specialists, writes for the first time about public relation counsellors in his book Crystallizing Public Opinion in 1923. Later on, he publishes Propaganda in 1928, where he wants to reverse the negative connotations with the term providing examples of socially beneficial campaigns. Similarly, works of and political commentator Walter Lippmann represent important milestones for the discipline. In his book Public Opinion, published in 1922, he is concerned whether the traditional democracy works effectively as he is worried whether an average citizen in our complex age is really able to make informed decision. Crucial was also Harold Lasswell’s text examining the propaganda in the US, UK, France and Germany - Propaganda Techniques in the World War (1927). The first book focusing on public relations and politics was Kelley’s Professional Public Relations and Political Power from 1956, where he recognizes public relations as essential to the development of relationship within the political process (Martinelli In Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011: 36-40). Another source for research in political public relations is the agenda setting theory as coined by McCombs and Shaw’s research in Chapel Hill (1972), which showed during the 1968’s presidential campaign that media informed and influenced people with regards to what political issues were important. This was later followed by introduction of concepts such as second-level agenda setting, framing and priming. Third important stream of research and theoretical background is rhetoric and persuasion, which typically involves message, sources, source characteristics, use of specific language and persuasion studies. Classic study by Lazarsfeld and his collaborators Berelson and Gaudet People’s Choice conducted during the 1940’s presidential campaign discovered, among other things, the role of the social relationships and interpersonal influence in the mass communication process and resulted in the two-step flow model of communication. Translated into the public relations practice, this for example shows why politicians seek influential third-party endorsement or why are certain policies or regulations introduced by experts. Theory of cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger (1957) explained that people seek out messages that reinforce existing beliefs and avoid those that contradicts them, resulting in selective message exposure and perception.

17 As a vital source for the political PR research, we should also name the critical approaches to political communication and public relations, which e.g. examine hegemony and other ideological or sociological factors (incl. gender) as crucial variables when studying media, messages, politics or their relations. Lastly, valuable resources represent uses and gratification theory, in which media consumers are viewed as active and deliberate in their message consumption. This theory dates back to Lasswell’s founding on why people use media. However, it was first tested by Blumler and McQuail in 1969. Relevant is also classic situational theory of publics by Gruning and Hunt (1984). In addition, we can identify three scholarly approaches determining when the history of the political public relations has started. Firstly we can name the activity-oriented approach, according to which the public relations has been present since the Ancient times or beginnings of humankind, when people for the first time attempted to persuade others. Secondly, the need- oriented approach suggests that public relations were established in the second half of the 19th century and was related to the commercial public relations and industrial revolution, which needed systematic communication. Third approach is profession-oriented and claims that the profession of public relations appeared in the middle of 19th century and is closely connected to its founder Edward Bernays (1891-1995) and Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1817-1934), who both independently advised politicians, states, as well as corporations (Zipfel 2008: 678). Interestingly enough, the Progressive Era (1890-1920) was also the origin of political communication innovations including the press release, paid political advertisements and political public relations campaigns and thus, a basis for the politics and professional political consultancy business in the US. (Martinelli In Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011: 39).3

Boost of political public relations It was already Walter Lippmann who in his Public Opinion (1922) expressed concern about public’s ability to make informed decision in an increasingly complex age and thus he was concerned for traditional democracy to work effectively. Almost century later, Gaber (Gaber 2007) speaks about so called political communication paradox. Voters want politicians to be honest and accountable but this very demand means that politicians (and their proxies), implicitly, have another agenda in operation when they communicate with the public, i.e. securing their

3 Compare also with the Czech sources on the topic such as Jirák and Köpplová 2003, Jirák and !íchová 2000 and Jirák and Trampota 2008. 18 approval and subsequent electoral support. Gaber identifies two effects. First, governments make communications, rather than delivery, their real priority. Second, trust, not just in politicians but in the political system as a whole, wanes. This in turn endangers the very system it was designed to underpin. Similar approach mentioning the crisis of public communication due to increased professionalization in public relations and marketing can be found in the texts by Blumler and Dennis Kavanagh 1999; Blumler and M. Gurevitch 1995; Lilleker and Negrine, 2002 etc. There are several factors such as eroding party loyalties, increasing competition among rising number of political actors, growing complexity of political decisions, and an expanding media sector, which enabled a marked growth and importance of political public relations activities. One set of arguments claim that public relations help articulate different standpoints in the political field and to put political issues across to the politically less interested population segments. On the contrary, public relations are seen as twisting the political reality and endangering factual decisions in favour of politainment, thus contributing to the general public disengagement with politics (Zipfel 2008: 680). The boost of political PR is sometimes labelled negatively as spin or as a euphemism for propagandising (Maloney 2001). Deacon and Golding (1994, 3- 4) also speak about the rise of the ‘public relations state or democracy’ as a political system that is focused on the distribution of positive messages and the enhancing of one’s public perception. The term ‘public relations democracy’4 is used to describe a pluralist society with a free media, where much of the communication that comes out of the political system is designed to persuade the public that policies are correct, that laws and procedure are legitimate and that one organisation is better at representing groups of voters than its competitors. Although, one can argue, that every democracy must use persuasive communication to ensure the public obey laws, this term emerged to characterize a situation where all communication has persuasive overtones, that all governmental information is tinged with a party political message, and every statement is designed to say something positive about the messenger. The major difference of criticism lies in the fact that in public relations certain techniques and methods were being used to legitimise the power of one party through the various governmental communication channels. However, in the traditional sense public relations are about image creation, branding, news management and campaigning, but not necessarily about legitimising a political system5 (Lilleker 2006, 168 - 169). Thus, the decisive

4 The term public relations democracy appears in the academic literature mainly in connection with the UK government of Tony Blair (e.g. Davis, 2002 or Franklin 2004). 5 Within a pluralist system, this Public Relations Democracy would be expected; equally the fact that multiple interests 19 point is the focus of public relations. In other words, whether they serve only to better communicate political decision to the public or whether the requests of public relations activities influence or substitute for political decision (Zipfel 2008: 680). Normatively speaking, governments should quite simply inform and never attempt to persuade the public. Realists such as Maloney (2005) argue that much of what is referred to as public relations is actually weak propaganda: communication with conviction. On the other hand, each individual audience member has the power to decode a message, process and evaluate it in relation to their personal experiences and ideology and then choose to accept or reject its logic, which automatically suggests that there is no unitary voice. However, this does not mean that the use of public relations is not damaging the democratic process, neither it means that there are no alternative uses of public relations. The symmetrical model of communications suggests a form of democracy where public and political spheres have a communicative synergy; they talk to one another and so persuasion is two-way and decisions are made with the public (Lilleker 2006: 171- 172).

Propaganda Bussemer (Bussemer 2008, 659) identifies two trends, which led the European and American bourgeois to discover the power of propaganda. The first one was the expansion of consumer society and mass media followed by the boost of the advertising industry, which was in many countries discussed under the term of propaganda. Secondly, the crowd or the mass became the subject of intense study and discussion by scholars such as Gustave Le Bon, Scipio Sighele, Wilfred Trotter or Sigmund Freud. The last one described the societal change after 1849 featured by the public opinion and mass media becoming the driving force of the society. Thus, the politicians viewed the new forms of propaganda as a mean to control public opinion, which they saw as an inherently irrational and dangerous force. The term propaganda was than discredited after the World War II and its association with Hitler and Goebbels. It disappeared from the scientific discourse as well as from the political debate and was replaced by terms like international communication, public diplomacy or public relations (Bussemer 2008: 660).

and causes all employ public relations means that no single voice is permanently louder than all competitors. However, when related to the government of a nation, it is argued that governmental public relations is able to ‘shout the loudest’, drowning out the voices of competitors, and so the incumbent gains an unfair, and perhaps undemocratic, advantage. (Lilleker 2008: 169). 20 It is true, that at the beginning the pioneers of the public relations started with the use of the word ‘propaganda’. For example famous Edward Bernays wrote the book named Propaganda in 1928 seeking to reverse the negative connotations the word had come to posses by providing case studies of its social benefit campaigns and arguing that propaganda is necessary to a democracy because it informs public opinion. Obviously, soon the term public relations got established and the word propaganda gained other connotations (Martinelli In Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011:37). Today, propaganda is widely considered either a historical phenomenon of the 20th century, closely linked to the propaganda regimes in Germany, Italy, Russia, and China, yet without much significance for the present. One perceives propaganda as a not very precise collective term for all promotional activities in the political realm (Bussemer 2008: 658). There has been dozens of attempts to define the term propaganda; scholars were defining it from the perspectives of history, sociology, strategic communication, psychology or political science. Using the most common and neutral definition of propaganda we can look at it as means to disseminate or promote particular ideas. The word originates from Latin and means to promote or to sow (Jowett, O’Donnell 2006).6 Nowadays, identifying a message as propaganda has mostly negative or pejorative connotations. Common synonyms for propaganda are thus lies, manipulation, control of mind, brainwashing etc. The latest terms implying that propaganda are spin and news management, which both refer to the coordinated strategy to minimize negative information and present in a favourable light a story that could be damaging to self-interests. Therefore, propaganda is generally seen as unethical, harmful and unfair technique. In his classic peace, Harold Lasswell describes propaganda as the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols, where the word attitude means a tendency to act according to certain patterns of valuation. Therefore, the propagandist’s aim is to intensify the attitudes favourable to his purpose, to reverse the attitudes hostile to it, and to attract the indifferent, or, at the worst, to prevent them from assuming a hostile bent. In the same text from 1927, which was examining the World War I. propaganda techniques, Lasswell classifies propaganda techniques according to aims and target audiences: the more distant (allies, neutral countries) and sophisticated (educated and questioning) the audience, the more propaganda focuses on rational justification for war: self-defence, proportionate response

6 The first use of the term dates back to 1622, when the Pope established the sacred congregation aimed at the Roman Catholic faith propaganda (Sacra Congregation de Propaganda Fide). The word lost its neutral sense since the Catholic Church was not only spreading its faith to the New World, but also opposing Protestants. 21 and the upholding of international law. Mass home audiences, however, require more emotionally compelling reasons (Lasswell 1927). Propaganda, in its many forms, is always some type of activated ideology. It could be both agitation aiming for some significant change or integrative attempting passive acceptation. Looking closer at the propaganda forms, Jowett and O’Donnell (Jowett, O’Donnell 2006) categorize it into white, grey and black propaganda. Very generally, we can say that white propaganda comes from an identified source mostly during peacetime attempting to build credibility with the audience (e.g. some over patronised national celebrations or certain international sports events); while the black propaganda is based on hidden or false sources aiming to spread lies, fabrications and deceptions (e.g. fake radio broadcasting; supplying false news to news organisations etc.). In between these two categories we can identify the grey propaganda, which operates with not always correctly identified sources and uncertain accuracy of information (state news organization denying or omitting invasion of other state; government officials supplying favourable news to cooperating journalists; letters from non-existing readers describing positive attempts of the government etc.). Three types of propaganda in the modern society can be identified. First, war propaganda as communicative campaigns designed to serve as auxiliaries in warfare (e.g. deception or defection). Second, ‘sociological’ propaganda (in terms of Jacques Ellul) in totalitarian regimes of the 20th century sought to create a new mankind by using propaganda and permanent, all-pervasive persuasion. Lastly, the third type is a political propaganda in democracies reflecting a close relationship among political communication, public relations and campaigning, and implies a rather weak impact on the audience. Competing parties openly admit that they try to persuade the electorate and the media can comment freely on the various positions. Propaganda competes as one position among many in the market of opinions (Bussemer 2008: 658-659).

Origins and expansion of the term ‘spin’ The term ‘spin-doctor’ was created in the US. It can be defined as a management of how political messages are going to be interpreted by the media in the tiny space between when a political event takes place and when it is first reported (McNair 2004). To ‘spin’ is to give the words describing a policy, personality or event a favourable gloss with the intention that the mass media will use them to the political advantage of the spinner and so gain public support (Moloney 2001).7

7 The word was the 1980’s jargon when coaches trained pitchers to make the ball to turn in the mid-air in order to confus the hitter. 22 The term originated in the US in the 1980s to describe CIA disinformation activities. Later on, British journalists began to refer to spin and spin-doctors in the early 1990s when ruling Conservatives started to loose their power and New Labour occurred as a serious contender. In their study Esser and col. (Esser 2001) have concluded that the term spin-doctor is not any more used only for the top advisers, but as almost a general name for any campaign operative. Therefore, the current literature uses the term for a wide range of people such as professional political consultants established in the US; media and PR experts with marketing knowledge but without political background; or for experienced party member with a special knowledge about campaigning. When speaking about a spin-doctor, the common definition talks about a person in politics, who tries to influence the public opinion by putting a positive bias on the information about one candidate or party and negative bias on the competitors. However, the term spin doctoring, according to Frank Esser, is an unscientific neologism coined by journalists to describe the complex process of intensifying political PR and political marketing. Esser claims that spin- doctoring is neither a neutral scientific concept (such as communication) nor the self-labelling of a branch (such as public relations). In fact, it is rather a biased and negatively rated neologism of journalists to discredit the work of political PR experts portraying them as, for instance, media manipulators. Journalists’ use of the term spin doctor is usually rather problematic as it mostly aims to discredit the politician, party or government in asserting themselves against an autonomous and powerful journalism that pursues an agenda of its own and whose mechanisms and motives and not always exclusively oriented toward the public welfare. Therefore, he points out to the fact that many times it is forgotten that the media as a political institution pursue specific self-interest and that the participants in political PR provide essential information without which the media could not possibly serve their public task (Esser 2001). On the whole, Esser understands spin as meta-communication or the news media's self-referential reflections on the nature of the interplay between political public relations and political journalism. Similarly, McNair argues that the demonization of spin is to be understood as an element of a journalistic counterstrategy: where political PR and marketing have developed a high degree of professionalism, journalism is developing counterstrategies to prove its independence and legitimacy (McNair 2004). Alternatively, Swanson and Mancini (1996) argue that spin is a contemporary manifestation of what he calls the political-media complex. It works both - as a contest: the battle between and among parties and politicians and journalists aiming to influence the news agenda; - and as complicity: journalists' dependence on spin-doctors as sources and 23 interpreters, politicians' dependence on news media for publicity. As an example of the expansion and influence of spin-doctoring we can point out to the contemporary Britain, where spin- doctoring reached a form of aggressive political public relations developed by New Labour to counter hostile media coverage from the right-wing pres (Maloney 2005). Margaret Scammell reports massive rise in coverage of ‘spin’ in the media as she mentions that spin doctors in a sample of UK national newspapers increased by close to 7 000 % in 1989-99. ‘Spin’ become the uniquely defining feature of press coverage of New Labour (Scammell 2000). Kevin Maloney claims that UK was another step towards what Deacon and Golding (1994: 3-4) have called the rise of the ‘public relations state’. In his memo from July 2000, the New Labour strategist or, if you want, a spin-doctor Philip Gould says that: “The New Labour brand has been badly contaminated,”…”undermined by a combination of spin, lack of conviction and apparently lack of integrity…” According to Gould’s focus groups’ research, the public felt Tony Blair “lacks conviction, he is all spin and presentation, he says things to please people and not because he believe them.”8 Similarly, we can also mention the German case. Esser, Reinemann and Fan (2000) compared the relatively new concept of ‘spin doctoring’ in the 1997 British and 1998 German general elections and characterised the UK experience as ‘spin doctoring high gear’ and Germany as ‘spin doctoring low gear’ (2000: 209). While British journalists covered the efforts of the political spin doctors extensively and critically because of their often aggressive methods used against the media, German journalists were found to be less likely to report on spin doctoring (Esser, Reinemann and Fan 2000: 209 - 210).

Spinning as a problem or solution for democracy Strömbäck and Kiousis point out to the fact that when scholars in political communication research speak about political public relations, they mostly refer to purposeful activities by political actors to influence media and their agenda by framing events and policies (e.g. Davis 2002; McNair 2004 and 2007; Maloney 2005), and they either refer to these as the packaging of politics or (more commonly) spinning conducted by spin-doctors. The meaning is usually negative or critical. Political public relations should however not be equalled with the news management. Both news management and media relations are important part of political public relations.

8 Well-known is the case of Tony Blair’s press secretary Alaistair Campbell and his dodgy dossier. The controversial ‘sexed-up’ document justifying British involvement in the Coalition of the Willing in the second Iraq War in 2003. Disgraced BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan alleged that Campbell had used dubious intelligence information to ‘sex-up’ the case for war against Iraq. It was a tragic episode, with the source of the allegations, former weapons inspector and British defence scientist David Kelly’s suicide. Campbell later resigned, largely to take the pressure off his prime minister (Hirst and Patching, 2007: 135).

24 Political public relations are a much broader concept than strategies and tactics for influencing media (Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011: 18-21). David Miller (Miller 2005) categorizes scholars concerned with spin into two groups. The first one consists of pluralist pessimists, who define the interconnection between media and spin as a problem that causes voters disengagement or public apathy, in which the media play a contributory role. The first approach includes many of the authors writing in the field of political communication such as Bennett and Manheim (2006) or Blumler and Gurevitch (1996: 129). They alarm about the rise of spin or crisis of public communication. Politicians’ attempt to ‘spin the news’ and journalists’ reaction with 'spin coverage' of attempted manipulation, result in self- referential, game-oriented political information, from which the public are increasingly excluded. Hence spin is deeply implicated in ‘crisis of public communication/political journalism’ arguments (e. g. See Barnett and Gaber 2001, Lloyd 2004). By contrast, the second group could be labelled as neoliberal optimists as they, on the contrary, see the media and the rise of spin as either a fact of life or as actually being beneficial to democracy. Whatever problems there are in the political system, they are not caused by the media or by spin. In fact, they say that a deregulated media and ever-increasing ‘professionalization’ and ‘modernization’ of communications and campaigns are the solution. As the representatives of this opinion flow we can mention Raymond Kuhn, who sees the rise of spin as an integral part of the rules of the game ‘in the media age’. Similarly, John Street have argued that politics have ‘moved on’ and that this may not be a bad thing as it may even improve democracy’ (Street 2001: 211). Moreover, Pippa Norris (Norris 2000: 306) reports systematic positive effects of the rise of spin in the US (Miller 2004: 375-377). Brian McNair for example says that like electricity and the atomic bomb, the PR cannot be disinvented and it is a necessary dimension of the modern political process (McNair 1996). As a consequence of that, specialists in the political consultancy have gained a central role in the mediated politics; we can even say that they constitute a third force in news making by applying scientific theories and methods of persuasive political communication to shape and target messages to maximize their desired impact while minimizing undesired collateral effects (Swanson and Mancini 1996, Manheim 1998, Esser 2001). The term ‚spin‘ itsef has rather sinister connotation such as manipulator, propagandist, conspirators or even sometimes it is pictured as evil force in the politics. Like the villain in James Bond or Austin Powers movies, public relations practitioners have become the personification of a kind of communicative evil which threatens to

25 take over the world and destroy democracy, and which it is a task of the scholar to expose and discredit it (McNair 2005).

26

B) GLOBAL CONVERGENCE OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Changes in society, media and politics

Over the last 50 and more years, the interconnected changes in the society, the parties’ structure and organization, and media systems were observed. First, the transformation and change of political communication was witnessed in the western democracies and later on, a similar development was seen in the so-called ‘new democracies’. Firstly, major change happened within the society leading to the change of the electorate. Thus, one can speak about modernization in Weber’s terms, meaning individualization, break-up of traditional social structures. Traditional social structure and variables do not enable us to predict the electoral results any longer. With newly gained liberties, the individual has more choices and his/her decision is not predetermined. There are two major traditional approaches studying voters behaviour (the Columbia and the Michigan school), but none of them is plausible enough as they are both more or less based on social structure variables. However, both say the voters are no more as stable as they used to be; they are now rather more volatile, hesitant and absenting. Another change was recognized in the media system as it changed the way politics is being covered. Historically, there were three distinct models of media systems (polarized pluralist, democratic corporatist and liberal model). With endogenous trends (Americanization, globalization, technology progress, global journalism culture) and exogenous trends (secularization, modernization, commercionalization), there is a clear tendency in Europe towards homogenization and one global media model (lib. model increasingly dominant). With, however, still obvious and very strong national differences (tradition, parliamentary democracy, electoral system, legal system, etc. ), which set the boundaries (Hallin and Mancini 2004). Thirdly, parties and politicians modified their message for the voters and the public. Over the last century more and more political parties have been transformed from parties with mass membership to parties with small, and still declining, memberships. The relationship between voters and political parties over the last few decades has become less a relationship based on identity and long-term commitment and more on a relationship based on persuasion, in which voters, lacking enduring political convictions, are induced to support a particular candidate or party in the elections (Swanson 2004). This trend has been most often referred to as dealignment

27 of voters. Traditional political cleavages are not applicable anymore. With the changes described in details throughout this text, it is obvious that by adapting to the new circumstances parties have transformed themselves into some sort of ‚agencies‘ or ‚professional groups‘ aimed at the electoral success. They have adapted themselves to the needs and interests of the new public, which can be reached through new media. Correspondingly, the politicians became more active in participation on shaping the media’s presentation of politics in line with their own needs and to their own advantage. In these efforts, parties started turning to professional assistance and advice. All the great changes described above have led to particular changes in the election communication, campaigning and public communication. Parties and politicians turned from the traditional methods of political electioneering to media-oriented campaigns based on political marketing techniques and practices. Public relations become part of every day politics as politicians, parties and candidates use techniques and methods common in the area of marketing and public relations such as media relations, branding, sale of services, public affairs, reputation management etc. Sometimes all of these are wrongly branded only as a spin doctoring. The result of this is a mediatization of politics in the sense that politics is continuously shaped by interactions with the mass media (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999) on one hand and politicization of the media on the other (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999). Interaction between political public relations and political journalism become constant. Both subsystems of the political system (political PR/publicity) and the journalism subsystem (political journalism) still acid under the constraints of their own system and according to the logic of the others. Politicians as political actors and journalists both have their own special interest but are dependent on each other for its attainment and therefore try to strategically influence the other side (Esser, Pfetsch 2004).

Americanization?

When describing the observed transnational trends and changes in political communication scholars use terms such as ‚Americanization‘ (Negrine 1996, Norris and Kalb 1997), with personalization of politics, scientificization of campaigning, detachment of parties from citizens, development of more autonomous structures of communication as key features., or as ‚professionalization‘, which we have described above as a mutual adaptation to, and a necessary

28 consequence of, changes in the political system on one side and the media system on the other and in the relationship of both of them. Practices such as political commercials, the selection of telegenic candidates, technical advisors, media professionals hired to produce compelling campaign materials, sharply increasing campaign costs. Media-oriented parties are now common characteristics of many elections across the globe. In line with that, the rise of political marketing and communication has then been widely blamed for growing public cynicism about political leaders and institutions. The main concern is that the techniques of spin, selling and persuasion are undermining the credibility of political leaders. Some regard the adoption of strategic communication as just one more way for parties to connect with voters in modern campaigns. Yet many others have expressed concern about the ‘Americanization’ of election campaign in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia, and possible impact this may be having on public confidence in political parties. In Europe, comparisons with US were obviously regarded as problematic because of differences in political and media systems. Nevertheless, the Americanization hypothesis has been used as a starting point for several analysis of modern political communication, so let us begin with it as well. Generally, we cannot avoid spotting that the democratic world started to be proliferated with American campaign techniques. On one hand, prominent US consultants have been working overseas since 1970s. First, they focused on the Latin America and Western Europe in the 1980s. Later, they moved their attention to the so-called ‘new’ democracies emerging after the fall of Communist parties’ rule in the Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. Also, the newly democratized countries of Asia and Africa become suitable options for deployment of US market-driven campaign and communication techniques. Election observers from Australia, Canada, Western Europe and Latin America marked the global diffusion of a common Americanized model as of 1980s (Scammell 2008). But, on the other hand, can we simply talk about ‘Americanization of international election communication’ as a one-dimensional concept? The key features of the ‘Americanization’, which originated in the US and were exported to other countries, according to Swanson and Mancini, are the personalization of politics as leaders and candidates raise in importance; the scientificization of campaigning as technical experts like opinion pollsters begin to make decisions formerly reserved for party officials; the detachment of parties from citizens as politicians come to be increasingly reliant on opinion polls rather than on direct contact with grassroots activists and voters; and the development of more autonomous

29 structures of communication, as the modern media are more determined to pursue their own interest rather than to serve the need of politicians (Swanson, Mancini 1996). On the contrary, Scammell noted that some of the indicators about Americanization of international election communication are only singular observations reflecting the pending process of modernization and professionalization of political communication’s actors and these do not provide satisfactory proof for a directional convergence and diffusion process, which the concept of Americanization claims to include. (Scammell 2008). Scholars found consensus agreeing that there is an international pattern of convergence around key processes such as media-centricity, personalization and professionalization, capital intensity, media and, increasingly, marketing logics. But again, can the concept of ‘Americanization’ be the causal explanation if both academics, even those from US, and political practitioners reject it? Certainly, the ‘Americanized’ brand brings negative associations as it implies imperialistic designs of the US to impose its practices. On one hand, it underestimates the strength of indigenous forces as motors of change and, on the other hand, it over-estimates the degree of international trade in political consultancy. Therefore, it is better to perceive the US as an ‘archetype’ rather than a ‘model’ of modern campaigning (Swanson and Mancini 1996).9 Also, Negrine and Papathanassopoulos raised three issues, which would be worth considering before simply labelling the process as ´Americanization´. First, they claim that with the easy, constant and established process of two-way exchange traffic of fashion, music, literature, inventions and theories between US and Europe makes it difficult to work with the idea of a unilinear process of transfer from US to the rest of the world. Secondly, they note that the thesis about Americanization is almost irrefutable as the modern world is influenced by American as well as by the British, French, Spanish, Islamic and other practices and institutions. Thirdly, despite the fact that Americanization thesis talks about a one-way flow of influence, in fact there is more complicated process as not only do some countries adapt more influential practices outside the US, but the United States itself import some practices as well (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1996).

9 The main difference between the mentioned two is that the ‘modern model’ is a product of the socio-political changes of modernity, it is an example for imitation, while ‘archetype’ is an original pattern on which we can have variety of cases dependent on the electoral and party systems, regulations of parties and media etc. Its characteristics could be found more or less everywhere but the intensity differs. Hence, may the US present a picture of all our futures? This thesis was tested in the book Politics, Media and Modern Democracy (Swanson and Mancini 1996) with the conclusion that contextual factors vary weight and intensity of elements of ‘modern model’ but not absolute barriers. 30 With the creation of the term Americanization, the essential paradigm had been set and generated a great deal of dynamics in comparative political communication research. A boom in the mentioned field of studies was the outcome following the criticism of the parochial perspective of many US-centred projects. For better orientation in the very vivid and broad polemics, we can follow the summary of Fritz and Gunda Plasser (Plasser and Plasser 2000: 15-20), who differentiated between two opposite views on the concept of Americanization. According to the diffusion theory, Americanization is a one-way convergence process between the US and European, Latin American or Asian election communications with foreign communication experts adopting US behaviour. An example to this could be the orientation of planning strategies of political communication, similar ways of political marketing, or the adoption of US forms of political coverage and their underlying values (Plasser and Plasser 2000). The second approach provides the modernization theory backed for example by Negrine, Papathanassopoulos, Kavanagh or Norris, who look at the ‘Americanization’ of election communication as a consequence of pending greater change in the structure of politics, society and media systems. In other words, the changes could be assigned to the broader and more complex concept of globalization. This school thus rejects any hierarchical superiority as the term Americanization implies. Blumler and Kavanagh (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999) see the fragmentation of the public sphere causing a higher degree of specialization and professionalization among the political communication actors. Similarly, analogous election features such as excessive personalization, a political star system, mass media impression management and an increasing negativity of campaign and its coverage are products of an endogenous change. Even though some campaign features of the European, Latin American or East Asian political communication were borrowed from the US, the key characteristic components are basically retained. Americanization is thus perceived as a synonym for ‘modernization’ or ‘professionalization’ (Mancini 1999) and the processes between the US and Western Europe or Latin America are only indirect convergence leading toward higher number of similar political communication characteristics in the media-centred democracies (Plasser with Plasser 2000; Norris 2000; Bennett and Entman 2001 and others).10 Thus, modernization theory scholars claim that structural changes on the macro-level, which includes media, technologies and social structures, resulted in an adaptive behaviour on the micro-

10 Norris notes that the diffusion of television-dominated, personally-driven, and money-driven campaigns, often seen as characteristic features of the Americanization of campaigning, probably progressed further for example in Italy, Venezuela and Israel than in Britain, Germany and Sweden. 31 level, which comprises parties, candidates and journalists. This process then led to gradual modifications of traditional styles and strategies of political communications. On the other hand, the diffusion theorists focus on voluntary proliferation of US-campaign styles and on the micro- level of consultants exporting their knowledge outside the US.

Shopping for ideas in US?

The United States are for many reasons seen as the cutting edge of electioneering innovations and campaigns or the campaign laboratory which disposes with abundant funding, cutting edge technology, professional expertise, knowledge-sharing incentives. Two major grounds for such an outlook are the enormous intensity of elections and consequently the still increasing amount of experts willing to participate in this highly profitable business (Scammell 2008).11 Concerning the situation outside the US, we have to say that the political consultancy is much less developed. There are some agencies and celebrated consultants in Europe, Australia and Latin America. In Europe, party staffers and politicians mostly manage campaigns, while professionals advise and provide specialist services. In line with what was said, it is no wonder that the US is perceived as an international role model of campaigning. However, diffusion of the US campaign and marketing techniques is not a linear process resulting in a uniform standardization or international practices. There are actually two models, which describe how the US campaign expertise is being diffused abroad. The most spread one is probably the shopping model, which is used for selective ‘buying’ via observation of US campaigns or hiring consultants, but the party retains its control (Plasser and Plasser 2002). In other words, the shopping model primarily focuses on the down-to-earth techniques that can be easily implemented in the national context while maintaining the country- and culture-specific campaign styles and philosophies (Farrell 2006). The second type is the adoption model, which adopts strategy and techniques from the US consultants and experts, which are regarded as more promising than the traditional local campaign approach. Typical for the adoption is, on one hand, the disregard of conventional organizational

11 Currently, the number of more than 500,000 elected public offices in the US is incomparable to any other country in the world. Also, there are enlisted more than 50,000 political consultants, who work in the very profitable industry and attracts incredible number of more and more specialists aiming to be more ‘professionalized’ via training, profession associations, trade lits etc. US elections are also very attractive for worldwide media, which than supports the country’s picture of the Mecca for elections and campaigns or the campaign laboratory which disposes with abundant funding, cutting edge technology, professional expertise, knowledge-sharing incentives. 32 campaign and continuous political programme and, on the other hand, fixation to the candidate’s image, strategic product development, target-group marketing, news management, spin, permanent campaigning and negative advertising. This model is expected to have more far- reaching effects on the political competition in Europe, Latin America and Asia, though it is less common in practice now. (Plasser and Plasser 2000).12 The shopping model concentrates on the implementation of selected American campaign techniques as a supplement to the country- and context-specific campaign practices, whereas the adoption model is stressing the transformational consequences of winning on-air, research-driven message development and targeted message delivery. Thus, the shopping model leads to what Plassers call hybridization of various campaign styles, while the adoption model is more about standardization of campaign practices. Consequently, the traditional campaign styles are vanishing being replaced by hybrid methods partly based on country-specific of traditional campaign with select features from the US. The second option then is that the traditional campaigns and country- specifics phase out, being substituted by capital-intensive, media- and consultant-driven campaign practices. Results of Plassers’ global research on political campaigning prove that despite some ubiquitous trends in media-centred democracies, campaign practices still reflect system and cultural specifics and globalisation of campaigning thus does not lead to uniform standards in political campaigns (Plasser and Plasser 2002).

Professionalization?

Instead of Americanization or modernization, scholars started to use the umbrella term ‘professionalization’. That, and related words, have become the normative way of describing the development in political campaigning and communication in recent years. However, the more scholars focus on the way political campaigning and political communications have become professionalized, the more definitions of this term we get. One has to ask, whether this is really the right word to describe the latest development in the mentioned fields or if we should be rather looking for a more specific term? Lilleker and Negrine (Lilleker and Negrine 2002) also questioned the usage of the term professionalization, claiming that it is confusing and provides a little detail to the actual change in

12 According to Scammell, the most successful US political communication services sold abroad are usually general strategic advice, polling and market research. Media use and strategic advice are less common but quite strongly noted in Latin America and in the CEE. However, advertising is being done rather locally. 33 the nature and conduct of campaigning. Or, is the term maybe related to deployment of professional communicators namely public relations experts, image consultants, data analysts and speechwriters etc.? In addition, Lilleker and Negrine also noted that in some cases the term was used when talking about the elected representatives.13 In line with that, the authors conclude that the term professionalization is multifaceted, often highly subjective, and not able to fully describe the nuances in the complex nature of political communication. Political scientists understand the term as a way in which politics have become a full-time paid career, while political communication scholars use it very loosely in all sorts of different contexts such in cases, where they mean professional experts employed by party to deal with media or elected representative of the party with basic competence in news management. Thus, a professional seems to be a person with range of skills in handling the media and using modern communication facilities, which rather than professionalism indicates amateurism (Lilleker and Negrine 2002).

Crisis of political communication or new beginning?

While scholars do agree on the fact that mediated political communication is in transition, they have troubles agreeing on the actual consequences of these changes. A lot of pages have been written describing a concern about the current state of market-driven political communication. In the eyes of some scholars, mediated political communication has reached a state of crisis in advanced industrial democracies and is failing citizens (Blumler and Gurevitch 1995). Others profess greater optimism about the democratic potential of new formats and outlets for political messages and the resilience of citizens (McNair 2004, Norris 2000, Scammell 2007). The above described discussion and terms clarification is crucial in order to better understand the wider effects, which these changes of political communication have/had on the political and media systems and more generally on the character of democracy. The widespread belief that political communications have contributed towards civic disengagement has become prevalent among journalists and scholars. The sceptical and doubtful approach has proliferated the literature as it often slides too easily from discussing real changes in the news industry to the assumed effects of

13 Concretely, they talk about political marketing models of campaigning, which introduce process that combines specialist roles with effective delivery (Farell 2006; Lees-Marshment 2001; Scammell 1996) – professional campaign team analyses market, advices, trains, creates effective tools to transmit message etc. Other political marketing literature speaks about prominent non-professionals responsible for campaign communication. But Lilleker and Negrine, find these markedly different to the discourse of professionalization, which suggests that as political campaigning becomes professionalized, all those involved in campaigning will be or will become professionals within their ascribed roles. 34 these changes on public opinion (Scammell 2008). Theories of ‘videomalaise’ or ‘media malaise’, which claimed that exposure to political coverage contributed towards political alienation, first emerged in the early 1970s. The post-Vietnam and post-Watergate era theories of media malaise seemed to provide a plausible reason for growing public disillusionment. Scholars mostly suggested that public faith in representative institutions and leaders has been eroded by developments in political communications, including tabloidization of the news media and the adoption of political marketing techniques by parties (Norris 2000). She described a common US view that the American public turns off, knows little, cares less and stays home. Similarly, the same worries appeared in Europe as well. During the past decade a rising tide of voices on both sides of the Atlantic has blamed the news media for growing public disengagement, ignorance of civic affairs, and mistrust of government. A related viewpoint, more prevalent in Europe, regards the growth of professional political marketing by parties as also contributing towards greater cynicism (Norris 2000). Sceptical argumentation claims that the news coverage of politics and government assumed greater importance to political actors. Consequently, politicians became more sophisticated and effective at manipulating news coverage by means that guaranteed to satisfy journalists’ commercial need for pictures, video, timely statements etc. Of course, journalists in many countries have sought to resist politicians’ manipulation and assert their own independence. As a consequence to this growing adversarialism between journalists and politicians appeared an increasingly negative view of politics and politicians offered in political news stories, which seek to expose politicians’ statements and actions as public relations ploys, and which have become less documentary and more heavily interpretative, emphasizing the journalists’ view. Their attributes are then linked to growing citizens’ cynicism about politics and politicians (see e.g. Swanson, Holtz-Bacha and others.). Similarly, Blumler talks about ‘a crisis of civic communication’ affecting the Western Europe. He claimed that the relationship between politicians and journalists become more adversarial, as in their struggle to control the news agenda the parties have increasingly tailored their messages to journalistic formats and news values. Whereas in response, the reporters have intensified their efforts to put their own stamp on the political story to expose what politicians are really ‘up to’. According to Blumler, that resulted in impoverished campaign coverage and decreased quality of public debate about serious policy issues facing the country. Of course, this theory was shortly questioned by number of sceptics, who provided evidence, for example, that the attention to news

35 media was associated with positive indicators of civic engagement in the US, UK and other countries (Blumler, Gurevitch 1995). On the contrary, much less sceptical Pippa Norris introduces a different perspective in order to better understand the situation. She refers to the historical changes in campaigning. As the so- called ‘pre-modern campaign’ (local party meetings, door-to-door canvassing and direct voter- candidate contact) decline, the ‘modern campaign’ showed up (typical for widespread adoption of political marketing techniques, strategic communications features, identified target voters, battleground issues, key themes and images, priority to organizational and financial resources etc.). The latter gives more significant roles to experts in the public relations, news management, advertising, speechwriting and market research. In other words, that is the part when scholars speak about ‘professionalization’ of campaigning.

However, during the past fifteen years we can identify another change, which Norris regards as a transition from modern to ‘postmodern’ campaign, typical by features such as fragmentation of television outlets; opportunities for newer forms of party – voter interaction on internet; attempt by parties to reassert control in a more complex, fragmented, and rapidly changing news environment through strategic communications and media management during the permanent campaign, with the continuous feedback provided by polls, focus groups and e-meetings, not just campaigns. She provides evidence of a consistent and positive relationship between attention to party and news messages and indicators of civic knowledge, political efficacy, and voting participation. To put the described public communication crisis development in a far more positive light, Norris explained that in Europe and in the US, because of what she calls a ‘virtuous circle’, attention to the news media gradually reinforces civic engagement, just as civic engagement prompts attention to the news. She concludes, that process of political communications by the news media and by parties is not responsible for the civic malaise14 (Norris 2000).

As every crisis, the alleged one of political communication has also brought along something positives - a space and a need for a fresh look at things. It led scholars to open a brand new discussion about the current state of the public and political communication. And, they came with some very interesting approaches and theories, which might help the scientific discipline to move

14 Civic malaise is a variation of the term media malaise (first suggested by Kurt and Gladys Lang in 1960s; later Michael Robins as ´videomalaise´ and other US and European scholars followed), which refers to claims that the common practices in political communication by the news mediaand by party campaigns hinder civic-engagment, meaning citizens learning about public affairs, trust in government, and political activism 36 to a new paradigm. Margaret Scammell claims that politics could be actually improved by even more marketing (Scammell 2007). She refers to the Dickinson and Svenson’s concept of ‚beautiful corporations‘. According to them, the old marketing standards of price and volume are not enough any more to sustain profits for corporations. The modern customers, having more than they need, are looking for something else. New ‚empowered‘ customers have now all the means to control, compare, check, ask and make their choice on the oversupplied market with no time or place limitation. Nowadays, the consumer, not the producer, is the hunter. This, they claim, is true for common shopping for grocery as well as for politics. Thinking of politics and government as a service underlines the importance of image and reputation in politics. In fact, Scammell claims that reputation based on records and leadership, not on the TV appearance, is the only thing of substance parties can offer to voters in support of their election promises. Hence, the high reputation is also a crucial variable in explaining why voters choose one party over the one, which policies they actually prefer.

Of the various institutions of democracy, no single institution is held in greater disrepute that the political party. Yet, while parties are struggling we see consistent evidence that the levels of political interest are not declining and may be increasing in some countries […] The conventional wisdom about floating voters is being turned upside down. The undecideds of the past tended to be relatively uninterested in politics […] now, we see correlations between better education, higher levels of political interest and lower levels of party loyalty.

Although Scammell might not have enough practical evidence and her concept may not be entirely valid for every single democratic state, she is certainly correct when talking about a shift from the current mass media model. She suggests that the new model we are moving towards could be called a consumer model of political communication (Scammell 2007). At this point, we should also mention a relevant study by the US scholars of political communication Lance Bennett and Jarol B. Manheim (Bennett, Manheim 2006), who talk about the transformation of public communication in the United States from the traditional two-step flow of messages passing from mass media through a social mediation process, to a one-step flow involving the refined targeting of messages directly to individuals. Similarly to Scammell, Bennet and Manheim are optimistic about the ‚crisis of political communication‘, as they see a lot of change coming with new media and technology enabling direct communication between politicians and voters, observing the profound changes and transformation of the political communication. The channel than could be direct mail, targeted telemarketing, receiver-sensitive

37 Web sites such as social networking sites, e-mail lists or other means. The message thus can be tailored-made in order to fit the boundaries, while being framed to the needs, wants, expectations, beliefs, preferences, and interests of the individual audience member (Bennett, Manheim 2006).

38

C) POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Historical sketch

Between the two world wars, the first public relations departments were reported at the public administration sector (e.g. the Foreign Affairs Ministry) as well as at the corporate sector (e. g. in the large corporations, such as "koda Plze# or Ba$a, or at the first Brno’s trade fair called the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in then Czechoslovakia in 1928), which included production of press releases or publishing internal or corporate newspapers (Svoboda 2011: 219). The Office of the Czech Government also had a press department, which was, for example, between 1924- 1939 headed by the well-known writer Max Brod (Kárník 2003: 334). It is also interesting to note that the National Assembly was producing a daily information and news digest (Sn!movní korespondence) on the latest development in the parliament sent directly to the journalists (Kárník 2003: 336). Furthermore, the Czech politicians were using advantages of the available media as well as adapting to the new communication technologies in order to communicate with the citizens. The partisan press dominated the choice of newspapers and dailies published in the Czech lands. Moreover, all the parties were aware of the fact that in order to address their voters they not only need dailies with morning, afternoon or evening variations, but they also need to publish a weekly or bimonthly magazines or reviews. The numbers of copies of the partisan newspapers were very high compared to the present days. In 1926, there were 1,800 news titles reported only in Prague, 74 in the city of Ostrava, 32 in Olomouc etc. The dailies were published in 30,000 to 530,000 copies daily (depending on the party and the type of daily).15 As the historian Kárník notes: Parties without partisan press had no chance for success at that time. (Kárník 2003: 326-331). Later on, the parties also added their own radio broadcasting. Thus, there were Labour radio and Agriculture radio founded in 1926 and others followed. On the other hand, it is important to mention that the politicians lag a bit behind concerning the medium of film and film news, which developed (first as mute) in the early 30ties and did not focus too much on the political news (Kárník 2003: 339):

15 For example in 2011, the best selling Czech tabloid daily Blesk was printed in 1.2 mln copies, the second one was MF Dnes with 797, 000 copies and third one was the daily Pravo with 395,000 copies (Mediaprojekt 2011). 39

In fact, the political public relations have been deployed already at the birth of the independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. „The importance of taking the entire world public into consideration before planning an important event is shown by the wise action of Thomas Masaryk, now President of the Republic Czechoslovakia,“ wrote the father of political public relations and a relative to Sigmund Freud, Edward E. Bernays (more about him in Chapter A). Masaryk decided to officially announce the Washington declaration proclaiming the Czechoslovak Republic on Monday, October 18, 1918 instead of on Sunday, October 17, 1918, because he realized that the people of the world would receive more information and would be more receptive to the announcement of the republic’s plea for freedom on a Monday morning than on a Sunday, because the press would have more space to devote to it on Monday morning. Discussing the matter with Bernays before he made the announcement, Masaryk said, „I would be making history for the cables if I changed the date of Czechoslovakia’s birth as a free nation.“ And as cables (newswires and the press) make history, so the date was changed (Bernays 1928: 122). In his memoirs, Bernays also describes how he orchestrated an event at the Carnegie Hall, where Masaryk was standing shoulder to shoulder with famous Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski (became Polish prime minister in 1919), like the two symbols of the „Austro-Hungarian oppression“, which gained a lot of attention of the US as well as the foreign press (Kunczik 2002: 134). Later on, when in his office, Tomá% Garigue Masaryk recorded the first presidential public radio speech in December 1933 and thus started the tradition of a presidential Christmas Day oration reflecting the current political events and news. This tradition was pursued also by the next presidents Edvard Bene% or Emil Hácha. (Between 1940-1944 the speeches were broadcasted from London). Masaryk also made use of the commonly accessible medium of the book and published his personal memoirs as well as a series of interviews with the top journalists and writer Karel &apek. His regular personal meetings with the country’s top journalists are also well known. The democratic development in the Czech territory was suppressed by the World War II., and then followed by the undemocratic regime. This regime was concluded tens of years later in 1989, when the country transited to democracy; in Huntington’s words during the ‘third wave of democratization’. There were several factors influencing the development, changes and current state of the party political communication in the democratic Czech Republic. On one hand it was the timing of the regime change, on the other hand the typical system prerequisites such as the importance of the parties, electoral system, media ownership etc. 40 As Voltmer notes, in communist regimes the media played a central role as a propaganda instrument for re-educating the masses and disseminating extensive messages of the Party across the country. The highly politicized role made the media an indispensable part of the power structure. Needless to say, that not only television but also the printed press were owned by the state or associated mass organizations. Despite its simplicity, this brief description provides a general idea how complex transition to a democratic system of political communication is. It requires restructuring the entire media system both with regard to its relationship to the government and its economic structure (Voltmer 2005: 216 - 218). In older democracies, parties moved from traditional methods of political electioneering and turned to media campaigns based on political marketing incrementally, taking place continuously step by step over the course of the 20th century. Whereas in some of the new democracies, the modern model of political campaigning had to be developed and implemented anew, as soon as the transition to democracy began (Swanson 2004). Especially, the young democracies that emerged in the aftermath of the demise of soviet-style communism underwent extremely rapid changes that left little time for careful consideration before making decisions about the future structure of the new institutions. Everything had to be done at the same time. The obvious solution for making decisions under extreme time constraints was to adopt institutional models from the West. With regard to the media this usually meant wide-ranging privatization and commercialization not only of the printed press, but also of broadcasting. Some countries in Eastern Europe implemented public service broadcasting with some degree of independence from both the state and market competition (Voltmer 2005). Another important difference that distinguishes this wave of democratization from previous ones is that building the new institutions takes place in a media-saturated environment where television is a pervasive part of political life. From the outset, the newly elected political leaders have to act in the limelight of the media and more often than not find themselves the target of fierce public criticism. As a consequence, counterstrategies of news management and ‘spin’ quickly became a dominant part of the political process propelling political communication in new democracies immediately into what has been labelled ‘media democracies’ (Meyer 2002).

As Giovanni Sartori has famously said, it is the political parties that connect government and the governed. Citizens in modern democracies are represented through and by parties… Parties can best be conceived as means of communication (Sartori 1976: 24 and 28). Similarly, Sarcinelli (1998: 277) speaks about a ‘communicative hinge function’ of parties in the democratic process. 41 He claims that parties perform a reciprocal middleman service in the communication between state agencies and citizens, in both the process of opinion formation and the process of interest mediation. Therefore, we can look at the history of political parties also as a history of political communication. Political parties have communicated with citizens in various ways during different stages of their development following the opportunities of media technology development (Farrell and Webb 2000; Gibson and Römmele 2001; Norris 2000). In the young democracies the continuous process of media development is dramatically interrupted by the breakdown of the old regime involving not only a change of the institutional structure but also the erosion of the value system on which the old system has been resting. While in established democracies the media might have only little impact on political orientations, citizens in the young democracies are assumed to be much more vulnerable to detrimental media influences, because there are only few experiences and beliefs still valid that individuals can draw upon to check and evaluate negativistic and critical media messages (Voltmer, Schmitt-Beck: 2001). It is already clear that certain Czech Republic’s prerequisites largely differ from the systems in the US or in the Western Europe. As an example we can mention proportional electoral system to the Lower Chamber of Parliament, indirect vote of the country’s president, strong role of parties in the system, more than two political party system (moderate multipartism), media system – strong public broadcasting service, ban on political advertising on PSB TV, partisan press which claims to be independent, and quite a small market for political consultants or advisers. The Czech citizens also declare quite high trust in television (62 % vs 35 % distrust) and radio (59 % vs 31 %), which is higher than trust in the army (56 %), police (51 %) or courts (46 %) (CVVM 2010). Moreover, Czech parties do not have massive membership base and there is only a very limited number of other traditional organizations such as churches, clubs, interest groups etc., which could be mobilised in support of the party. Also, the country reported relatively high total electoral turnout of 64.7 % in 2006 compared to 58 % in 2002 and 62,6 % in 2010, but lower than 74 % in 1998. Therefore, despite some sort of cynicism notable sometimes in the press, I believe we cannot really speak about voters’ disengagement yet. Additionally, politics was not a popular issue for the best-selling paper – tabloid ‘Blesk’. Also, the Czech language might sometimes be a barrier for English-speaking professionals coming to work in the country on campaigns. Also, there were several events, which demonstrated the fact that parties’ communication has been slowly professionalizing over the past twenty years. In fact, the US or UK consultants appeared already at the very early 1990, however the parties and politicians showed no need of acquiring techniques from the ‘old democracies’ then, as the Czech voters were interested in the politics, 42 voters turnout at elections was high, and the party system and political competition was only emerging. Later on, at the turn of the century, things were changing. As an example, we can mention few facts illustrating the trend: the global advertising agency Young and Rubican collaborated with Václav Klaus’s ODS in 1992; similarly, the Christian Democrats had their communication claims and strategies created by the advertising agency Ogilvy from the late nineties until 2006 (Novotn' 2009)16; the two largest parties of ODS and &SSD as well as the smaller actors were cooperating with the Czech lobbing or communication agencies in 2002; the &SSD hired US consultants in 2006 etc. (For more see "aradín, Lebedová in Dan(ák, Hlou%ek 2006: 238 – 240).

16 Novotn', P. : Volební kampan) vym'%lejí jen domácí firmy, sv)tové se (eské politice vyh'bají. MF DNES, 19. 9. 2009. Available at http://ekonomika.idnes.cz/volebni-kampane-vymysleji-jen-domaci-firmy-svetove-se-ceske-politice-vyhybaji-1y3- /ekonomika.aspx?c=A090918_200925_ekonomika_abr 43 D) RESEARCH METHODS AND QUESTIONS

Professionalization as useful concept for research in political communication

The starting point for this research was an ongoing debate relating to political communication and campaigning developments in the recent years, which have been labelled by the term ‘Americanization’. On the one hand, the developments are seen as being adopted directly from the United States. However, on the other, they are seen as being part of more general developments touching on politics, media and society, grouped in the term ‘modernization’. Some of the central characteristics of a seeming convergence of political campaigning practices in diverse political and social systems round the globe include catch-all policies, personalization, media-centricity, professionalization and political marketing. This research was inspired by the process of changes observed in the style politicians were approaching media, voters and general public. All these aspects (namely the process and the relations among media, politics and voters) evoke the field of political public relations. Therefore, I have decided to pursue this field of political public relations, which allowed observing the changes from the party’s perspective, provided theoretical framework for the managerial processes inside parties and enabled to research also outside the election campaigning period. The general driving force behind the research was to explore in more details the new political communication trends occurring in the Czech Republic. Contemporary practices in the content and conduct of political communication can be best understood when looking at them using a historical and comparative perspective. Proper explanation of the latest changes without understanding the broader context, which led to each of these developments, is not possible. In my case, I have decided to use the common concept of professionalization of political communication. For the purposes of my text I will start with a very precise definition of professionalization of political communication by Christina Holtz-Bacha, who explains it as a process of adaptation to, and as such as necessary consequence of, changes in the political system on the one side and the media system on the other and the relationship of the two systems. (Holtz-Bacha 2007: 10). Professionalization is a general and not culture-bound concept, which follows the modernization of the society and will take place in similar political systems sooner or later. However, its actual appearance and the degree is dependent on the country’s social, historical and political specifics (Holtz-Bacha 2007). Although the term has been

44 questioned and is not flawless, it is, under current circumstances, the best approach to get better understanding of the changes in the nature of interrelations among political parties, media, voters and society in the Central Europe’s young democracies. Most of the empirical work documenting the growth of professionalized communication and campaigning has so far taken the form of qualitatively rich contextual and historical studies of individual parties and/or countries. With the arrival of the shopping and adoption models (Plasser and Plasser 2002) and similar concepts concerning the spread of US practices, very few studies were also working with comparative frame among states or countries. One of the very first studies, which defined empirical indicators that operationalized the concept of campaign professionalization in a broader generic sense, was presented by Gibson and Römmele (2007). There exists an extensive body of research on political campaigning in different countries. While some of this research focuses on the professionalization of political campaigning in general (Swanson and Mancini 1996; Negrine, Mancini, Holtz-Bacha and Papathanassopoulos 2007; Negrine 2008) or as measured through the use of different campaign techniques (Gibson and Römmele 2001, 2009; Strömbäck 2009), other research focuses on the increasing use and management of political consultants – primarily, although not exclusively, in the United States (Plasser and Plasser 2002; Thurber and Nelson, 2000). (Strömbäck and Kousis 2011: 30 -31).17 There is also a vast amount of literature covering the Czech party system, numerous kinds of election studies (e.g. &aloud et col., 2006; Lebeda 2007, Eibl et col 2009; Balík 2010 etc.), election engineering (e.g. Chytilek, "edo et col. 2009), party manifestos or voters choice, but none of the research looked at the changing processes from the perspective of the party organization and its internal processes. While the research has looked into the political marketing and campaigning in the Czech Republic (e. g. Bradová and "aradín 2007; Bradová and Lebeda 2007; Matu%ková 2010; Lebedová 2011), the field of political public relations remains under-researched. Also, the research that has been conducted so far points to the changes in campaign communication practices in the Czech Republic, but does not look into the potential influences behind their emergence. The goal behind this research is to grasp the concept of professionalization of parties’ public relations in the Czech Republic and get better understanding of the observed changes in the parties communication style and manners (it does not matter whether it was during the campaign or not).

17 There is also an extensive literature on different campaign strategies or tactics such as for example, the use of political advertising, negative campaigning, voter segmentation, Internet and social media in political communication and campaign processes etc. 45 Therefore, the major question of the research is: what is the level of professionalization of the Czech political parties’ communication? Further on, I also want to research how does a ‘professional’ Czech party communication operates and looks like? In addition, the goal is also to see the differences between the time of a campaign and the period in the middle of the election cycle. In order to provide data, which will be valid in the broader context, this study replicates Gibson and Römmele’s method based on 30-points CAMPROF index based on the party-centre theory (Gibson, Römmele 2001). The index was successfully tested on the case of German 2005 general elections and will be applied further on in this study as well. Although it might look slightly eclectic, I see Römmelle and Gibson’s comparative scale as an important and significant step in moving towards empirical proofs and findings in this field, allowing the scholars to get a very interesting comparative analysis. However, I want to point out, that CAMPROF index is not exhaustive and all-encompassing, and certain country specifics have to be omitted. Besides, the communication technology and new media keep changing and innovating the communication almost constantly. Notwithstanding these imperfections, the starting point of this research is grounded in the replication of campaign communication professionalization index CAMPROX for the two consecutive election campaigns in the Czech Republic (European Parliament elections of 2009 and general elections of 2010). Replicating an international scale enabled me to obtain a broader perspective on the level of campaign communication expressed in the comparable form. However, to go deeper into the analysis of the party communication changes and to get better understanding about the differences in the period of a campaign or no campaign, it was necessary to talk to the parties themselves. As I was grasping the field, which has not been researched before and, therefore could not refer to previous knowledge, the choice of a qualitative form of the research was definitely more suitable. The method of qualitative research is chosen also as it is a part of the interpretive paradigm and allows for less restricted methodology, which could be supplemented or modified during the research itself. Another reason why this approach was applied, is the fact that the qualitative methods’ goal is to find the complex holistic picture of the observed phenomenon, while combination of sources and different types of data is also possible. Another factor, which influenced the choice, was the small number of cases. Indeed, the goal was to analyze the phenomenon (the parties’ political communication) directly on the researched units (parties). Thus, the research moves to the micro-perspective and starts researching the party officials. More specifically, the major questions are looking into more details by asking: how the PR work was 46 organized within the party; to what extent is the communication strategically planned; and what drove the changes and improvements in the parties’ communication practices. The term professionalization is often used when talking about the changes in the nature of and communication. Instead, Lilleker and Negrine suggest, authors should be using more specific terms describing the real process, its causes and responses to them. If we do not want to be left with a normative conclusion that political campaigns have become more professional, which would leave us with even more questions, we have to define and explain aspects of the evolution process such as: the specialization of key roles within the campaign; increased use of mode of delivery that requires skills that traditional party employees and volunteers may not have; aims of communication to become more slick, media-friendly and tailored for media coverage etc (Lilleker and Negrine 2002). In reference to professionalisation of political communication in general, Negrine (2007: 33) identifies four sorts of transitions: - transition or even a transformation of the parties and other political bodies in the way they communicate with their particular constituencies; - transformation in the nature and structure of the organization of the party communication activities; - transformation in the use of experts or ‘professionals’ hired by parties or government bodies to support or direct the communication; - and transformation in the labour market where increasing number of professionals in communication politics, persuasion and mobilization have been occurring. When trying to understand the changes in the political communication, we can also examine Pippa Norris’ approach, which she used when studying campaign communications. In order to get a more complex picture we need to make a clear analytical distinction between (Norris 2000): - changes in the structure and organization of parties and the news industry; - changes in the contents of political messages; - and changes in the potential effects of these messages. There are two meanings in which modern professionalization is claimed to be qualitatively different form the past. It is ‘specialisation’, driven by technology and money, and ‘displacement’ of party strategists by non-party professionals (Scammell 1998). Based on these assumptions, I have identified three major issues to be covered for the purposes of this study: (Also, I added one more issue based on the question of spread of the US techniques and methods). 1) communication strategies, tools and channels applied by a party; 2) organization and responsibilities of departments responsible for the party communication; 47 3) role and impact of external consultants in the communication; 4) the influence from European and other countries on the party communication strategies and practices.

Research design

The research is designed as a descriptive multi-case study in the scope of qualitative research. This design was chosen as the best possible mean to provide complex description of the phenomenon of recent changes and developments in parties’ political communication in the Czech Republic. I chose this method after considering that the set of case studies can teach us a lot about the defined phenomenon and field of political parties’ activities, which has not been explored yet. Only a case study approach is able to provide understanding of the important aspects of my research, which investigates a very complex situation of social and political life. Also, I believe, that by conducting a set of case studies, I could provide a solid basis for future quantitative research and hypothesis formulation. Another reason, why this method was chosen, was also the fact, that there were different sets of data planned to be used for the purposes of this study. On the other hand, it is important to stress out that by using the selected method it is not possible to generalize the results or prove causal relations. Consequently, the research is designed as a combination of methods and data sources in order to find out what is the level of professionalization of party communication in the selected period of time. First of all, there is a replication of multidimensional CAMPROF index (indication of the level of professionalized campaign communication) designed by Römmele and Gibson (2009), which allows for certain level of generalization. Also, the index enables comparisons among individual cases. However, it is applicable only for the time of the election campaigns and deals also with other aspects of campaigns the research was not particularly interested in. Therefore, other sources of data were included in order to find how do an individual party’s communications practices look like. In line with that, this study provides analysis of two sets of semi-structured interviews with campaign press officers, collected first in 2008 and, in the second round, in 2010. The analysis is also complied with the researcher’s own field observations and obtained party materials and media articles. In addition, the quantitative data collected by the researchers of the Political Science Department at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, during the 2010 general election campaign, were used as secondary sources.

48 In order to get more complete picture and balanced information, further set of interviews with the top political journalists were conducted,18 as in fact, the journalists are targeted by the parties’ media relations’ efforts and are in a daily touch with the party officials. One of the main reasons for selecting interviewing as an approach to the topic was that the interviewee could offer a detailed insight into a party’s internal communication mechanism. As Bryman notes: ‘In qualitative interviewing, the researcher wants rich, detailed answers’ (2001: 313). In the case of this research study, qualitative interviewing is seen as enabling the researcher a unique approach to understanding how the party communication departments work, what its strategies and tactics are, which tools are considered to be the most salient, generally enabling the interviewee to develop her own themes as the interview progresses, rather than just confirming or revoking the interviewers’ set questions. As a result, the strength of interviewing is that one often obtains unexpected information that other forms of research might not discover (Berger 1998). The major limit for the validity of the data collected by interviewing party officials is: the subjectivity of the responses; competitive environment among the parties; and certain level of party representatives’ vigilance when uncovering certain internal information. One must also take into account the possibility of the informant omitting important details that are for him or her commonsensical, which, as Gaskell (2002) notes, ‘may lead to the interviewer making invalid inferences about situations and events’ (44). Nevertheless, it is expected, that from the accumulation of insights from a set of interviews one comes to understand the issue at hand straight from the source.

Selection of cases I decided to include five parties present at both chambers of the Czech Parliament at the time of the begging of the research in 2008, as representing the important actors in the Czech party system. Hence, the following parties were selected as the cases for the purposes of this study (in alphabetical order): the Social Democrats "eská strana sociáln! demokratická (&SSD); the Christian Democrats K#es$anská a demokratická unie - "eskoslovenská strana lidová (KDU- &SL); the Communist Party Komunistická strana "ech a Moravy (KS&M); the Civic Democrats Ob%anská demokratická strana (ODS); and the Green Party Strana Zelen&ch (SZ).

18 Intervieweing journalists one-on-one seemed a better option than using questionnaires for data collection. The journalists were usually too busy to reply to questionnares with caution and on time. Therefore, it was better to meet personnaly, which also allowed them to mention more examples and share their personal working experiences with Czech parties and politicians. 49 In the second round of the data collection, which covered the general election campaign of 2010, two more political parties were added: the Civic Matters V!ci ve#ejné (VV) and a right-wing conservative party Tradice Odpov!dnost Prosperita 2009 (TOP 09). Both of them scored very high at the polls and later also entered the parliament and formed the coalition government with ODS. For the purpose of the CAMPROF index, the data were collected in the form of questionnaires (see Attachment in Czech only) for the campaign managers’ as those were expected to know about all aspects of the campaigns. The questionnaires served as a base for the interview, during which the campaign managers elaborated further on details. When there were no party representatives available, the data were obtained from the secondary sources. The research includes two general election campaigns and one European Parliament elections campaign. As the key informants of the second part of the study, which dealt with communication and public relations, the party employees responsible were chosen. The heads of departments of the party communication from each individual party were contacted and asked for interview. When the head of the department was not available (KS&M), the interview was conducted with an employee responsible for public relations and communication – the party spokesperson. In 2008, there were five interviews completed, while in 2010, there were 8 persons interviewed. The spokesperson of the &SSD refused to get in touch. Therefore two of the spokesperson’s subordinates from the party’s press department were interviewed instead. Both of them wanted to stay anonymous. In summary, 13 interviews with heads of communication and marketing departments or with party press agents were conducted. Another group of key informants for the purposes of this study were key political journalists. Four of them were interviewed in order to confront the data and information obtained by the party officials.

Data collection methods First volume of data serves as a basis for the CAMPROF index. The total of 12 party cases in two election campaigns (2009 and 2010) was examined. The majority (11 questionnaires) were collected via one-on-one meetings with the party campaign managers. The remaining data (mainly in case of the ODS) were compiled via alternative party source and through relevant academic literature, party materials or articles in media. This approach was allowed by the fact that half of the variables in the CAMPROF index were objective measures, while the other half was subjective.

50 The second group of data serves as a basis for the party public relations case studies. The data were collected using the method of questioning, more precisely semi-structured personal interviews. This method is based on questions asked in person in order to obtain the largest possible volume of data for tackling the research problem. A single researcher, the author of the study, has collected all the data. In consequence, the responses as well as its analysis could be influenced by the author‘s subjective preferences or by her practical working experience in the field of public relations and political communication. Also, the personal characteristics of the researcher may have influenced the atmosphere during the interview or willingness of the informants to share their knowledge and thoughts. All this might have happened despite the author’s maximum efforts to stay neutral and objective. Another factor influencing the results, might be the competitive atmosphere among the parties and the fact that some respondents could not be open about their work, which definitely may have influenced the validity of provided responses. Prior to conducting the interviews, a topic guide was created that would guide the inquiry. As Gaskell points out, ‘a good topic guide will create an easy and comfortable framework for a discussion, providing a logical and plausible progression through the issues in focus’ (Gaskell 2000: 40). However, although the researcher had a list of specific topics to be covered, the interviewees also had a great deal of leeway in how to reply (Bryman 2001: 314). In the first set of interviews there are seven sets of question divided into topics concerning (see Attachment in Czech only):

• the organisational structure of the press departments;

• communication tools used;

• communication strategies applied;

• relations with MPs and regional units;

• the working experience and background of the interviewee;

• influence from the overseas or other European countries;

• opinion on ‚spin-doctoring‘.

The second set of interviews, conducted during the election campaign, was enriched with questions concerning:

51 • the campaign communication strategies;

• role of external consultants or agencies;

• sources of inspiration on interviewees’ work practices;

• opinions on the influence of media on interviewees’ work.

Most of the questions were open-ended and, where possible, projective techniques were applied (such as indirect questions etc.). The data were collected in two waves. First one took place in the first half of 2008, while the second took place in the summer of 2010 (shortly after the general elections). Between the first and the second wave of interviews, the relevant party employees working in the public relations changed and thus none of the persons interviewed in the first and second wave was the same.19 Following the party officials interviews, the researched moved to media. Some of the informants may have been subjective, not telling or being able to tell the truth or all facts. Therefore, the research then turned to the political journalist and confronted them with some of the preliminary conclusion and research observations. The interviews were transcribed in the form of summarizing protocols in order to unify level of information and to identify some redundant answers or repeating facts. Some of the answers were completely omitted as they turned out to be irrelevant. Then, the protocols were manually systematically organized, integrated, compared among each other and, with other sources, translated and analyzed (see the upcoming chapter). I was also taking notes during the interview and in few cases sent additional questions by email in case some of the facts were missing. The data are analyzed in two levels. The micro level analyzes the data concerning the individual parties in the selected period. The macro level aims to cross-analyze the data, relating it back to the outlined theory and research questions. Before continuing to the actual analysis, it is important to discuss some of the gaps in the research. The qualitative research method I choose gives a detailed description and an inside into the research phenomenon and the surrounding actors and events. The method allows me to study all chosen cases of political parties and the process of political communication in its natural

19 Before the interview started, the respondent was informed about the research and the researcher’s intentions. They were also told who were the other key informants and it was explained to them how the data they provided are going to be treated and used. The interviews typically took 40-70 minutes and were held either at the party’s offices or at the cafeterias. Except for the two anonymous interviewees (which were conducted via email), all of them were recorded and saved in the electronic form (as mp3 files). 52 environment and is very helpful as this research is an initial phase of exploration of the phenomenon in question. On the other hand, the acquired results and knowledge might not necessarily be universally applicable for other cases in different time or place frames. Also, the method makes any quantitative predictions very difficult. The same applies in case of testing hypothesis or theories. As another disadvantage, the time consuming phase of data collection could be mentioned. There is also a possibility that the final results are influenced by the personality or subjective preferences of the researcher. Nonetheless, using the qualitative research method, the study should be able to provide detailed and complex knowledge of how professional the Czech political parties’ communication in the selected period of time were, and how the parties’ public relations and communication departments functioned. However, in order to further validate the obtained knowledge, the quantitative methods and further research might need to be applied.

Time frame The data for the CAMPROF questionnaires were collected in the years of 2009 and 2010. Consequently, the data were coded according to scheme presented in the upcoming chapter, the missing parts were compiled via secondary sources, then analyzed.

The second part of the research took time in the period of 2008 and 2010. Its goal was to gain information about the parties operations concerning the public relations and communication under ‚normal‘ conditions. Therefore, I chose the time in the middle of the election cycle. Later on, another set of interviews was added in 2010. At that time, I was researching the parties’ public relations and communication during the election campaign. The interviews were collected when the campaign had finished, as all the key informants were too occupied with the extreme amount of campaign work that they did not have time to meet before. Therefore, there is a risk involved that some of their statements may be affected by the fact that they were talking about activities, which took place some two months prior to the interview.

The last part of the data, one-to-one interviews with journalists, was collected at the second half of year 2011.

53 E) RESULTS

I. PROFESSIONALIZATION OF CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC (CAMPROF index)

In order to measure and compare parties’ use of professionalized campaign techniques during elections, I am going to adopt the multidimensional index CAMPROF introduced by Andrea Römmelle and Rachel Gibson (Römmele, Gibson 2009). First, they started with defining four areas of party activity where professionalization-induced change seems most apparent: (1) the adoption of new tools and tactics (high-tech and computerized) and intensification of existing methods (opinion polls, focus groups); (2) a shift in the overall style of campaigning to a more capital-intensive, aggressive or attack- oriented and continuous mode; (3) a re-orientation in the relationship with the electorate toward a more interactive and individualized engagement; (4) the re-structuring of power relations within the party with an increasing centralization of power particularly in the person of the leader, as well as some resurgence of the local level, specifically in relation to mobilizing local turnout. Based on the above, they have identified 10 key party activities or initiatives that appeared to be closely associated with the implementation of professionalized campaigning, and that were directly observable. These were: 1. Use of telemarketing to contact members and outside target groups; 2. Use of direct mail to contact members and outside target groups; 3. Presence of an internal Internet communication system; 4. Email ‘sign-up’ or subscription list for regular news updates; 5. Outside campaign headquarters; 6. Continuous campaigning; 7. Use of external public relations/media consultants20; 8. Use of computerized databases; 9. Use of opinion polling; 10. Conducting opposition research.

20 Although Römmelle and Gibson speak only about PR or media consultants, they obviously also mean advertising agencies or marketing agencies. 54 After that, the activities were converted into measurable variables and grouped according to the way the coders can asses them: first six can be assessed objectively, while the second six has to be judged more subjective as the reliant data are usually not well accessible for public. For each variable there is a scale from 0 – 3 applied, which means that the highest score one party could get out of the total of 10 variables is 30 points.

Objectively Measured Variables (1) Use of Telemarketing and (2) Direct Mail: The more extensively a party engaged in these activities, the more professionalized it was considered to be. Levels of activity were assessed based on the proportion of the population that were contacted via such means. Over 50 percent of constituencies or 1 percent or more of the voting age population, score = 3; between one-quarter and one-half of constituencies or 0.5 percent to 1 percent of the voting age population, score = 2; and less than one-quarter or 0.5 percent of the voting age population, score = 1; non-engagement in this activity, score = 0. (3) Internal/Intranet Communication System: The more widely used this type of system is then the more professionalized the party is seen to be. Thus, if its use/access within the party included members, local and national staff, score = 3; local and national staff only, score = 2; national staff only, score = 1; not available, score = 0. (4) E-mail Subscription Newsletter: The more frequently produced and more targeted this service was, then the more professionalized the party was considered to be. Thus, scores were based on the frequency and range of options offered to subscribers – generic weekly newsletters and more targeted/ individualized newsletters, score = 3; generic weekly newsletters only, score = 2; generic newsletters less frequent than weekly, score = 1; no service offered, score = 0. (5) Outside Campaign Headquarters: An increasing trait of a professionalized party is the development of a separate management team that handles the election campaign. A fully developed version of this model is defined by having a set of personnel physically outsourced and placed in a separate location, score = 3; a dedicated unit or team working within the party headquarters with regular meetings and a clearly defined personnel boundary, score = 2; a definable campaign team but less clear boundaries to the rest of the party headquarters, score = 1; no obvious separate campaign team, score = 0. (6) Continuous Campaigning: This is possibly one of the most pervasive characteristics of the professionalized campaign, but also one of the most difficult to judge. A hybrid measure (combining objective and subjective assessment) was ultimately settled upon that focused on the 55 extent to which a party was deploying the full range of professionalized campaign activities at a point in time well outside the official or ‘hot’ campaign period. Where a party was engaging in between seven to nine of the professionalized campaign activities six months prior to the official election day, a score of 3 was assigned; four to six of the activities were taking place, score = 2; between one and three of the activities, score = 1; where none of the activities could be observed six months prior to the election, score = 0.

Subjectively measured variables (7) PR/media Consultants21: This activity was considered to be fully developed where parties employed and made frequent/daily use of a range of media consultants prior to and during the election. We were particularly interested here in the extent to which consultants were in a decision-making role on a par with, or even above, party officials. Where the PR agencies appeared at least to share the balance of power with the party, score = 3; frequent or daily use of outside PR/media consultants, who have less power than the politicians of the party, score = 2; occasional use of PR/media consultants, who have less power than the politicians of the party, score = 1; no use of outside PR/media consultants, score = 0. (8) Computerized Databases: This activity was considered fully developed if the parties were operating and made frequent/daily use at both national and local level of a national database to identify and target swing voters or those who might be most vulnerable to switching party, score = 3; if the party operates and makes frequent use of a national database at national or local level, score = 2; the party operates and makes occasional use of a national database at national or local level, score = 1; the party does not make use of a national/local database or does not have one, score = 0. (9) Opinion Polling: This activity was considered to be fully developed if the party had its own dedicated and professional survey research unit that conducted regular and frequent opinion polls in relation to the election, with these results being used to shape and direct the party’s overall campaign strategy, score = 3; if the party frequently commissions polls from external polling institutes, score = 2; the party occasionally commissions polls from external polling institutes, score = 1; the party does not use opinion polling, score = 0. (10) Opposition Research: This activity was considered to be fully developed if the party had a dedicated unit within the party that conducted regular and frequent research into the opposition

21 See the previous note. 56 parties both before and during the election campaign. As with opinion polling, the results of this research would then be integrated within the rest of the campaign, directly and/or indirectly guiding the strategy, score = 3; the party frequently commissions opposition research from outside, score = 2; the party occasionally commissions opposition research from outside, score = 1; the party does not use opposition research, score = 0.

Gibson and Römmelle also developed six key independent variables, which work either as primers or triggers, and pre-determine a party to adopt new techniques. However, those proved to be unusable in the Czech Republic due to their base in Western democracies systems and other system differences (party ideology scale, (un)presence of catch-all party, differences in party organization structure etc.).

Data collection The data were collected in two waves for the purpose of the CAMPROF index application. In order to assign scores to all five parties, which competed in the 2009 general election, I have conducted four semi-structured interviews with the party campaign managers in the summer 2009. Since the ODS’s EP campaign manager Jan Zahradil was not available, I replaced the interview with an alternative source from the party management, who wished to stay anonymous and with secondary sources such as media reports on the campaign strategy and online news sources. In addition, party documents, scholarly texts and other information were used for further coding in case the party campaign managers were unavailable (the case of ODS). To obtain data concerning the general elections of 2010, I have conducted six interviews with the party press managers or employees of the press departments in the summer 2010. In case of &SSD, I talked to two party employees, who wished to stay anonymous. Moreover, I have consulted media reports, scholarly articles and online news sources in order to get the most reliable information possible.

I. 1. The European Parliament election campaign of 2009

Similarly to other EU countries, the election for the European Parliament in the Czech Republic was held on June, 5th a 6th, 2009. The parties were campaigning for 22 MEPs mandates, which were at the end distributed among ODS (9 seats and 30.04%), KS&M (6 seats and 20.26 %),

57 KDU-&SL (2 seats and 9.57 %) and &SSD (2 seats and 8.78 %). Altogether some 28.2 % of voters turned out and the Czech Republic thus reported the fifth lowest voters’ turnout among the EU countries.22 Concerning the objectively measured CAMPROF variables, no party has used telemarketing in this campaign, however the parties used direct mail in the form of leaflets delivered to the citizens’ mailboxes (&SSD, ODS) and/or direct emails (&SSD, ODS, KDU-&SL, KS&M, SZ). In order to reach out and continuously inform and communicate internally within the party, the &SSD, ODS23 and KDU-&SL disposed information within online party intranet. KS&M had this system less sophisticated and SZ did not have it at all. Another means of how to stay in touch with the party members and supporters is an email subscription to the newsletter, e-bulletins or party electronic newspapers. Basically, all the surveyed parties were sending online updates regularly. Besides, they also had a dedicated communication unit or team, working within the party headquarters, with regular meetings and a clearly defined personnel boundary. While KDU-&SL and KS&M started planning the campaign quite soon (more than half a year before the election day), all parties’ campaigning activities appeared publicly only some 4 to 1 month before the elections and therefore none of the parties was engaged in professionalized campaign activities six months prior to the official election day, and thus scored 0 for the variable ‘continuous campaigning’. Regarding the subjectively measured variables, all the included parties described their campaign planning teams as a mix of party people and external consultants. However, the full responsibility for the decisions and its consequences were always in the hands of the party leadership. The parties generally appreciated the usefulness of the consultants’ proposals and advice as somewhere in the middle on a scale from 1 to 10, whilst in case of KS&M at scale point 8. The only exception was the ODS, which did not want to hire external consultants due to one past unsatisfactory cooperation with external advisors. As for the variable concerning databases, &SSD, KDU-&SL and SZ operated and made occasional use during the campaign of a national database of supporters and potential voters at national or local level. KS&M and ODS was not working with voters and supporters databases at all. &SSD frequently commissioned public opinion polls as well as focus group analysis from an external polling agency. ODS organised few opinion polling via its internal sources. SZ and KS&M occasionally commission polls from external sources or by combining external and internal sources, respectively. KDU-&SL did not conduct any polls at all. As for the opposition research,

22 For details see www.volby.cz. 23 ODS had online registration for its supporters in „Modr' t'm“ (Blue team). 58 &SSD, ODS, KDU-&SL and KS&M claimed to research their oppositions based on some publicly available figures and polls etc. The SZ did not do the opposition research at all.

Table 2: European Parliament elections 2009

Proffesionalized campaigning index scores by party - 2009 Campaign item ODS SZ Use of telemarketing 0 0 0 0 0 Use of direct mail 3 2 1 2 1 Presence of an internal Internet communication system 3 2 3 1 0 Email ‘sign-up’ or subscription list for regular news updates 2 2 2 1 2 Outside campaign headquarters 2 2 2 2 2 Continuous campaigning 0 0 0 0 0 Use of outside consultants 2 0 2 2 2 Use of computerized databases 1 0 1 0 1 Use of opinion polling 2 1 0 1 1 Conducting opposition research 1 1 1 1 0 Total score 16 10 12 10 9 Source: Author

***

It is &SSD that received the highest score of 16 points, namely because it reported an extensive use of direct mail as well as direct email communication, worked with own opinion polls and cooperated with external consultants. Surprisingly, the second highest party in the CAMPROF ranking obtain KDU-&SL, which address voters via email communication, operated sophisticated internal communication system, worked with voters databases and was adviced with external experts. Third position belonged to the winner of the EP elections, ODS, which communicated with voters and supporters via direct mail and email and ran internal communicataion system. However, ODS did not use any databasing, nor external advices and the opinion polling was conducted internally. There were not any major differences between the three smaller parties (KS&M and SZ), which had a very similar score. The SZ, which did not get any MEP seats at all, however, revealed the lowest score. In case of these second-order elections, the results showing the level of professionalized campaigning tools deployment do not copy the election results. Therefore, it seems that the level

59 of applied professionalized campaigning tools may have had only limited influence on the election outcomes at this particular elections.

I. 2. The parliamentary election campaign of 2010

To begin with the objectively measured variables, &SSD was the only party to use telemarketing techniques in the 2010 election campaign, calling out to 250,000 landlines in Prague.24 &SSD, ODS, TOP09 and KS&M made large use of direct mail, which targeted the majority of Czech households. In some cases (TOP 09 and ODS), the mail came repetitively, was targeted at specific groups etc. The VV party was distributing its political and lifestyle magazine V!ci ve#ejné as a supplement to the national dailies with the largest number of printed copies (MF Dnes, Blesk and Metro), therefore it was able to reach its target audience on a substantial scale. In case of KDU- &SL, it was the party’s regional departments, which were in charge of direct mail, and so the headquarters reported of being unaware of total figures. Regarding party’s internal online communication network, the &SSD and ODS operated an internal network for members, staff and candidates, there were also lists for mobile text sending, info sheets for all members, and websites for supporters and community. In contrast, KS&M’s system was rather less sophisticated. VV has not established intra-party online network. SZ had restricted sites for members, while the management also shared some data online. TOP 09 launched the micro-site for supporters, but the intra-party management, data and information sharing was not really available through intranet during the campaign yet. The KDU-&SL historically had the party intranet, but was not using it very much during the campaign. „We tried to use it in the [cancelled] autumn campaign, but it turned out that it does not work, the members were not very skilful with internet; the core [party] management functioned through emails.“ (Kaderová 2010). All the surveyed parties were sending out regular updates via electronic newsletter or e-bulletin to its members and supporters. However, the parties differed in the frequency, number of addressees the news was send to, and in the way they targeted specific groups with their messages. ODS operated quite sophisticated system of adding all received emails to the database of addresses. „We have analyzed the respondents’ attitudes […] and we have addressed them. At the same time, we have introduced the activity of manifesto, written with the voters involvement, due to which we’ve acquired even more email

24 Reportage by the Czech public service television &T from 24. 4. 2010 available at: http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/domaci/87898-halo-tady-pecina-telefonicka-kampan-cssd-je-v-plnem-proudu/ 60 addresses.“ (Kupka 2010). As for the campaign planning team’s variable, all the parties operated a dedicated unit or team working within the party headquarters, which held regular meetings, and had a clearly defined personnel boundary. The difference was in the number of its members and presence or (un)presence of external consultants. Nevertheless, the responsibility always remained at the party’s head management. The campaign for the general parliamentary elections (which was later cancelled) started in May 2009 with the activities of ODS, some 6 months prior to the elections, therefore I assigned ODS with 1 point for variable continuous campaigning. The other parties followed and commenced their campaigns some 5, 4 or 2 months prior to the election day. However, later on, when new election day was set for May 2010, &SSD, TOP 09 and VV did not even interrupt their campaign, or resumed only for a very few months (ODS), therefore they also scored 1 point. Concerning the use of external consultants, ODS, &SSD, TOP 09 and SZ cooperated frequently or daily with external PR, advertising or marketing consultants, who however had only advising role and no responsibility for the final decision, which remained in the hands of the party politicians. Therefore these parties scored 2 points for the variable ‘use of external consultants’. In these cases the consultants were also present at crucial meetings, but the decision power was still held by the party. On the other hand, KDU-&SL, KS&M and VV reported occasional use of PR/media consultants, who had less power and influence than the politicians of the party and were not part of the campaign planning team meetings. These cases thus scored 1 point. ODS and &SSD operated and made frequent use of internal voters’ database at central level. TOP 09, SZ, VV and KDU-&SL operated and occasionally used a database of supporters and members on a national or local (VV) level. TOP09, for example, disposed of a large database that included its members and supporters, as well as journalists. The database allows one to filter the desired contacts and reach them via sms or email. Regarding opinion polling, &SSD was regularly and frequently cooperating with a polling agency STEM and had its own analytical unit and was adjusting their campaign and media outputs accordingly. ODS also claimed to conduct quantitative and qualitative research on voters. „We relied on [the poll’s results], mainly for the general approach, and on in their critical view on the political campaigning so far.“ (Kupka 2010). KDU-&SL only made one qualitative local poll in the region of Hradec Králové and, in fact, paid no attention to its results. „We were not directed by [the results], we did not take them seriously.“ (Kaderová 2010). Similarly, SZ had at its disposal a set of quantitative data, but it was so small, that the party could not really make any use of it. Therefore, I coded both KDU-&SL and SZ with 0 points for this variable. KS&M did not conduct any polls due to financial reasons. 61 On the other hand, TOP 09 and VV occasionally commissioned polls from external polling institutes. The variable ‘opposition research’ was very difficult to code, because the parties seemed to be most non-objective when replying to the question about conducting research on the other parties. Finally, it was &SSD and ODS only, who conducted polling also on other parties and worked analyticaly with data concerning their opposition.

Table 3: General elections 2010

Proffesionalized campaigning index scores by party - 2010 Campaign item ODS SZ VV TOP09 Use of telemarketing 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Use of direct mail 3 3 1 3 0 3 3 Presence of an internal Internet communication system 3 3 1 2 1 0 1 Email ‘sign-up’ or subscription list for regular news updates 3 3 1 1 2 2 1 Outside campaign headquarters 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Continuous campaigning 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 Use of outside consultants 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 Use of computerized databases 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 Use of opinion polling 3 2 0 0 0 1 1 Conducting opposition research 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 Total score 20 18 7 9 8 11 12

Source: Author

***

&SSD has again reached the highest score, and succeeded over the second ODS by massive deployment of polling and use of telemarketing. Both the largest parties have much outdistanced the other parties and reported extensive use of direct mailing as well as sophisticated emailing, use of external consultants, intra-party online network and some level of opposition research. The two new parties (TOP 09 and VV) occupied the third and fourth position, missing points mainly in the area of opinion polling, internal communication tools and sophisticated emailing. KS&M occupied the fifth position and the two parties, which did not get into the parliament (KDU-&SL and SZ) gained the lowest results, scoring less than half of the points registered by the leading &SSD. Interestingly enough, they both scored even less than in the 2009, when the second-order elections for the EP were held.

62 I. 3. Notes on application of CAMPROF index

The CAMPROF index was first applied at the German general elections in 2005 and proved to be successful in producing a range of scores that allow for inter-party ranking and comparison in terms of the extent of professionalized campaigning. As for its application in other countries, the results could be misleading, because there might be a different understanding in the meaning of certain variables (e. g direct mail, computerised databases etc.) due to socio-cultural or technical specifics. As for the Czech Republic’s case, some variables were almost not present at the system and their importance in the index therefore might be a bit exaggerated (telemarketing and opposition research). Yet some other variables, which are strong newly occurring features of the Czech campaigns (online communication and online advertising, negative campaigning, GOTV techniques etc.) are not included in the CAMPROF index at all. On the other hand, it is important to note that the biggest share of the parties campaigning budget was spent on the outdoor advertising in 2010. All the interviewees confirmed that the largest part of the campaign finance resources was devoted to production and buying of the outdoor media, mainly billboards and posters. This type of communication is viewed as a traditional campaign communication tool and therefore is not incorporated in the CAMPROF index. Hence, the applied professionalized campaign communication tools did not represent major costs in the campaign. To sum up, the CAMPROF index has indeed proved useful tool in getting a certain picture on the parties’ campaign communication and may allow for further comparisons among countries, but may also produce, in certain way inaccurate findings, due to country specifics and the disability to reflect on the latest developments in the communication.

63 II. PARTIES’ PUBLIC RELATIONS

In order to grasp the area of parties’ relations with media and public, I have conducted semi- structured interviews with spokespersons of the parties and parties’ campaign managers. Based on the obtained information and data I will be analysing how the PR work is organized within the party, to what extent is the communication strategically planned, and what drives the changes and improvements in communication. On the next few pages, I will provide a detailed description about the organisation of the work at the communication departments, what communication tools and techniques the departments use, what are their daily routines, what is the background of people working as party spokespersons, and what influences their work. The text will be divided into two major parts. First of all, the data from the period of early 2008 will be examined. That was the time in the middle of the election cycle, when I expected the parties to have regular and stabilised workflow in the public relations agenda. The second part of the data collection focuses on the time of general election campaign of 2010. Similarly, it will be describing parties’ communication teams, strategy behind their work, communication tools, and personalities in charge of parties’ PR. Moreover, I will also focus on the spokespeople opinions on the relations between media and politics as well as on the influence or impact of foreign consultants, campaigns, PR techniques or innovations in their work. To conclude, I will compare the two described periods and their features. Following on, in the next chapter, the claims and statements of the party people will be confronted with the information gained from the five top journalists from the Czech newspapers and public service TV.

II. 1. In between election campaigns: The case of year 2008

First of all, I want to look at the general organisation of the public relations work at the party and then move to the individual tools, strategies and other details. I will first introduce the parties, which at the selected time formed the governmental coalition (ODS, KDU-&SL and SZ) and their party practices thus may have been influenced by this fact. This analysis will be then followed by examination of the opposition parties of &SSD and KS&M.

64

II. 1. 1. The communications team In this section, I am going to explore the ways parties organised their work at the press departments. For example: how many employees the departments had and what were their responsibilities. Interestingly, the parties deployed different strategies in the way they organized their public relations. Also, the titles of these departments vary among the parties.

ODS In summer 2008, ODS’s chairman Mirek Topolánek served as the prime minister of the country and the party occupied eight ministerial posts. The majority of activities, both the policy agenda and the communication, were thus happening on the governmental level, while the party headquarters became void. The unit devoted to the public relations of ODS was called “The Media Section” and its head at the time was Milan Bou%ka. He had three people in his team. They closely cooperated with the two other party units, the IT Department and the Analytical Department. For greater tasks, such as advertising or graphic design, ODS was hiring an external agency. The Media Section was responsible for producing the party paper called “Listy ODS”, book compilations, and newsletters. The unit was also in charge of the website feed and online communication. The head of the media section was in daily contact with the spokesperson of the government, but they did not meet regularly. He claimed that the content of the work of this unit was very different when the party was not in power. „Our work is much different in this time when ODS is ruling. The core [of the work] has moved to the level of government and ministries, the party literally ‘empties out’ and it is difficult to find party topics or issues [to communicate]. Than it looks as if government and party is one entity.“ (Bou%ka 2008). As an example, he mentioned, that during the campaigns the workload of the Media Section grows as the party prepares leaflets and promotion for candidates and therefore needs to hire, through an external agency, professionals such as copywriters, editors or graphic designers. However, this was not the case for the municipal, Senate or EP elections. The party did not see campaigns for the elections for Senate, European Parliament and for the regional councils needed to be managed from the centre. Some regional units had their own spokesperson and, in general, they have been given a ‘free hand’ (Bou%ka 2008).

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KDU-!SL Christian Democrats’ press department was led by the spokesperson Martin Horálek. In his team, there was one person handling the website and other online media, and one part time person working as a consultant preparing politicians for the TV interviews. Besides these two roles, there were two other persons working at the analytical department, which was closely linked to the press department. The party spokesperson Horálek was in daily contact with the then party head and Minister of Regional Development, Ji*í &unek, and oversaw all his press agenda and accompanied him everywhere, the Ministry, the Parliament, meetings of the government and the party meetings. The spokesperson’s daily routine starts with the media monitoring, identification of new issues, then he coordinates a strategy how to react to the current issues, analyzes problems and gets additional data, in order to be able to reply to journalists’ questions or issue a written statement. The “normal” functioning of the department changed only slightly for the second order of elections. During the general election campaign, the party usually hired external help. However, the Senate and regional government elections campaigns were established as decentralized, therefore the party’s regional units hired their own PR or advertising agencies. The manager of party’s regional units became spokespersons (Horálek 2008).

SZ The Green Party was the smallest party in the Parliament at that time and a third member of the governing coalition. The party reported no press department at the time of the research. There was just one spokesperson, Eva Role(ková and one person, who mastered the party’s website. The party had no analytical department either. There even has not been a post of a spokesperson at SZ, until the moment the party began to realize it may be possible to cross the five percent threshold to enter the Parliament and thus hired Role(ková to the role of a spokesperson on March, 3rd 2006. Apart from the traditional press relations’ agenda, the spokesperson was taking part in writing political speeches and letters to the party members. She was in touch with ministerial spokespersons and participated in trainings and leaders preparations for TV and press interviews. Role(ková claimed that the party does not normally hire external help (with one exception during the election campaign of 2006, when trainings were conducted by an external agency).

66 The party’s management was not planning on extending the staff working on public relations at that moment. Some press relations’ tasks were also done by MPs, their assistants, or the secretary of the MPs’ club. (Role(ková 2008).

!SSD The biggest party in opposition, Social Democrats, operated a unit called “The Section of PR and Marketing.” Apart from its head, Ond*ej Macura, the section consisted of one head’s assistant, one spokesperson Kv)ta Ko(ová, and one employee specializing in media monitoring. Also, there was one person working part-time and assisting with occasional work-overload. Apart from that, the party operated a political-analytical department, which interpreted public opinion research data or it assigned party’s own surveys and polls. The Section of PR and Marketing was trying to incorporate the political-analytical department’s results into their outputs towards media and general public. „Apart from commonly accessible data from [the Czech polls agencies] STEM and CVVM, we also assign our own [public opinion] polls […] and we rely on their results and try to communicate the issues people are mostly interested in (such as health system or corruption), as we honour the fact that politicians are people’s representatives and must reflect their opinions.“ (Macura 2008). Despite the fact of being defeated into opposition in 2006, the number of staff devoted to PR had been reduced by one half after that. During the campaign of 2006, the &SSD’s PR and marketing department had more than 10 people. Afterwards, the number was reduced to the current figure of 4,5 employees. There was not less activities or tasks, the party just had to found out how to manage those with limited resources, therefore cut in a number of employees dedicated to PR. Still, the party was not planning on hiring more people, until the general election campaign and anticipated involvement in the government. „We have a bit of personal shortage here right now. However, we count on the fact that the [party] situation will change two years from now, so there is no need to bother with filling up the staff.“ (Macura 2008). As the party was defeated in the general elections in 2006 by the ODS, it needed some time to stabilise the internal party situation as well as the workflow and strategies. People heading the PR and marketing in &SSD were changing rapidly during the first years after losing the elections. Over a single year, following the lost elections, as many as five people have taken turn in the head of PR and marketing section position.

67 The party also cooperated with external agencies and consultants, who were giving advice to the then communication team. During the election campaign, there were more of them engaged. (Macura 2008).

KS!M In the opposition Communist Party, the agenda of public relations was part of The Department for Information, Analysis and Propaganda, headed by the deputy leader responsible for media policy and elections preparations. The larger part of the section deals with election campaign production, while the other part is responsible for web mastering and political analysis for party members. A spokesperson was an independent role within this section, subordinated to the party leader, but formally reporting to the Deputy Leader, V)ra +e,ulková. Independently, there also existed the Department for Analysis and Documentation, employing two persons. All the communication agenda was done exclusively by the party employees. The party hired external agencies only at the time of election campaigns for creative work on the campaign advertising. In the regions, there are 14 regional spokespersons in close cooperation with the party main spokesperson, Monika Ho*ení. The position of a spokesperson in KS&M has been generally stable, as there was only one personal change in this position (in year 2004) since the party’s transformation into KS&M in the 1990 (Ho*ení 2008).

***

The parties deployed different strategies in the way they organized their media relations work. The governing party of ODS employed four people working solely for the party, while the core of the government communication was concentrated at the prime minister’s office and at the ministries. The opposing &SSD operated 4.5 members of their communication team. The KDU-&SL had at disposal 2.5 staff and the KS&M had one spokesperson working alone with support of two employees from political-analytical department. The Green Party had one spokesperson to do all the work with support of part-time web master. All the press departments in some way collaborated with the analytical units (except for the Green Party), which provided political analysis and background information.

68 II. 1. 2. The party spokesperson or spin-doctor? To get a better picture about the professionalism of the parties press departments, I also needed to examine more closely the party press agents themselves. The questions included those about their background, education, motivation and previous experience. As for the work experience and background of the interviewed party spokespersons, some of them had previously worked as journalists (in case of Milan Bou%ka of ODS, Eva Role(ková of SZ and Ond*ej Macura of &SSD, who in particular used to work for the tabloid daily). Also, some of them had a professional experience from holding a similar position in the past, that is working for political or state institutions (such as the interviewed spokesperson of &SSD, KDU-&SL, SZ). There are not any schools or university programmes for future party’s public relations managers in the Czech Republic. Since all of the interviewed people were in their late thirties or early forties, I wanted to find out what was their qualification for this position. By asking about their field of education, the research found out that all of the respondents studied humanities such as theatre (the case of ODS), philosophy (the case of SZ), theology (the case of KDU-&SL), pedagogy (the case of KS&M) or journalism (&SSD). On the other hand, when asked what, in their opinion, was the best qualification to work in political public relations, they mentioned journalism and political science. „People, who want to do this job, should in some way get their hands on work in media. One will learn what do the journalists want and how to take a stand on the problems.“ (Macura 2008). On the other hand, ODS spokesperson admitted that people in this position could later face difficulties when pursuing a different career and therefore, it is sometimes hard to hire the best possible people. “Ideally, I would need these people to be former journalists, political scientists and have marketing thinking. It is hard to hire quality staff as those people you select won’t accept this job, because it would leave a mark on them.” (Bou%ka 2008). When speaking about the level of professionalization and professional approach to work, it was also important to examine the spokesperson’s relationship to the party. In four cases the interviewed employees were not members of the party and described the relation to their employer as professional. Specifically in case of ODS, &SSD, KDU-&SL and SZ. For example, &SSD’s head of marketing and communication unit commented on it as follows: „I am not a member of the party. I agree with the manifesto… It is a professional matter […], professional work for a party I believe in.“ (Macura 2008). As a certain evidence of the professional approach to political public relations, the Green Party spokesperson worked for two different parties in the past. She was working as a spokesperson for

69 several ministers and KDU-&SL, before she was hired by the Greens. Further on, Macura of &SSD described his position as someone who is a professional in mediating the relations, but is not actually the voice or face of the party. „We count on the fact that most journalists have a direct line to [the party leader] Ji#í Paroubek and he does not want to be hiding behind a spokesperson. We want to show people that the problems are being communicated by competent people, responsible for the field and party politics. […] Then there are things not suitable to be communicated by a politician. Spokesperson communicates less important stuff.“ (Macura 2008).

The only party member was the spokesperson of the Communist Party.

As the term ‘spin-doctoring‘ started occurring in the news and general literature in connection with the political public relations specialists, I wanted to ask whether the spokespersons were familiar with this term, what did they think it meant, and whether they personally felt as spin doctors. First of all, most of the participants were unable to define this term as they simply were not familiar with it at all. The ODS representative seemed to have some idea about the concept generally in negative sense and claimed the party ODS is not using these practices, which he reckons to be rather part of the corporate business world. “Honestly and I can be very open on the fact that we do not use this; or under my management it is not used and will not be, because once you start bending the reality you have to keep doing it on and on and if they get to uncover it, you can’t allow to make mistake, journalists can never come across discrepancies. […] Wag the dog movie is typical example, no, no… This can be done and it can be clean, because you can come up with more important issue [to cover the problematic issue], and [former ODS leader and the Czech president Vaclav] Klaus was good in this one.” (Bou'ka 2008). Later on, Bou%ka shared his thought about spin-doctoring being deployed in the corporate world. “I think [spin-doctoring] is probably deployed [in the Czech Republic], but hidden, they won’t disclose themselves. However, it probably works in the economic sphere.” (Bou'ka 2008).

On the other hand, the Social Democrats did not see the term and the concept around it in very negative light. Although the respondent was unable to define what it means, he had rather positive connotation connected to it. “Politics is not very much related to PR, a politician has to do solely political decision, but he needs to know how to communicate them correctly and for this one uses 70 the advisors, which should direct the politician in a way he should communicate the issue. I too am on that team, which tries to channel, communicate and solve these issues.” Moreover, he was certain that spin-doctors operate in the country, although he did not mention any names. “For sure, they are in the Czech Republic, politician equals power, and there is certain kind of men, who know how to use this power in a wrong direction, but I would rather call them lobbyists, who uses politician to reach their own goals.” (Macura 2008).

***

The parties’ spokespersons described their relation to their party as professional. They were loyal to their employers. Neither of them was a party member. They were all quite newly appointed to their position. Two of them had background in journalism and two had a previous working experience in PR and communications. All the researched spokespersons had a university degree with background in humanities. The exception was the spokesperson of KS&M, who was a member of the party, worked for it for long time, was a former teacher and did not have experience with similar work prior to working for the party. None of the interviewed spokespersons was able to provide satisfactory definition of the term ‘spin doctoring’. Some of them were not familiar with it at all. Some of them had vague idea about it seeing it as positive advising to politician or as negative practices being used in the Czech corporate world.

II. 1. 3 Communications strategy The work at the public relations or communications departments has its rules, principles and routines. Above all that, it has its goals. When trying to understand why the work is done one way or another, I found crucial to ask about the strategy and conception that drives this work or individual decisions. First of all, I inquired about the existence of a written and approved document stating the party’s official communication strategy towards media and general public. That could indicate to what extent is the PR work thought through and done professionally. Further on, I tried to identify individual unwritten strategies, tactics and rules the parties’ PR people were deploying.

71 By the term communication strategy or plan I understand precisely defined form, which states the PR goals for defined period of time (one year, election campaign etc.), the necessary budget, target groups, media channels and communication tools as well as the indicators or tools measuring the effectiveness of the work (Svoboda 2011: 20-23).

Formal document to follow At most cases there was no communication strategy as a written document. Parties claimed to have one or two reasons for not having it. First, it can leak out easily to the public or competitors. „We wouldn’t even compile one [communication strategy document], these strategic documents can very easily leak as we know from colleagues.“ (Role(ková 2008). Or, such document is redundant for the complex organism such as a political party and numerous of its representatives with different interests and goals. „There are some unwritten rules, but when you have rebelling MPs in your party, they stop respecting it.“ (Bou%ka 2008). „Marketing strategy is being produced by people from the central office, it exists, but I think, that it is an illusion to think that one can create a strategy point by point, month by month and follow it, because political life is a live organism.“ (Horálek 2008). When asked about the written communication strategy, the KS&M reported they had “a plan of propagandistic activities”, which is a list of topics to appear in the party daily Haló noviny in the next six months. In terms of practical PR and marketing this would rather be called a media plan, not a communication strategy.

General communication strategy behind the PR work When pursuing the matter of strategy behind the parties’ public relations’ work, I have been searching for the marks or indicators of systematic steps and activities leading to preset goals; building and improving specific reputation or image; or promoting measurements or policies. The way most respondents replied to the questions about communication strategy suggests that there was no systematic approach to the way the party should have addressed the media and the public.

Social Democrats’ seemed to have this issue most thought out as they claimed to follow the party manifesto, which is always consulted or referred to when a problem or complication arises. “The party program is pivotal and according to it we create a recommendation how the problem should be communicated on a meeting and we choose a person to speak for it. They then consult with the analytical department and start communicating accordingly.” (Macura 2008). 72 Moreover, &SSD’s head of communication was well aware of the party’s key target audience and was working on finding out a tactic how to start communication with this target group. “[…] Back in 2006, we have found out, and this stems from the party modernization process commenced by Ji#í Paroubek, that we have a problem: we needed to address young people and voters in Prague and we are, of course, trying to eliminate this deficiency…“ Also, &SSD was quite open and did not seem to have strict rules on who is allowed to speak with the journalists or not. Anybody from the Shadow Cabinet or MPs or Senator could come up with a proposal to communicate an issue (Macura 2008). In line with that, &SSD explained that they are keen on feedback from the media and described that they tried to measure the effectiveness of their PR work. „We do not only analyze results of press conferences, but we also make analysis of how the media messages resonated with people, citizens and thus we verify, whether citizens are familiar with our issues and whether we have passed [or presented] them on well.“ (Macura 2008). Despite all that, the party was aware of the (un)ability to set their agenda in the media. However, they were certainly thinking about different tactics how to reach their goals. „We try to communicate our major issues, which need to show up in the news. Are we able to put them through? Not quite…because journalists are still journalists and they have editors above them and editor-in-chief and we are unable to influence these structures, but I have a feeling that, if the issue is principal and we communicate it well, at least one journalist pays attention to it.“ (Macura 2008).

In case of the Christian Democrats, there was ‘the marketing strategy’ planned in line with the manifesto and its priorities and issues determined by the party convention. In general, the communication strategy was determined or approved by the party executive board, which assembles once a month, while important questions are solved at the national convention, which takes place four or five times a year (Horálek 2008).

Similarly, the governing party of ODS had its communication strategy set by the party board of executives and it was a result of “intersection between the outputs of analytical and media departments.” However, the party spokesperson expressed his concern to what extent was the strategy in line with the party manifesto: “I am not saying that this is happening all the time; and it is similar to the corporations; but it is happening, this political marketing starts dominating. I personally am not against it, it is a good tool, however, I feel that the idea is vanishing. There 73 should exist a good idea in the first place and not that there is some shaman coming to tell you: ‘I can sell you anything…’ (Bou%ka 2008). The party was trying to run what they called a positive campaign communication. Its goal was to support the success of the party and its government officials in fulfilling the party manifesto. However, the spokesperson expressed his concern that it was not an easy task to get this message to the media and public (Bou%ka 2008).

The Green Party was compiling and conducting their communication rather intuitively and ad hoc. “There is a group of people with some sort of experience. We contact each other…or there is some impulse, which tells us ‘be careful’ or this is not good. Or, I personally alarm the executive board or the MPs’ club, there is space for me to tell my opinion. At the same time, we have individual consultations with our chairman.” (Role%ková 2008). The spokesperson Role(ková also expressed her doubts about how detailed such a strategy can or should be. She preferred to rely rather on common sense and experience. “We can’t think it through into all the details; a clear strategy is to be comprehensible in order to appear in the papers to have some space to explain our standpoints, sometimes it is more hot, sometimes less. However, you can’t predict things in great details as there is way more unknown variables in politics than in the corporate world.” Perhaps, the party did not feel the need to have any strategy stated as they were experiencing unprecedented success with relatively high media-coverage at the time of the interview. “I can’t complain about journalists’ interest in our party. I can’t even say there were any big misinterpretations concerning our party.” (Role(ková 2008).

In case of KS!M, the spokesperson described the regular internal meetings, which served her as a basis for the next week’s working agenda. The Communist Party had a meeting of the so called collegium, an advisory body to the party executive board, once a week or two weeks and the spokesperson was auditing it. This was a place where most suggestions or proposals were raised, based on the schedule of the Parliament’s meetings; or stemming from media agenda; or based on proposal by individual party members. The results of these meetings were short-term tactics on how to communicate certain issues to the press, public and internally (Ho*ení 2008).

74 Crisis communications plan A useful part of communication strategies is usually a plan how to react in the time of crises, how to prevent a crisis communication and how to control damage. Crisis communication plan could be either part of general communication strategy, its attachment or separate document. When asked about the crisis communication plan or strategy document, I have found out that neither the Communist, nor the Green Party or the Christian Democrats had it ready. “We did not have any and if there is some [crisis happening], it will be in the hands of the party chairman.” (Role(ková 2008). ODS refused to comment. On the other hand, &SSD seemed the most progressive in this sense. The Social Democrats claimed to call ‘media meetings’ of some kind of advisory body twice a week. The PR a marketing department met there with external consultants in communications or economics and legislation and discussed the crisis issues, which the party was facing heavily (Macura 2008).

*** The spokespersons did not see a written communication strategy or communication plan as a crucial thing for their work. On one hand, they were afraid that shall it exist it could leak to the competition or the press. On the other hand, they felt that the politics was changing so quickly and unpredictably that planning ahead could not be useful. Thus, there were no signs of sophisticated, proactive image-building policies, and promotion or crisis communication preparation on the long or mid-term basis indicated. More or less, the parties’ communication was backed by the party manifestos or ad hoc executive board decision. The opposition party &SSD seemed to have clear target group in young voters and Prague citizens, while ODS complained about the lack of issues and topics the party was able to communicate and not to interfere with the government. While KDU-&SL was at the time reacting to the severe crisis communication concerning its leader’s alleged bribery and therefore had probably no time in general for proactive and positive communication, the Green Party enjoyed being a ‚media darling‘ and therefore had no need to compile a piece of communication strategy.

II. 1. 4 Communications tools In order to achieve their goals, the communication people use different sets of communication tools which enable communication with individual journalists or a group of them, sharing

75 important issues, news, statements and getting feedback. Crucial moment in the relations with media is to have a reliable and up-to-date list with relevant contacts of journalists, editors, bloggers etc. That way the party is able to send the relevant information to them, press releases, get back to journalists who have questions, send the media feedback as so on. Therefore, I was asking about the so-called media lists and how the parties manage them. All of the five parties confirmed existence of a mailing list of journalists. They differed in the number of contacts and the way they targeted the individual journalists (See Table 4).

Table 4: Overview of the parties’ contacts on journalists in 2008

Party Contacts on mailing list &SSD 300 email addresses + 40 phone numbers for SMS messages

ODS “hundreds of journalists” KS&M 80 to 100 email address KDU-&SL 80 contacts SZ 150-160 contact emails, but 100 of them were being actively contacted and used Source: Author

The common tools researched in this text are press releases and press conferences. Those will be described first. Quite common are also informal one-to-one meetings with the journalists. Some parties also like to build informal relations with journalists via organising informal gatherings etc. Part of the research questions is also devoted to the way the parties analyse they efforts and effectiveness of their media relations work. Therefore, I have asked how they work with the media monitoring reports and analysis.

Press releases

!SSD was most proactive in its everyday routine contact with journalists. The party send out to media up to 15 press releases or press notices in one week. Its goal was to react promptly to the

76 moves and activities of the government. „As the opposition party, we believe that we shouldn’t be only criticizing but also react flexibly to all governmental decisions, either praise them for it or say that they were wrong and present our solutions. Our strategy is to react on everything so that the public is aware that besides governmental and coalition decisions there is also an opposition capable of reactions (Macura 2008).

Similarly, KDU-!SL accustomed their regular contact with the media with the schedule of the House of Deputies. When the House sat, the party’s press department sent even up to 10 press releases per week. The party had sent even 20 releases in one week, when the party chairman’s Ji*í &unek affair of the alleged bribery had peaked. Otherwise, it depended on the pace of the Lower Chamber meetings. During those the party send up to 10 press releases weekly. In between, they tried to send some 2 to 3 press releases weekly to set the agenda (Horálek 2008).

The Communist Party prepared and sent out what they called press statements on political situation always after the meeting of the executive board or of the Shadow Cabinet, which were held almost daily. Statistically, there was one press release every other day in a year (Ho*ení 2008).

On the other hand, the smallest member of the then coalition government, the Green Party, sent out only one or two press releases per week, depending on the occasion (Role(ková 2008).

Different situation was in ODS. The party sent out party press releases very scarcely due to the fact that it was in the government at that time. Most of the output for the media were thus sent out by ministries presided by the ODS ministers or by the Office of the Government. The party headquarters monitored these press releases and tried to follow up. In total, the number of ODS’ press releases thus varied from 0 to 3 per week. Mostly they dealt with issue presented by the party’s MPs and Senators. The strategy was not to inflate journalists with too many releases. Therefore, they used other channels to get their message across such as website with current news, weekly newsletter ‘ODS News’ (Novinky ODS) and, if possible, communicated by other means to the members of the party (Bou%ka 2008).

Press conferences

77 Another most common tool how to approach journalists with the news and party statements is traditionally a press conference. The parties held them either at the Lower Chamber of the Parliament or at the party headquarters.

In line with tits proactive communication strategy, !SSD organised quite a lot of media gatherings. On average, there were two to six press conferences held every week. The party PR manager underlined that there was always enough journalists attending the press conferences. „When the Chairman is [present at the press conference] we always have a full house. Journalists should and want to be objective, therefore they mostly welcome our press conference, because otherwise they would have to call [to get information], this way they come and get press release, statements from the Shadow Minister etc.“ (Macura 2008).

Similarly to the Social Democrats, the Communist Party also held press conference at the Parliament every working day during the Lower Chamber’s meeting and occasionally even more often when some important situation or an issue arose. It broadcasted these events life on its party radio station, which has been operating since 2005 (Ho*ení 2008).

On the other hand, KDU-!SL tried to limit the frequency of its press conferences to one or two monthly to make sure journalists will come. The party was aware that the journalists typically did not like to come when they did not learn anything new, so they spared with the press conferences. Instead of the conference, the party preferred to address one specific journalist at a time and offer an issue or information exclusively (Horálek 2008).

The smallest member of the governmental coalition has reported similar situation. The Green Party organised press conferences once or twice a month when they felt they had something to say, which was always after the general meeting of its national executive board. Besides that the party held couple briefings for media and planned and organized variety of public happenings aiming to get the media attention (Role(ková 2008).

To spare with press conferences was also the tactic of ODS. It was organising press conference only when there was, in their representatives’ view, an important occasion. In the past, when Václav Klaus was in charge of ODS, there used to be a tradition to hold a press conference strictly about the party issues every Friday noon. However this stopped after the party headquarters 78 moved further away from the Sn)movní street (across the Parliament building). And, it also became more difficult to produce strictly party topics or issues. Besides, the party spokesperson reported no interest on the side of MPs and other party officials. (Bou%ka 2008).

Informal meetings

Apart from the press conferences, there are also other ways to meet with the representatives of the press. Some politicians and parties also prefer less formal occasions than a press conference.

The Social Democrats liked to organize less formal events for journalists such as breakfasts, casual lunch or dinner with the party chairman or shadow minister to discuss issues around table as well as traditional evening party or mixer. „Our chairman just yesterday had an informal dinner in a golf club for journalists in his constituency of Usti nad Labem. We also organize Christmas parties, sometime also during the year we set up parties for media.“ (Macura 2008).

On the contrary, the Communist Party claimed not to organise informal events or meetings with the journalists due to ethical reasons. „I respect that they are on the other side of information barrier […] in other parties, they may have professional spokespeople working for ODS on Monday, for US [the party of Freedom Union] on Tuesday and for [state-controlled energy producer] CEZ on Wednesday. I couldn’t be like this. I try to have professional relations with them [journalists].“ (Ho*ení 2008).

ODS tried to organize informal events for journalists, such as petanque tournament for political journalists operating in the Parliament. However, they did not want to hold these regularly. „It may look as if it [informal meetings with media] is some kind of media corruption, but I think, that it is not, the journalists need to get in touch with these people also in another way [than formal press conference].“ (Bou%ka 2008).

Another popular type of informal media gatherings were the so called Christmas parties for journalists. ODS, the Green Party and the Christian Democrats reported to organise these (Bou%ka 2008; Horálek 2008; Role(ková 2008). On top of that, the individual ministers of KDU-&SL sometimes held breakfasts with the press concerning the departmental issues (Horálek 2008).

79 Other channels and tools

Apart from the already mentioned communication tools, some of the spokespersons emphasized the importance of other than traditional tools. For example the Communist Party stressed out the public events in the regions, which took place all throughout the year such as Labour Day celebrations, summer festivals, the International Women Day, etc.). Another example could be the fact that the Green Party was distributing its party papers to the journalists, so that they can look for interesting issues or comments themselves. The new technologies enabled new forms of communication and the Christian Democrats wanted to be progressive and started using some of the then new technologies and new media, especially YouTube e.g. for organising online videoconferences or replying to questions by voters for MEPs on video.

Media monitoring

Another important part of the media relations work is to find out how the journalists understood the party’s message or how they reported about the issues, problems or events presented to them in the news. The most available and traditional option lays in the press monitoring services. The party staff themselves compiles the media monitoring or the data could be also ordered from external agencies specialising in these services. Or, it could be a combination of the two. The data from the media monitoring can be further analysed to give the party better insight and feedback on how effective its communication activities are in the short or long term. Competition can also be monitored, or development of specific issues etc. The other benefit stemming from using the media monitoring is that the selected parts of the monitoring can be sent daily to the key politicians and actors in order to keep them updated and ready to react, reply to questions by voters or journalist and thus, prevent difficult situations, or improve their strategies. Therefore, in this part I wanted to find out how the parties work with the media monitoring.

&SSD claimed to monitor media coverage of the party in several sources and then adjusts its reactions accordingly. The party was also producing a weekly overview reporting about the party chairman and the deputies, and presented it at the executive board meeting for review and feedback once a week. The party acquired a service of the Newton media monitoring agency and the Czech News Agency &TK and it also monitored some printed press internally (Macura 2008).

80 KS&M established media monitoring in electronic version in order to be able to distribute it to the regional offices, while people at the headquarters also received press clipping compiled by one party employee (Ho*ení 2008).

ODS claimed to work with and process the media monitoring results, but did not want to reveal any details. “If we tell you how, you would know too much of our art.“ The party felt its membership of the governmental coalition as a handicap for communicating strictly party issues or news. However, it was aware of the fact that its communication can be successful when the issues are linked to the policies of the governmental ministries. „It is possible to measure [the effects of media relations work] only when you are in opposition. When we have strictly party issues, the journalists are not interested clearly because they are interested in government, but if you mention [the party issue] together with [governmental issue], it will appear everywhere. Also, when the opposition comments on it, it gets a lot attention.“ (Bou%ka 2008).

The Green Party disposed also with the daily monitoring and the spokesperson tried to react to the news. The spokesperson claimed to made notes, gave her recommendations and started reacting accordingly (Role(ková 2008).

***

All the researched parties produced press releases and organised press conferences on the regular basis. Except for KS&M, they also held informal events (sport tournaments, Christmas parties, breakfasts with party officials etc.) to meet with journalists. In addition, the parties were also seeking to use new communication channels. &SSD, as the opposition leader, was the most active in communicating with media as the party’s strategy was to react or comment on every step of the Government. It reported the highest frequency in press releases and press conferences. In comparison, ODS complained about the lack of political issues it can communicate exclusively and low intra-party discipline. Therefore, the party showed rather low activity in its relations to the press. Moreover, the two biggest parties, ODS and &SSD, operated the largest database of contacts on journalists. The other parties tried to limit the number of press conferences and spare them for important announcements. Also, they issued on average 2-3 press releases weekly. The details on all parties can be found in the Table 5. 81

Table 5: Summary of organisation of PR work and communication tools in 2008

2008 !SSD ODS KDU-!SL KS!M SZ Number of employees in communications 4,5 4 2,5 2 1 Cooperation with external agencies Yes Yes Yes Yes No Cooperation with analytical department Yes Yes Yes Yes No Number of press releases per week 3 to 15 0 to 3 2 to 10 2 to 3 1 to 2 Number of press conference per week 2 to 6 weekly Very occasionally 1 to 2 monthly 2 to 3 weekly 1 to 2 monthly Informal meetings with media Yes Yes Yes No Yes

Source: Author

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II. 1. 5 Foreign influence As a response to the Americanization theses, I have decided to investigate the impact of foreign influence on the PR and communication practices in the Czech Republic. In this particular case I have anticipated that the influence can come through seminars, cross-border meetings, trips, conferences, training or self-study and observations. Therefore, there were also questions about inspiration, flow of new information and innovation asked during the interviews with the spokespersons.

ODS admitted that the party representatives observe the election campaigns in the US from the distance, partly looking for inspiration and partly to consider what is executable in the Czech Republic. More than by the US, it feels inspired by the UK’s Conservatives. The party was, however, watching closely the development around then presidential campaign of candidate Barack Obama. They saw Obama as a role model and liked his tour around Europe. However, the spokesperson Bou!ka was very sceptical about the possibilities that this kind of campaign approach could work in the Czech Republic. “You know very well, that not everything coming from the US can function here for hundred percent, because we are not Americans, we can’t make people fall for things and for example stand on the town square and shout; when was the last time when people gather together spontaneously…in the streets?” As a useful innovation coming from overseas Bou!ka valued particularly the US technologies and processes, which can make things easier, as well as data-basing of registered voters in order to call them and ask for their vote. However, ODS went through its own experience when Václav Klaus tried calling people with pre-recorded message in 2002, which now the party describes as a failure. When asked whether the party was thinking about working with consultants or communication experts from the Western Europe or overseas, Bou!ka replied: „If we need help, we can hire anybody.“

The Christian Democrats saw great advantage in the membership in the European People’s Party. Throughout this network they were getting knowledge, experts, closed training and seminars for the campaign managers and specialists on media. „We draw a lot of inspiration out of there.“ The connection to the largest European party and options it provides could, in fact, have compensated the relatively small human and resources base the party had at home.

83 Communication of KDU-!SL was, in the eyes of the spokesperson, getting professionalized, but money being the limiting factor. The bigger parties have bigger analytical departments and KDU- !SL was trying to catch up with them by cooperating with foreign teams. As for their view on the US campaigning and political communication, it was definitely inspiring for KDU-!SL respondents. However, the party saw huge differences in the realities of that country. „The US is further ahead of Europe not only in technology, but also concerning their mentality. Politics is more connected to business there. Politics is a game played very professionally.“ (Horálek 2008).

The Green Party also had drawn on trends, inspiration and news from its sister parties. They went through training by the German politicians. In the past, when working for the KDU-!SL, the spokesperson Role"ková met with the German CDU-CSU’s media experts to train her. The party had strong relations with the German Green Party Die Grünen, their common efforts were targeted mainly towards professionalization of the party structure rather than improving media relations. The party officials were also covering the presidential campaign in the US with the great interest. „Everybody is following Obama. We watched it with great interest and discussed how inapplicable it is in the Czech environment, but how interesting it is and one can compare the differences.“ Apart from other things, the literature and academic sphere served the Green Party as a source of knowledge and improvement. “I study books by American journalists, I get lot of inspiration from reading newspaper interviews and news in general, and I was often discussing the media education with professor Jirák [head of media studies department of the Charles University].“ (Role"ková 2008).

The Social Democrats had a direct experience with the US way of campaigning as they were cooperating closely with the US consulting firm PSB during the 2006 general election campaign. “PSB gave advice on how to take stands on certain things…We certainly use their advice, these agencies work very professionally. Prior to start advising they conduct research among Czech voters and they try to do their best with the strategy. And they get paid for [the advice], which, by its analytical functions, enables us to understand the Czech voters. It is tailor-made service.” (Macura 2008). However, the US advice was not the only source for the party as they also used the European sister parties network within The Party of European Socialists as well as the organisation of social 84 democratic, socialist and labour parties, The Socialist International. Namely, !SSD was in close cooperation with the German SPD. Also, !SSD was not only looking for advice in other countries, but was also sharing its knowledge with counterparts in Slovakia. “Certainly, there has been a lot inspiration from other countries, we were helped by [former German Chancellor Gerhard] Schroeder and his team. Afterwards we were, vice versa, passing on our knowledge in Slovakia to the team of [the leader of the Slovak social democratic SMER] Robert Fico.” (Macura 2008). Generally, the party seemed to be open to progress and new techniques. “Our goal is certain improvement of the party’s communication with media and public. Every advice is good for us, two heads are better than one; all this definitely leads to professionalization of political PR and that’s why we do it.” (Macura 2008).

On the contrary, the Communist Party does not look to the US, however they seek new trends and techniques within the parties from the same political family. Thus, they have good relationships with German Die Linke. Especially, KS!M valued the progressive approach in the way the German party compared and consulted its advertising materials. The same practice works also with The Party of the European Left. However, KS!M also underlined, that it watches closely what the competition, namely the Social Democrats and the Green Party, are doing in this area. Besides that, the candidates have the media and psychology trainings on disposal secured by the private Czech agency and also by cooperating Club of Sociologists and Psychologists. “There was a professional there, he had a video camera, we were pulling topics out of a hut.” Other knowledge was acquired in practice or by learning from colleagues. “I have learnt by myself and from my predecessor how to send out press releases. I have later [to the press release] added logotype, header and made the whole presentation unified.” (Ho"ení 2008).

***

All the parties were seeking inspiration and knowledge base in the field of communication and campaigning in other countries and states. The vital sources were the networks within the European parties. Those can provide education, experienced experts, hands-on trainings (which would normally be very expensive) or social and political contacts. The spokespersons’ evidence confirmed the already known relations with German, Austrian and 85 other sister parties (See e.g. Mrklas 2006). Hence, the Christian Democrats were taking advantage of being member of the EPP and actively participated in the education seminars, trainings and knowledge exchange within this circle of parties. Similarly, the Green Party was in close connection with its German counterparts and network of European Greens. Moreover, KS!M reported connections to Germany or the PEL. On the other hand, ODS claimed to be inspired by the UK Conservatives, however they did not confirmed to have actual ties with them or any other party in the EU countries. All the parties admitted they were watching closely Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential race, however they all expressed scepticism about possible deployment of the ‘exotic‘ US methods in the Czech Republic. The only party, which had practical experience with the US consultants from the 2006 elections was !SSD (See Matu"ková 2010). However, the US was not its only source of inspiration and new ideas. The party was also using the EPS network as well the Socialist International. They also praised their relations with the German SPD. In addition, !SSD was not only receiving foreign advice and knowledge, but was also sharing it with Slovakia’s SMER.

86

II. 2 Public relations during the 2010 election campaign

In this second part of the chapter on party public relations, I will look closely into the same variables as in the previous chapter, but two years later. This time, the parties were facing general election campaign, which was postponed and consequently took longer than expected (for details see Balík 2010: 39-65). The research was also extended in two different ways. First of all, I have included two new significant actors – two political parties, which entered the Czech party system in the 2009. First of them was the Civic Matters (V!ci ve"ejné, VV) and second the TOP 09. (For details see Havlík 2010: 11-38). Secondly, the research questions on the impact of the campaign on the public relations work in the party were added. In addition, stronger focus was placed on the role of external consultants and foreign influence as the campaign is usually the time when there is greater space for new ideas, outsourced consultants and innovations. These days were for the party PR people obviously busy and stressful. In an interview for the MF Dnes, the country’s top daily by the number of its readership, Kate"ina Blechová, then a spokesperson of #SSD, described her average day. “My mobile phone starts ringing at around 8 a.m. and stops after 10 p.m. and sometimes even later. I reply to some 10 to 15 phone calls per hour. Depends on situation. At the same time I prepare and moderate press conferences and write press releases. Sometimes I also have to be chasing the chairman, because when the press conference goes live on TV, we need to start on time.”25

This section will begin with the communication strategies, which the party PR people were following. Then, I will describe how the work was organised within the communication teams; what communication tools and channels the parties used; and who were the spokespersons. Further on, I will focus on the role of external agencies or consultants, either Czech or foreign. The chapter starts with the ‘old’ five parties and then the two ‘new’ actors are added. There were six spokespersons (head of communications) interviewed for the purpose of this section: Martin Kupka of ODS, Martina Kaderová of KDU-#SL, René Kubá$ek of the Green Party, V!ra

25 Mat!j%, P. (2009): Paroubek se moc nesm!je, ale má vtipné poznámky, "íká mluv&í #SSD. Ona Dnes. 17. 6. 2009. Available at: http://ona.idnes.cz/spolecnost.aspx?c=A090615_105539_ona_ony_jup. 87 Karasová of KS!M, Jan Jakob of TOP09 and Petra Hru"ová of VV. !SSD spokesperson Kate#ina Blechová refused to take part in the research. Her evidence was substituted by two interviews she gave to the major daily, in which she talked about her work for !SSD. For the complimentary information, I have talked to two sources from the !SSD’s press department, who wanted to stay anonymous. Note that none of the persons interviewed in 2008 worked in the same position in 2010. All of the subjects of my research were thus new to their positions. The interviews took place in summer of year 2010.

II. 2. 1 Communications strategy When grasping the field of party communication during the 2010 election campaign I started with questions on the strategies behind all the communication efforts by the parties. This time, I anticipated that the strategies will be more thought than in 2008 as they were part of the larger plans of ‘how to win the elections”.

The incumbent party of ODS was communicating two major lines in the general election campaign of 2010. Martin Kupka, head of the PR and communication section of ODS, described quite a clear strategy the party followed in its communication as well as in the marketing activities. In his view, it was impossible to separate the two communication lines – one strengthening, positively presenting ODS, and the other one pointing at the risks, comparative or negative campaign (Kupka 2010). During the campaign the party has also experienced the leadership change. Less than three months prior to the elections, the chairman Miroslav Topolánek was replaced by his deputy head Petr Ne$as (for details see Havlík 2010: 11-38). The campaign communication was adjusted promptly. As a result, the party had a special message, because something that was not lined up in advance had happened. To change the party chairman so close to the elections was indisputably unique and unexpected and the campaign headquarters reacted immediately. Whole new campaign was kicked-off presenting Petr Ne$as as the new leader, which was suddenly a completely new element in the previously pre-planned structure of the election campaign. The general vision about the next directions of ODS was determined by the executive board. In line with its assignments, the campaign planning team then prepared and directed the strategy. Towards the end of the campaign, ODS had one press conference a day aimed at underlining and

88 strengthening its final message. Some of the press conferences took place at the special thematic places such as maternity centre (talking about family politics) or in a day centre for senior citizens etc. The agenda of the press conferences was thought out on the long-term basis. Of course, there were also ad hoc press conferences as well, however the baseline was intentional and elaborated, claimed Kupka (Kupka 2010).

ODS’ main competitor and the largest opposition party of !SSD pointed its campaign communication strategy at the possibly largest group of voters, focusing on the social policy issues. The vision was determined by the party chairman Ji!í Paroubek, campaign manager Jaroslav Tvrdík and to some extent also the party PR consultant Petr Dimun. Major part of the campaign communication was reactive. Its goal was to draw attention to the social situation in the Czech Republic, negative aspects of the right-wing government and the impacts of their policies on the ‚common people‘ (Anonym 2010). "SSD also revealed exceptional tactical moves in its relations with media. First of all, the party was selective about what journalists and media the party representatives are allowed to talk to. This was contrary to its spokesperson Kate!ina Blechová beliefs. “I did not agree with the strategy of delimiting ourselves to some media and journalists. And, if one has a different opinion than the [party] leadership, it is hard to stay in position [of party spokesperson].” (Tachecí 2010).26 This case was certainly not the only disagreement the former public service broadcaster Czech TV‘s anchor had with the "SSD chairman. Their differences in opinions resulted in Blechová being boycotted by the key party representatives. “The last drop was the moment when the chairman Paroubek gave me a dressing-down during the live broadcast on the Czech television. It was at the press conference, where I allowed all journalists to ask questions – at that time an affair of the former chairman of the Lower Chamber [of Parliament] was current – thus the questions were not very pleasant. This was not liked and Mr. [party] Chairman expressed it to me, peculiarly in front of the journalists and Czech television’s cameras. Since then, he didn’t allow me to moderate any single press conference. Until the elections, Mr. Tvrdík [campaign manager] got in charge of this, and some media - including [the major daily] Mladá fronta DNES - did not get any space at the press conferences. None of the major actors […] discussed things with me, I have been dealing with email correspondence and question from journalists and stayed

26 Tachecí, B. (2010): Válku s médii nem#l Paroubek $anci vyhrát, !íká b%valá mluv&í Blechová. MF Dnes. 8. 9. 2010. Available at: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/valku-s-medii-nemel-paroubek-sanci-vyhrat-rika-byvala-mluvci-blechova-122- /domaci.aspx?c=A100908_075029_domaci_bar. 89 spokesperson only on paper.“ (Tachecí 2010). The spokesperson Blechová was certain about the incorrectness of the party’s communication strategy on blocking certain media.27 However, her voice was not heard. „[Party chairman] was convinced that his strategy is the right one and [in situation like this] it is difficult to discuss anything. I can’t assess whether it was his [strategy] or was imposed on him, anyhow, nobody doubted it.“ On the same issue Blechová also added: „He [!SSD Chairman Paroubek] made enemies needlessly. As if he did not know that he can’t win a battle with the media. In the privacy, he was different in fact. When he was in a good mood, he was more pleasant than when he was fulminating at the press conferences.“ (Tachecí 2010).

The second largest opposition party of KS!M traditionally registered a rather stable election results. For this campaign their communication goal was to present the party manifesto. The Communist Party, which felt to stand aside the attention of media, which favours statements from !SSD as the major representative of the left-wing parties, saw the election campaign as a good opportunity to gain some attention. In their view, the advantage of the campaign was the fact that media tried to keep balance and thus, the party received coverage in the major newspapers and TV more often. The party started preparing for the campaign one year ahead and kicked-off the communication 4- 3 months prior to the election day (Karasová 2010). The Christian Democrats experienced milestone elections in 2010, as they drop out of the Parliament for the first time after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. KDU-!SL spokesperson Martina Kaderová saw a major mistake in the party’s strategy of how to present its manifesto to the public and voters. In her view the party manifesto was excellent, however the mistake was simply in the fact that the party did not succeed in ‘selling’ its issues (such as support of family policies) properly. Another factor, which played against KDU-!SL was, according to Kaderová, the media who were “making fun of the party.” She felt that the media were not objective and she did not know why. The party had kicked-off its campaign two months prior to the elections. Some of the plans and prepared tools were re-used from the interrupted general election campaign in 2009 (Kaderová 2010).

27 Almost one month prior to the elections, !SSD decided to resume its campaign following the attack of its deputy leader Bohulav Sobotka during one of the campaign meeting. Part of the decision was also to boycot selected media, which according to the party did not inform objectively about the campaign and !SSD and marked them as „right-wing“ (three major dailies and two weeklies) (Petrová 2010: 127 - 129).

90

Similar election debacle reported also the single-issue party, the Green Party, which did not succeed in gaining enough votes to pass the 5 % threshold to enter the Lower Chamber of the Parliament. The party had two communication goals during the campaign. First goal was to communicate the manifesto, introduce candidates and picture the Greens as an alternative choice. In the second part of the campaign, the goal was to break the curse of the ‘lost vote‘ (the belief that the party may hardly get into the Parliament and so if voted for, the vote thus will be lost). In the opinion of then the party spokesperson René Kubá!ek, the Greens succeeded partially in communicating the first message, but the second one did not get thought at all (Kubá!ek 2010). In general, the spokesperson was not satisfied with the overall coverage of the party during the campaign mainly due to the fact that media, in his opinion, heavily reported about the low chances of the party to cross the 5 % threshold necessary to gain any mandates. He mainly saw the problem in the fact that the public service media did this as well and thus, did not invite the Green Party representatives to the political debates on TV etc. „The media were informing neutrally about the party […] in the scope of their abilities and level, which the current media have, which means they informed about superficial topics, we had to do fooleries to be covered, while the programmatic or crucial issues were not interesting for them.“ (Kubá!ek 2010).

The newly occurring actors in the Czech political party system appeared as a strong competition for the five established parties, speaking about their communication activities. VV has launched campaign preparations (including communication) right after the term of (not realized) autumn general elections was announced (Hru!ová 2010). Similarly, TOP 09 started planning the campaign right when the party was founded at the end of May 2009. The communication started when the party introduced its brand and logotype in August 2009 and, in fact, it had not been interrupted since then until the hot phase, which started by introducing the manifesto in March 2010 (Jakob 2010). From the communications perspective, TOP 09’s campaign had three crucial moments. First, when the party introduced its manifesto claiming it to be a fresh alternative and not populist programme. The second important moment was the direct mail in the form of money order for 121, 000 CZK sent to some 100, 000 households aiming to draw attention to the public finance deficits. The event was very well covered in the media as some people were confused whether it was fake or real. The public response to this activity was extraordinary. Then, in the last week 91 prior to the elections, TO09 holds a press conference with all candidates and representatives, where they state they are not going to ally with the Social Democrats into coalition government after the election (Jakob 2010). The Civic Matters (VV) had their vision and thus communication strategy based on the theme of anti-corruption and anti-establishment mood. This was set up by the marketing and PR department as well as by the party members in the regions and by the leadership. Particular ideas for communication came either from someone in the party leadership and were suggested to the PR marketing department or vice versa. The spokesperson Petra Hru!ová described the campaign manager Vít Bárta as an arbiter, who was supervising the communication so that it was in line with the general communication strategy (Hru!ová 2010). ***

All the researched parties claimed to build up their campaign communication strategies on the major issues from their manifestos. Further on in the campaign, the parties mostly also applied second communication lines (e.g GOTV, negative etc.). ODS, for example, had a side communication line such as attacking opponents ("SSD) and later had to cope with a sudden change of the party leader and adjust their communication plans. On the other hand, "SSD deployed a strategy of the „right-wing“ media boycott for some time during the campaign, which was against the party spokesperson advice and in conclusion let to the limitation of her public appearance, tasks and influence and escalated conflicts within the party. The spokespersons of SZ and KDU-"SL expressed their frustration about the media coverage of their party. The campaign communication for the 2009 election (which was later cancelled) started in May 2009 with the activities of ODS, TOP 09, which was some 6 months prior to the elections. The other parties followed and commenced their campaigns some 5, 4 or 2 months prior to the election day. Later on, when the new election day was set for May 2010, some parties did not even interrupt their campaign ("SSD, TOP 09, VV), or resumed only shortly for very few months (ODS). In general, the parties’ communication was backed by more or less well-considered strategy, which was based on their manifestos and election goals.

92 II. 2. 2 Communications teams In this part, the communication teams will be described as well as the way their work was organised on the day-to-day basis.

ODS had 5 full-time employees available at its Press section, headed by Martin Kupka. In addition, there was one person in charge of the campaign website working externally. Apart from the regular press relations agenda, the Press section was also responsible for the production of advertorials in the print media and production of the election paper called “Jasn!“ (“Clearly/Certainly”). Significant part of the Section’s work also laid in the internal communication towards party members and candidates. The head of the campaign planning team was the campaign manager Ivan Langer. The team was rather autonomous to the party executive board. ODS chose a model, in which the campaign headquarters was communicating and reporting to the party board, while the board was bringing political assignments. However, the campaign planning team was functioning to some extent independently and introduced recommendations and analysis from outside experts. Campaign planning team’s meetings were held twice a week for half day, attended by some 7-8 members. Some 30 % of the members were professionals outside the party specialising mainly in opinion polls, marketing and online campaigns. The Head of Communications was part of the meetings as well. The !SSD’s PR and media department had approximately 20 employees. Some of them were based at the party headquarters; the others were hired through PR agency and worked outside the main office. The broader campaign staff was rather large and divided into several sections (PR and media section was one part of it). The management of the campaign (campaign planning team) had some ten members, who were meeting on the daily basis. Every morning, there was a strategic meeting held at the Lidov" d#m, the $SSD‘s headquarters (Anonym 2010). The Communists’ media department was combined with the election department, altogether there were six people covering also the website maintenance and DTP. The department was presenting basic communication concepts to the campaign headquarters, which then adjusted it and assigned tasks accordingly. All the conclusions and reports from the campaign headquarters were then presented to the central party’s board of executives, including the party chairman. The campaign headquarters of the Communist party was conceived of some 20 people – five people from the central headquarters together with regional representatives, however the party chairman was not part of this. There were no members from outside of the party. The campaign

93 headquarters was gathering once in three weeks three months prior to the elections. Lots of work was outsourced such as production of promotion material and graphic design (Karasová 2010). KDU-!SL employed three people at their press department. The spokesperson Martina Kaderová was also the head of the department. The department’s responsibility was also the content of the party website. They were using services of one PR aid, who was not a party member. Members of the press department were part of the campaign headquarters, which gathered together twice a month at first, and later every week. The campaign manager Pavel Svoboda chaired the campaign headquarters’ meetings and each of the 14 regions had its representative there plus employees of the central office. There were more than 20 people present, but no external agency. The party also hired an agency, which then started executing the campaign based on the directions from the campaign headquarters. The external suppliers were in charge of assisting with logistics, media buying, outdoor advertising and occasional copywriting (Kaderová 2010).

Due to the lack of financial resources, the Green Party had a very small press department, mostly represented just by the spokesperson René Kubá!ek. However, as the elections were approaching a lot of professionals in the field of PR started working for the party for free. The spokesperson himself was a member of the campaign planning team (Kubá!ek 2010).

VV had a PR department of six employees, who were in charge of media monitoring, communication with media, preparing reactions on news articles or other impulses coming from outside the party. Some of them were also part of the campaign planning team, which contained 10-15 people (campaign manager, party chairman and his close aids, deputy chairman and PR and marketing department representatives). The party also had one PR consultant outsourced helping with strategy compilation and specific media contacts, but he was not part of the campaign headquarters meetings (Hru!ová 2010).

The TOP 09’s press department contained a spokesperson, his assistant working part-time on the media monitoring and website, and one person responsible for the photo-documentation. The press department was in close cooperation with an online team, which comprised of two full-time and one part-time employees securing communication through Facebook, online chat etc. The party also had a ‘video team’ at its disposal, consisting of 2-3 more people. The party campaign manager, Jaroslav Polá"ek, directed all three teams. The campaign planning team was meeting every week or every two weeks, and more often as the elections were approaching. The party 94 chairman Karel Schwarzenberg led it. Other members were the campaign manager, deputy chairman, two representatives of the affiliated movement “Starostové a nezávislí“ (The Mayors and the Independents), one sociologist and two creative directors from the external advertising agency Lavmi (Jakob 2010).

***

The number of people working at the communication departments for each party differed significantly from one permanent paid employee at the Green party to the staff of 20 in case of !SSD. The rest of the parties (ODS, TOP 09, KS!M, VV), however, had on average some 6 people in charge of media relations, media monitoring, online communication and partly also internal communication. The titles, roles and organisation models differed among the parties. In the occasion of election campaign, the communication teams’ agenda include also several marketing tasks and the line between public relations and marketing is evaporating. The party spokespersons were usually also part of campaign planning teams and thus had an impact on the decisions how to communicate certain issues and topics. Two types of strategies in functioning of the campaigns planning teams could be identified. The parties either had a bigger planning team of up to 20 members (KDU-!SL, KS!M, VV) including politicians and party executives, which met on a regular (weekly) basis. Or, the campaign planning team was rather smaller with some 7-10 people including outside experts and consultants, party executives and very few politicians (ODS, !SSD, TOP 09) and meetings held several times a week. Despite using the external advice, the general responsibility for the decisions was always on the side of the party.

II. 2. 3 The party spokespersons or spin doctors? Some people tend to project their feelings about parties into the personalities of those, who represent the party and whose face they know from TV and other media – the spokesperson. „[When working in the Czech television] I was used to rather positive reactions to my work. I was shocked one day when while getting of the metro this one guy pushed me so hard that I dropped down. And he covered me with swearwords. There were few moments, which were very unpleasant,“ the !SSD spokesperson Kate"ina Blechová said in an interview (Tachecí 2010). In line with that, the experience of the political party spokesperson does not always seem to be the

95 most suitable stepping stone for the next career in the public relations. „It is not gonna be all easy,“ said the spokesperson right after she has left the party after the defeat in the 2010 general elections. „Although the role of the spokesperson is being demonized a bit, because we are not politicians, we just convey opinions of somebody else. It is hard, but one has to live out of something. Hopefully, time will screen it out.“ (Tachecí 2010). As in the previous part, the investigation has also inquired into the party membership of the spokespersons and their relation to the party. This time there were both the party members as well as not-members among the interviewed respondents. !SSD spokesperson Blechová was not a party member and was not planning on becoming one. „I have never been a member of any party and I am not going to change anything about it. It is something different to do a service for political party on one hand and be politically active on the other.“ (Tachecí 2010). The other two employees of the !SSD media department were also not members of the party. One of them commented on his experience as “an interesting experience and test of his professionalism and ability to work for a party he does not fully identifies himself with.” (Anonym 2010). Similarly, the spokespersons of VV and SZ were not party members. On the other hand, Jan Jakob of TOP 09 and Martin Kupka of ODS were members of their parties and later even run for their parties in municipal elections and both later became mayors of small villages.

Spin-doctoring The questions about the foreign influence during the research were followed by a plea for definition of the foreign term “spin” or “spin-doctoring”. Also, I have asked whether the respondents think that one can find spin-doctors operating in the Czech Republic. The spokesperson of KDU-!SL and KS!M did not know what the term stands for. Whereas, the spokesperson of VV provided a definition with rather neutral connotation, and denied an existence of spin-doctor in the country. “It is a person, who, with the help of his contacts, network and knowledge, is able to, and I don’t want to say influence, because influence has a negative meaning, but he is able to somehow enrich the campaign, the political party, its direction, but such person doesn’t work in this republic.” (Hru"ová 2010). Further on, she denied that there are spin-doctors here. “There is a lot of people in this republic, who would like to be spin-doctors, but so far none of them really is.“(Hru"ová 2010). Similarly, the spokespersons of TOP09 and the Green Party were able to provide definitions. “Influencing [media] output or opinion or a journalist to write as one person wants. [It exists] 96 partially in the Czech Republic.” (Jakob 2010). “A person, who is a consultant, person in the backstage, who directs the leader or candidate and gives him feedback, recommends things. It was not me. I wouldn’t say it was in our party.” When asked he said that the word has pejorative connotations (Kubá!ek 2010). One of the respondents from "SSD defined the term spin-doctor „as Jaroslav Tvrdík – the campaign manager.“ (Anonym, 2010), while the other respondent saw it „as some sort of propaganda, manipulation, not really truthful manipulation of the reality.“ (Anonym 2010).

Media’s influence on politics As the spokespersons were in everyday contact with the world of media and politics, I included also questions about the mutual relations between the two mentioned worlds or spheres. How or whether they influence each other. The ODS spokesperson agreed that politics is adapting to the media logic. “The campaign adapts to the media logic, politics can’t adapt to the media logic, but the actual steps in communication have to be media savvy. Media should not direct [politics], that would be , to hear what media want. However, one must know the media logic, be aware of how they operate and keep comprehensible and thought-out media strategy.” (Kupka 2010). Similarly, the KDU-"SL spokesperson notes: “Crucial influence. The politics adapt to the media,” (Kaderová 2010) or KS"M spokesperson: “Enormous. This year elections were not a victory of political parties, but the art of media. And that is relatively dangerous for the society.” (Karasová 2010). And, the two sources from the "SSD press department as well as the Green Party’s Kubá!ek see the media’s influence on politics as crucial. Moreover, VV spokesperson saw an impact of the media on how the public perceives politics. “I think their influence is huge, but not so much on the politics itself but rather on how the politics is perceived.” (Hru!ová 2010). TOP09 spokesperson was a bit less sceptical as he said that media were inseparably intertwined with politics, they are the major mediators of information for public, they have an influence and it is about working with them (Jakob 2010). ***

Four of the interviewed spokespersons were not members of the party they worked for and they understood their relation to the party as professional work. On the other hand, three respondents were party members (ODS, TOP 09, KDU-"SL and KS"M) and some of them later became also active in local politics. 97 All of the interviewed persons owned higher degree, most in the field of social science or humanities. They had previous working experience as journalists (in case of ODS, !SSD, VV), or from the work in the public administration or politics (KDU-!SL, TOP 09, SZ, KS!M). In fact, only two of the interviewed spokespersons had previous experience from communications and public relations managers (ODS, VV).

Most of the interviewed spokesperson were rather familiar with the term spin doctoring, although none of them was certain about the term. In their views, the term had neutral or negative connotation. Interestingly enough, none of them thought they themselves could be called spin- doctors or that there was somebody like that in their party. Only the sources from !SSD used negative description and identified the party campaign manager as an example of a spin-doctor. On the other hand, all of the interviewed spokespersons were aware of the media’s influence on the politics. They agreed that the politics has been adapting to the logic of the media. Despite their work positions, some of them were very sceptical about this process, as they did not have any control over it. On the contrary, others saw options in how to handle the media or how to be media savvy and so exercise some control over them.

II. 2. 4 Communications tools

As in the previous case of 2008, the communication goals in the party departments were reached by using varied kinds of communication tools such as traditional press releases and press conferences. Also, the intensity of the communication grew as the election day approaches.

Table 6: Overview of the parties’ contacts of journalists in 2010

PARTY Number of media contacts !SSD Some 100 journalists on their list and 20-25 of them were fundamental for them

KS!M Mailing list comprised 60 contacts KDU-!SL Claims to have some 200 contacts on journalists and worked closely with some 20 of them.

98 VV Some 100 addresses in their mailing list and 10 of them were fundamental. „With ten of them we knew each other personally, had more personal contact.“ (Hru!ová) TOP09 800 addresses (450 were regional journalists), fundamental were some 25 people. ODS N/A SZ 70 journalists on the list, with 10 closer relationship

Source: Author

ODS claimed to publish and send to journalist at least one information (press release, note or comment) every day. They were also organising a lot of press conferences with the number of invitees arising as the campaign was going to the grand finale. The party planned the press conferences covering individual manifesto’s issues in advance and prepared some press conferences, which, they thought, were unique in the Czech conditions as they took place at untypical locations etc. (Kupka 2010).

!SSD placed huge impact on the up-to-dated communication with media. Every day, the party was sending not only press releases, but also videos. The meetings of the Chairman with the media were organised regularly. According to information provided by two anonymous sources who worked at the PR department of !SSD during the campaign, the party employed some 20 employees (some of them also working distantly). The department focused greatly on media monitoring, opposition research, analyses, and strategic data. Interesting feature was the detailed and continuous monitoring of news. Starting at 6 a.m. and finishing at 11 p.m., people were watching some 20 selected news servers including interesting TV broadcasting programmes and news, plus political debates. Should interesting information arise, they would quickly tip off the selected people via SMS operator. (Anonym 2010).

KS!M also produced regular press releases, press announcements, notices and press conferences. (Karasová 2010)

KDU-!SL deployed basic media relations tools such as press releases and press conferences and

99 briefings. The party also had positive experience with contact with journalists via SMS (Kaderová 2010).

From the beginning, TOP 09 started using the traditional tools of media relations. The party was issuing press releases, organising press conferences, supporting informal contacts, conducting phone calls, emails, interviews and twice a year a special media gathering (Jakob 2010).

VV produced on average one press release per day. For the press conferences, the party was organizing one weekly to introduce the individual items from their manifesto. In the hot phase of campaign, VV was concentrating on the formal PR and communication tools (press releases, press conferences, public happenings etc.). Only after the elections the party started having more personal, less formal meetings with journalists. Till then the VV were doing usual press conferences and releases (Hru!ová 2010). ***

All the parties reported regular and intensive contacts with the journalists during the election campaign using the traditional media relations tools as well as some innovative approaches (such as SMS to journalists or online tools). Apart from press releases and press conferences gradually introducing key manifesto issues, the parties held public happenings, focused on online communication and/or informal relations with journalists. "SSD, ODS and VV claimed to issue one press release or press statement daily on average. In addition to that, "SSD was sending videos. The details are summarized in Table 7.

100

Table 7: Overview of communication teams and tools in 2010

2010 !SSD ODS KDU-!SL KS!M SZ TOP 09 VV 6 (joined with 2+2,5 (online Number of employees approx. 20 05.kv"tna 03.kv"tna campaign 1 + volunteers team) + 2 6 in communications department) (video team) Cooperation with external consultants Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes in PR & communication Number of press 5 + videos 5 5 N/A 1 to 4 2 to 3 5 releases per week Number of press 2 to 3 at least 1 1 N/A twice a month 1 1 conferences per week Informal meetings Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No with media

Source: Author

101

II. 2. 5 Outsourcing services

I have anticipated that during the campaign the parties would seek more help from external agencies or consultants. Therefore, I wanted to research further on this issue and find out what role these external agencies played.

Beside help of external experts on opinion research, marketing and online marketing, ODS used advice of the American political consultants Arthur Finkelstein and George E. Birnbaum. Their suggestions and experience was only used partially due to different country’s cultural and historical specifics. “Taking a step back, there is lot very similar things, also in other CEE states and not only here, and they [consultants Finkelstein and Birnbaum] had a lot of experience. In some way they can [change] the Czech view, which thinks that we are absolutely sole and that the political campaigns have to be looked at through the prism of Czech conditions, Czech history. During the debates with them, it finally showed up that we have many things in common and in this regard the experience was very valuable and the results showed that they were not wrong […] We had to translate some cultural specifics. We did not agree on everything, we did not listen to everything, but it was an advisory voice, which was very valuable.” (Kupka 2010).

!SSD was cooperating with several external PR agencies and people hired by these agencies (Anonym, 2010). Besides that, the US consultants PSB Associates participated in the general campaign strategy preparation. However, their involvement was way smaller than in the previous election campaign of 2006. They did not take part in the campaign execution and communication (See for example Matu!ková 2010: 106). The party mostly used these external consultants for creation of „complex strategies and opposition research analysis.“ (Anonym 2010).

KS!M cooperated only with external graphic design agency, which helped with the campaign posters‘production, but not with PR and communication. Occasionally, the party used media trainer for the candidates, who were supposed to go on live TV (Karasová 2010).

TOP 09 was cooperating with external suppliers to deliver mainly advertising, copywriting, video

102 reportages and data on opinion research; but not public relations (Jakob 2010).

VV did not engage any foreign consultants, only one external advisor on PR, while sometimes they looked for advice in corporate marketing sector. They hired agencies to supply graphic design and printing (Hru!ová 2010).

The Green Party used a lot of help from the PR professionals, who volunteered to help in the end of the campaign. “The surprise in our campaign was how many people got involved demanding no royalties. Supporters, personalities, those were people, who would not put their face in any political campaign, mostly professionals in their fields (lawyers, PR consultants), which left their work for one month because of the feeling that they need to engage in this, the ethos of the civic engagement has appeared, I hadn’t believed this was possible. However it happened at the very end. Had it happened earlier, we would have, I think, greater prospects. Those people suddenly felt stirred up only one month prior to the elections and kicked-off awful lot of small things, however it was too late.” (Kubá!ek 2010). The external consultants thus helped the party quite a lot, also by being a support for the press team. „This party is not professionalized as the big ones. It was a great help for me to meet with an expert, who helped with the things I would not think of.“ However, the responsibility was always on the side of the party (Kubá!ek 2010).

Media trainings During the election campaign, media usually get more focused on politics and run special broadcasting or supplements on manifestos and campaigns. Candidates or regional politicians thus appear on TV or in radio. For some of them it is the first time. Moreover, the TV duels between prospective prime ministers or party’s top politicians are becoming more popular. Therefore, I wanted to find out, whether the party provided support or trainings for its politicians, who were invited for the TV or radio discussions.

ODS confirmed that their key politicians went through intensive media coaching. There were intensive preps for the most prestigious TV debating programme called “Otázky Václava Moravce”, which were broadcasted from the regions (Kupka 2010).

Also, the Christian Democrats provided a media skills training during the campaign, although not all the candidates found it useful to participate. “We have one weekend dedicated to the media

103 training, not a lot [of candidates] showed up, it would certainly be useful and I think that the candidates should have worked harder on their self presentation.” (Kaderová 2010).

Similar preparations can be observed also at the Green Party, which organised one day workshop on media relations, campaign and manifesto for some 25 people. The party employees delivered part of the training. There was also one-day media skills training for selected candidates who were interested in it (Kubá!ek 2010).

Furthermore, the Communist Party candidates were also provided with an opportunity to get a professional media skills training. “Sometimes [we outsource] preparations of the candidates for individual TV performances, such as media skills training, those are people who do not normally go in front of cameras.” (Karasová 2010).

VV provided media trainings for their candidates running for the office in Lower Chamber of Parliament to improve their rhetorical and presenting skills and to get accustomed with the world of media. „Candidates went through this training, where they were shooting questions at them, this kind of cruel media training to learn what all they have to prepare for. We had consultant there, she was former journalist, and also one lady from DAMU [school of arts and theatre], who taught them how to speak, rhetoric and so on.“ (Hru!ová 2010).

TOP 09 too has organized training in media skills and also provided other education for its candidates, since a lot of them were new to politics. “The trainings for the candidates were organized from the party centre, but also the regional units secured some media preparations themselves.” (Jakob 2010). ***

The two biggest parties of ODS and "SSD used help of the foreign, respectively US consultants, but mostly for the purposes of the general campaign strategy or marketing. However, they seemed not to have significant impact on the final campaign set up. Besides that, both of these parties also used help of local PR and advertising agencies. Similarly, all other parties declared to use help of external agencies mainly for the purposes of graphic design, printing, marketing research etc. The outside PR aids used "SSD, KDU-"SL and VV. The Green Party used help of the PR professionals, who volunteered for the party at the end of the 104 campaign. Despite there are no data for !SSD available, there is no doubt that some sort of media training became a vital part of campaign preparations for all the parties. Be prepared for the TV interview or life political debate and to make a good impression on the viewers/voters was important.

Overall, the external advisors bear no responsibility for the final decisions or the results. In few cases they took part in the party formal executive meetings. However, they were mainly rather in the role of external suppliers of services.

II. 2. 6 Foreign influence

I kept on investigating about the influence of foreign consultants, innovations coming from other countries etc.

ODS spokesperson saw a slight influence on the Czech Republic’s campaigns coming from the Euro-Atlantic surroundings. The party itself was inspired by the US campaigns. (Kupka 2010).

Both anonymous respondents from the !SSD press department admitted the party’s inspiration by the US, mainly thanks to information mediated by the US consultants. (Anonym 2010).

On the contrary, VV claimed not to cooperate with any foreign consultants. “Our campaign was not influenced [from foreign countries], because we were not inspired by them, we’ve really done it the way we thought was the good one. We had signals of what people want, what they are fed up with, and what we can offer them in line with that.“ (Hru"ová 2010). Further on in the interview she added: “We have looked around Europe [for inspirations], but we didn’t accept anything out of that.” (Hru"ová 2010).

TOP 09 was looking for inspiration to the personality of Barack Obama and the way he communicated during the campaign with his supporters, or how he communicated the health reform. As being useful source of inspiration, they also mentioned the UK’s Conservatives, especially the way their website was created. The role model was also the German party of CDU (Jakob 2010).

105 KDU-!SL reported influence of the US and Germany. „We were inspired by the US, because I have lived there. The party also had a support of [the German Chancellor] Angela Merkel, but they did not advice us on anything.” (Kaderová 2010).

The Green Party met up and consulted with the German Die Grunen. In particular, they got inspired there for their video spots. Also, they found interesting the way Barack Obama was engaging his voters. “But, I wouldn’t give too much weight to this.” (Kubá!ek 2010). In general, the party also sought to make use of the techniques, which worked in their 2006 campaign.

Similarly, KS!M also found inspiration in Germany. „In Germany we were collecting experience, the cooperation is running there, it is as if you suddenly look into somebody else’s kitchen and then you do it your own way…Maybe it is pity a that parties don’t get inspired more in German campaigns, which are more polite…but tedious.“ (Karasová 2010)

***

The extraordinary 2008 presidential race in the US hit to some extend the whole world and the Czech parties’ representatives could not omit them when asked about the foreign influence and inspiration for their work. In fact, ODS and "SSD met several times with the US consultants which probably had some direct influence on the party spokespeople, but the strong ties to the European parties as well as to the German counterparts played some role in the 2010 campaign in case of KDU-"SL, SZ, KS"M and "SSD. The two new parties of TOP 09 and VV were not members of any European parties at that time and therefore direct obtaining or exchange of knowledge and political education was more difficult for them. In fact, VV claimed not needing any foreign inspiration for their campaign, while TOP 09 copied some features of the UK Conservatives website architecture.

106

II. 3. Journalists’ insights

In order to get more valid data about the media relations between the parties and journalists, I have confronted the information supplied by the political parties‘ representatives with the top journalists from two major dailies (Hospodá!ské noviny, Lidové noviny), one weekly (Respekt) and from the public service TV ("eská televize). All in all, the evidence from the journalists were rather identical and there were couple general statements they all agreed on. Further in the text, these statements are highlighted as introducing subheading to paragraphs.

Professionalization was not significant The interviewed journalists stated that in the past five or even ten years, they did not notice progressive trend in the work of parties’ media relations. Rather than that, they saw couple of individual professionals and couple non-professionals, who appeared and then disappeared. Therefore, the respondents characterized the development in the media relations as very slow and growing not as straight line but rather as a sine curve. „I would not say that there have been some notable changes. It is one person by another. If someone hires a skilful person than he does it well, if they do not [hire a skilful person], than it does not work.“ (Kolá! 2011). As the signs of slow change over the longer period of time, the journalists mentioned the fact that there are less emotions in the way the parties address journalists, they do not fight them or hide the politicians in front of them as they used to in the nineties.

Spokespersons are „just talking heads“ The journalists‘ general opinion on spokespersons could be described with the term “talking heads”. None of them was able to mention concrete names of active party spokespersons. However, they did not see it as a problem, which illustrates well their attitude towards the profession of spokespeople. All of them preferred to speak to or call the politicians directly on their cell phones and viewed the spokesperson as an administrative worker. „The parties handle the media as one big mass and on

107 a very official level. The party spokesperson’s role is still to send out emails with invitations to press conferences and statements, which is prehistory.“ (!ídlo 2011)

Regarding professional qualities of the professional party spokespersons the journalists described that they like someone who is cooperative, always answering the phone, always available, precise, understand journalists’ need, user-friendly, communicative and understands politics and party issues.

Politicians are not media savvy At the level of politicians, the interviewed journalists were unable to identify bigger progress. The TV and radio anchor for example said: „I don’t see any notable professionalization. There are still the top 20 politicians there, who are surprised by the facts the journalists are asking, they don’t know what to wear on TV and the important things that need to be said in the first sentence and in the first minute.“ (Veselovsk" 2011). Also the other journalists confirmed that no politician over the time made significant progress in his/her way he talked to the journalists or on TV. The good speakers were always good, while the bad speakers or communicators remained bad.

Personalities are crucial, not the party size Interestingly enough, the respondents did not see differences among smaller and larger parties in the way they handle the media relations. Here again, they stressed out, that the crucial factor are the skills the spokesperson has. In the past, there were good and bad spokespersons working for both the bigger and the smaller parties. Therefore, the money factor does not seem to affect this. „It is not about [the money and the size of the communications team], it is about interesting topics […], surprising topics and ability to distribute the information in the right time; that can’t be substituted by the money.“ (!ídlo 2011).

Parties‘ (in)ability to set agenda The US consultants operating in the Czech Republic were not viewed as the change-makers. All journalist respondents expressed, for example, their negative experience with the Social Democrats‘ approach to the journalists, which was extremely intensive. „In this case the quantity was discouraging,“ said one journalist. They all complained that their mailboxes were full and spammed by the influx of #SSD‘s press statements and other emails. On the other hand, none of 108 the respondents understood !SSD’s tactic to blocking out some media during the certain part of the campaign. On the other hand, !SSD’s major rival ODS, showed, in the eyes of the interviewed journalists, limited activity towards media in the time of 2009 election campaign.

Press releases and press conferences improved When asked about the traditional communication tools such as press release or press conferences, the respondents agreed that they are of a better quality than in the past. However, they dislike these tools a lot, although they admit that they are probably necessary. The journalists were rather looking for and expecting different kinds of tools, which the parties do not use so often or well. They mentioned e. g. social media, private interviews, more background information when they need it, to have a politician available to ask about anything the journalist want etc.

Spin-doctoring is present Unlike for the party officials, the term spin-doctoring was well known for the interviewed journalist as some of them also published articles on this matter. During the interview, they revealed couple of personal stories depicting that there are practices that certain people used to manipulate the information and thus the journalists. For example, the TV anchor was offered money in exchange for dictating the scenario of the live interview. Or, the editor-in-chief of a weekly reported that he several times received an envelope by mail from an unknown sender with leaks or compromising information. On the other hand, all the journalists tend to speak as if the fact that they know about these practices and are well aware of the goal of these, means that they cannot be manipulated. .

109 III. Discussion

In this section, I will examine the research results from the 2008 and 2010 more closely and will analyse them by identifying changes, development and differences between these two moments of the election cycle. Further on, those results will be enriched with quantitative data from the electoral research conducted at the Political Science Department at Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, and by qualitative analysis of the interview with the Czech journalists, who were in fact the target of the parties’ media relations activities and tactics. The reason for supplementing additional data is to better and more clearly identify major trends (such as permanent campaign, importance of political education, agenda-setting ability of the parties) in the parties‘political public relations in the defined period of time.

Permanent campaign? Permanent campaign does not mobilize voters to cast their ballots, however its goal is to create a favourable public opinion and maintain relations between the voters and political actors by running a continuous communication campaign. Hence, in the delivery time, which is contrary to the election campaign’s ‘promise’ time, the candidates need to transform their activities and strategy in order to assure voters their choice was right; and keep to the parties’ agenda. Typically, in this period of the election cycle, more actors such as the government, ministries, NGOs, interest groups etc. come into play. The ability to run a permanent campaign is dependent on two factors: technology and media development, and transformation of the mass party into the professional (Panebianco) or cartel-party (Katz-Mair), which is characterised by the reduction of ideology and traditional party organization structure in favour of growing importance of professional consultants and external experts. (See Heclo 2002). In 2008, all the parties reported rather stable and functioning media relations departments integrated into the party structure. In most cases, they had a general strategy for promoting the party’s policies and its MPs activities. The opposition party !SSD went even further, aiming at specific target groups of voters and having clear proactive strategy towards media, based on basic analysis of voters as well the party’s media agenda analysis. The largest coalition party of ODS also reported strategic thinking in media approach as it was planning to communicate positive achievements of Government. However, this strategy faced certain difficulties due to the only partial interest of individual MPs, who were not following the party line. Although, more important was the fact that it was very difficult to find space in the media for solely party issues

110 and topics, which would not interfere with coalition government or ministerial agenda. The party spokespersons were mostly non-party members, who regarded their work as a professional matter. However, they were sometimes inexperienced in the field of public relations. Another interesting fact is that for the time prior the election campaign, the number of staff did not rise significantly. With the exception of !SSD, which more than tripled its public relations staff from 4.5 to 20 persons, the other parties added one or two employees for the campaign period. On the other hand, the external experts or consultants hired by the parties did not bear any responsibility for the final decisions and its impact. Thus, the data provided in this study may thus point to a very slow, but continuous trend towards permanent communication campaign.

Work intensification The number of employees dealing with the press relations did not rose significantly except for the case of !SSD. On the other hand, the growth was reported in the services the communication departments were outsourcing. The intensity with which parties addressed media and voters grew up markedly comparing the two periods. The press releases and press statements were issued more often, the press conferences were held regularly and other tools such as public happenings, online communication etc., were added. The rise was not so significant in case of !SSD, as it was already communicating heavily before the campaign has started. Indeed, the party has been issuing several types of documents to be sent to the press daily. Notably, ODS registered extreme growth, and even surpassed !SSD reporting, with some 154 outputs to the press compared to !SSD’s 114 in the last five weeks prior to the election day.

Table 8: Comparing type of outputs send to media by the political parties five weeks prior to the election day in 2010

KDU- TOP !SSD ODS !SL KS!M SZ 09 VV Press releases 8 40 16 0 12 8 3 Releases from press conferences 10 35 10 0 15 0 30 Press statements 43 24 4 7 4 6 6 Reactions sent to press 40 20 9 10 5 5 10 Invitations/Notices 13 35 15 9 13 5 5 Total 114 154 54 26 49 24 54

Source: Author; based on data collected by researchers at the Department of Political Science, FSS MU in 2010 111

Looking closely at the types of outputs the parties’ press departments had sent to the media, the invitations for meetings with candidates or special campaign events prevailed. Also common were press statements by the leaders or press reactions on the current political and campaign development. (See Tab 8). The largest number of media outputs reported ODS (137), followed by !SSD (107), KDU-!SL (50), SZ (41), VV (31), and KS!M (28). The smallest number of press releases and other types of media outputs had sent TOP 09 (25). The two largest parties were most active in reaching out to the press, on the other hand, the party with the smallest number of dedicated staff, the Green Party, reported proportionally quite a high number of outputs. In general, the size of the department did not affect the low or high intensity the party used in order to contact the journalist using the traditional PR tools. Similarly, the journalists, as they stated, mainly differed among personalities among party spokesperson and their professional skills.

Political education and knowledge exchange The parties see importance in both educating its employees and members and looking out for knowledge and inspiration in other countries. In particular, the traditional parties have bonds and relations with their sister parties in the neighbouring countries or with the relevant European parties network. Those serve as a source of inspiration, knowledge and ideas for party functioning improvement, sharing of best practices, adaptation to new technologies and preparation and communication for and during the election campaign. Such connections also enable campaign observation trips and meetings with counterparts. The most elaborated structure of the political education have the four parties present in the current party system for longer time (ODS, KDU-!SL, !SSD and KS!M). These parties reported a close cooperation with sister parties in neighbouring states or with political education foundations of the German CDU and CSU, which is Konrad-Adenaur Stiftung KAS and Hans-Seidel Stiftung HSS (in case of KDU-!SL and ODS); Politische Akademie of Austrian ÖVP (in case of KDU-!SL); or with Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung and other institutions close to the PES (in case of !SSD). In cooperation with these networks, parties, or foundations, the Czech parties established their long or short term systems of education or knowledge exchange (Mrklas 2006: 266). The role models and partners for ODS, at the foundation of the party’s political education institute CEVRO, were Germany’s KAS, HSS and the US International Republican Institute (Mrklas 2006: 268).

112 The interviewed party sources confirmed the party’s ties to the above mentioned institutions, to the sister or European Parliament parties as the sources of inspiration or new knowledge. On the contrary, the spokespersons themselves did not go through complex professional or political trainings (or it did not stay in their memory). The Czech parties also reported different level of engagement and methodically used these foreign relations. This knowledge exchange took time mostly in the period of no election campaign. Yet during the campaign, the parties rather outsourced the Czech external experts. For the purposes of the election campaign in 2010 ODS and !SSD hired US consultants. However, both parties had also other Czech consultants working for them at the same time. The two new parties of VV and TOP 09, based their campaign mostly on their „own“ ideas. Therefore, on the long-term basis, there could be identified rather a continuous influence or impact on the party staff and politicians by the German, Austrian and the EP parties. On the short-term basis, the individual influence of the US is, of course, possible.

Agenda-setting ability of parties In the middle of the election cycle in 2008, the parties showed only vague communication strategies, or rather simple tactics, behind their public relations work. This has changed during the election campaign, when the parties naturally had developed more comprehensive communication strategy based on their manifestos, but also reported side communication lines based on the general GOTV strategies. Also compared to the 2008 data, !SSD reported larger number of staff devoted to media monitoring analysis, which allowed for fast reaction to articles in the news or adjustment of communication. VV, ODS and TOP 09 also had employees devoted to this matter. This indicates the parties‘intention to influence or set the agenda for the media. That indication can also be illustrated by this quote by ODS’ head of communication.“I was one of those who came with [suggestions] that the campaign had to contain strong media level, it has to work with the agenda- setting theory and that was proved […], the timing and the impact, how media started bringing the theme of [state] bankruptcy [in Greece and in general]. ODS supported the theme of bankruptcy in media as well as in advertising […]” (Kupka 2010). On the other hand, the KDU-!SL’s spokesperson expressed her frustration from the party‘s inability to set and posses the issues in the media. „We are the centre party and it is becoming obvious that our manifesto was the best […] and the

113 other parties were drawing from [our manifesto]. We have always came up with an issue and in two weeks either ODS or !SSD came with it as well, they were stealing from us.“ (Kaderová 2010). To what extent were the parties’ efforts effective could be illustrated on the results of the quantitative campaign study, researching party manifestos issues, campaign communication issues, and the topics covered by the media during the 2010 election campaign. When surveying the party manifestos of ODS, !SSD, KS!M, KDU-!SL, TOP 09, VV and SZ, I have identified that the manifestos mostly focused (64 % - 76 %) on the issues of social system, economics and political system (more precisely on the state and its efficiency). (Eibl 2010: 83). Similarly, the outdoor and advertising campaigns of the same parties focused on the issues of economics (25 %), social politics (21 %), health care (10 %) and corruption (9 %). More specifically, the advertising on economics covered by 56 % the issues of state economic policies and by 26 % the state debt. As for the social politics, the advertising mostly stressed the social benefits (37 %) and solutions to unemployment (17.8 %). Looking solely at the two major parties of ODS and !SSD, their advertising was dominated by the economy and social politics as well. In case of ODS, it summed up to 28 % and 26 % respectively, while in case of !SSD it acquired 30 % and 22 % respectively (Petrová 2010: 125) Apart from direct advertising, the parties can also communicate their issues to the press. The research which looked at all press releases (N=447) issued by the same group of seven major parties five weeks prior to the election days, found out that the prevailing topic was economy (10 %) and corruption (5.6 %). However, the bigger portion of the press releases focused on promoting party leaders or attacking opponents (18.8 %) and information about the news regarding the parties‘ campaigns (13 %) (Petrová 2010). Similarly, the two major actors of ODS and !SSD dominated the media coverage. By the number of all references provided by the media monitoring company Newton Media, ODS gained 30 % of the total press, TV and online media coverage and !SSD 29 %, thus getting almost 60 % of the overall coverage. The other parties followed way behind with KS!M gaining some 10 %, KDU- !SL 9 %, SZ 8 %, TOP 09 8 % and VV 3 % of the total media coverage. (Petrová 2010: 120).28

28 As for the topics covered by the Czech media in relation to the 2010 elections four weeks prior to the election days, the parties’ manifestos and programme were not the most attractive topics. Out of all articles mentioning either the party or its leader only 9 % covered the political programme issues. On the other hand, stories on the campaign reached some 13 %, while 45 % of articles mentioning either the party or its leader covered something completely different. Similar results showed an analysis looking at the issues connected to the articles covering elections in the eight Czech major dailies four weeks prior to the elections. Out of the sample of 1,050 articles 56 % were news about the campaign, 39.3 114 To sum up, these results showed that two major parties, ODS and !SSD, were the most active in outdoor and print advertising29 as well as in reaching out to the media. Hence, they gained the largest portion of media coverage. The prevailing issues in all seven parties‘ manifestos were the economic policies, which then became the subject of the media articles and reporting. However, way more attractive, and better covered than political programme issues, were other types of political and campaign news. This could have partially been the result of the parties‘communication strategies as the most of the press statements and releases to the press focused on the promotion of politicians, attacking opposition or news about campaign itself rather than on the issues described in the manifestos. Therefore, some signs of the parties ability to set the agenda could be noticed, however not clearly significant yet.

% covered the political programmes and 7 % covered the both.28 Looking closely at rather small amount of news pieces reporting on the parties’ political programmes, the most popular were the economic issues (25 %), social politics (14 %) and health care (12 %) (Petrová 2010: 122 -124). 29 Altogether !SSD invested 263,1 mil CZK and received 54 % of the total political outdoor and printed advertising. On the other hand, ODS invested 162,7 mil and acquired some 33 % of the total advertising space. Their competitors stayed behind, with Civic Matters (VV) getting some 8 %, TOP 09 1 %, KS!M 1 % and KDU-!SL and SZ less than 1 % (Petrová 2010: 121). 115 F) CONCLUSION

The nature and content of political communication is changing constantly. It is being changed inevitably with every new technology of communication and with every method of managing public perceptions of events and causes. Through out this thesis I have worked with the concept of professionalization, which, defined by Holtz-Bacha (2007: 10) is a process of adaptation to, and as such as necessary consequence of, changes in the political system on the one side and the media system on the other and the relationship of the two systems. But rather than seeing clear and clean breaks between periods and eras, the changes reflects an ongoing professionalization of skills surrounding the practice of political communication. The same process of professionalization of course takes place also in other spheres than media and politics. In corporate world, culture etc. Several scholars also pointed to certain risks accompanying the process of professionalization. Plassers (2002: 305) for example stressed out that the more political parties try to compensate for their lack of support and identification with the electorate by aspiring to professional strategies, the more they contribute to a further weakening of their shrinking core voter base. Similarly, Nord (2007: 92) states that the risk associated with the ongoing process of professionalization is further weakening the position of political parties. Stemming from the reduction of the party to voting mobilization organisation, Hamelink (2007) notes, that professionalization further widens inequality between politicians and citizens. Moreover, Wring (2005) criticises political marketing’s colonization of campaigning for the fact that it encourages secretive, hierarchical culture within party or elite thinking about voters. By professionalization we mean that the skills are delivered in a way that is more thought out than before and is based on some analysis and understanding of how things work. In broader perspective, there were continuities and transitions from one set of practices to another or from one activity to another. In this text we have examined and described the structure of the political parties’ press departments, technologies of communication (tools and means of communication) and role of professionals (the spokesperson, external consultants) at the selected period of time. There were qualitative differences among the parties in skills identified, such as better and more professional use of the media; better use of opinion polling and persuasive techniques; political parties becoming more strategic in the ways in which they pursue election victories; and individual politicians becoming more skilled and tuned into need of more professional media. In general, the research has examined the level of professionalization of the Czech political

116 parties’ communication by, firstly, applying the CAMPROF index ranking to the two consecutive election campaigns and, secondly, by describing the organisation of the parties’ public relations. Further on, by providing insights into the parties’ public relations and communication both in the middle of the election cycle and during the campaigns, the research was also able to answer how does a ‘professional party communications look like and function’. The research findings provided a clear picture of the status quo of the Czech parties’ campaign communication and public relations. In addition, the examination was extended by the data from the short period preceding the 2010 election campaign. That allowed exploring the current stage in broader context. It was not possible within the scope of this thesis to observe a long-term process, however such account would certainly be useful and remains a challenge for future research. The CAMPROF index application successfully produced two ranges of scores that allowed for inter-party ranking and comparison in terms of the extent of professionalized campaigning. Inevitably, some difficulties the research faced unfolded, due to the country and system specifics, which may have slightly affected the coding. Some variables of the index were almost not present at the analyzed system, or their importance seemed to be exaggerated (telemarketing and opposition research). On the other hand, the index does not include some recently influential measures, such as online communication on social networks, online advertising, negative campaigning, GOTV techniques etc., which may well be indicators of the four areas of party activity defined by Gibson and Römmele (that is: new tools and tactics adoption and intensification of existing methods; more capital-intensive, aggressive or attack-oriented and continuous mode; more interactive and individualized engagement with voters; increasing centralization of power in the person of the leader), where process of professionalization might also be very apparent. Adding or changing varibles would on one hand probably produce more beneficial results for TOP 09 and VV, but on the other hand, it would close the opportunity for international or inter-country comparisons, which remains to be the opportunity for future research. One difficulty, concerning the methods applied in this research, might be the validity of the data obtained throught interviews, due to lack of objectivity of the respondents. Therefore the findings were combined with a personal field observations and journalists‘ insight. Despite the identified imperfections, I believe the findings being usefull and providing a solid base for future quantitive or comparative research designs.

117 When investigating the level of the Czech parties’ professionalization in communication, I have, at first, explored the campaign communication. By applying the CAMPROF index that was designed to measure and compare parties’ use of professionalized campaigning techniques during election campaigns, I was able to determine the differences among the parties’ campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament Elections and 2010 Czech parliamentary elections. In 2010 campaign, the highest score of 20 points (out of total 30) received the Social Democrats (!SSD). The party proved the most extensive level of professionalized campaigning due to the largest use of the key party activities or initiatives that recognized to be closely associated with the implementation of professionalized campaigning. In fact, !SSD reported extensive use of opinion polling, direct mail sent repetitively to households, sophisticated use of intra-party communication systems and participation of outside consultants on the campaign management. The second highest ranking (18 points) was acknowledged to its main opponent, ODS. ODS’s use of professionalized campaign communication tools more or less equalled to the level of !SSD except for the use of telemarketing and larger scale of the opinion polling. As well as its major competitor, ODS also used an extensive amount of the campaign techniques present in the CAMPROF. It worked substantially with direct mail, focused on the targeted and tailor-made offline and online communication, cooperated with external consultants (both Czech and from the US) and developed intranet extensively. Both major party system actors, !SSD and ODS, distinctively differed themselves from the other players, by almost twice as high score compared to the rest of the parties. Thus, these two acquired a leadership in the use of professionalized campaigning tools and techniques in the 2010 campaign. That is also in line with the fact that these parties have invested the highest campaign budgets during the 2010 election. The two ‚new‘ parties of TOP 09 and VV stood almost on the same level by scoring 12 and 11 points respectively. They both massively used the direct mail sent to households or enclosed as a supplement in the largest dailies; operated a dedicated campaign management team, and started the campaign quite early. Both parties did not use much of opinion polling, had not developed intra-party communication system and (most probably due to their short presence in the political arena) did not work extensively with voters’ databases. On the other hand, the Christian Democrats (7 points) and the Green Party (8 points) showed the lowest level of professionalized communication campaigning indicators in the 2010 campaign. They both registered a very low or no amount of direct mail, very limited target group of their email news and messages, started their campaign later and with almost no polling data analysis and very limited use of voters’ databases. 118 The Communist Party stood on the lower level of the index, gaining 9 out of the total 30 points. The party utilized quite a lot of direct mail and email communication, but did not apply opinion polling and advice from the external consultants in the campaign management in the 2010 election. In 2009, the parties did not deploy much of direct mail and opinion polling (with the exception of !SSD) and the campaign itself started only very few months prior to the election day. The results for 2010 cannot be directly compared with the 2009 outcomes, because the latter is an example of the second-order elections. Despite that, the higher level and the increase of the deployment of professionalized communication campaigning tools from the 2009 to 2010 illustrates the importance of the 2010 campaign for !SSD and ODS. Especially, ODS almost doubled the professionalized tools used in the 2010 campaign. On the other hand, while KDU-!SL showed a decrease in the level of professionalized communication campaigning tools, KS!M and SZ had more or less the same score in both campaigns. This could be explained by the lack of resources needed for the long campaign, which was originally planned for autumn 2009 and later canceled and moved to June 2010.

Picture 2: Overview of the party’s CAMPROF index score in 2009 EP campaign and in 2010 parliament election campaign

Source: Author

After examining the level of professionalization in parties’ campaign communication using numbers and scores, it was important to observe in detail the architecture of these results and

119 provide insights into the parties’ structure via interviews with the party representatives. Thus, the research moved to the micro-level of each party in order to investigate the level of professionalized public relations and functioning of the party’s press and public relations. In particular, I explored two time-periods: middle of the election cycle (summer 2008) and parliamentary election campaign in 2010. All the examined parties operated departments dealing with the public and media relations. These departments were in charge of communication with media (mainly via press releases and statements, organizing press conferences and interviews with journalists, replying to journalists questions etc.); monitoring the media in order to get feedback on the party media coverage; party’s websites and social networking sites; party newspapers or (e-mail) newsletters, and they provided service to the politicians or candidates. The parties differed in the number of employees conducting this work, the level of engagement and intensity the PR work was done with (See Table 9). Compared with the middle of the election cycle, in the 2010 campain, the parties had clearer and devoted strategy of what they want to communicate to voters and media and how. The research has identified the parties’ strong intention to set the media agenda, in which they were successful only partially. During the campaign of 2010, the work at the PR departments was more intensive compared to the “quite” time of 2008. On one hand, the departments were more active in their traditional activities, on the other they also had more tasks (mostly marketing activities). Instead of hiring additional staff, the parties mostly strengthened their cooperation with external agencies and outsourced tasks such as graphic design, printing, media buying, logistics etc. The PR departments also participated in the candidates’ preparations for the TV debates and media interviews. In 2010 campaign, !SSD demonstrated the largest and exceptionally big PR department, which was four times larger, compared to 2008. In line with that, the party was also very active in communication and was sending out press releases and organising press briefings on a daily basis. The party also had a very sophisticated and constant system of media monitoring from 6 am till 11 pm, and media coverage analysis. On the other hand, the party also applied a specific tactic of media boycott accusing certain media from being biased. This has not only complicated the party’s relations with some journalists, but also made the situation difficult for the spokesperson, who did not approve this tactic. Moreover, this tactic was not successful also due to the fact that the journalists felt spammed and overwhelmed by the !SSD’s communications activities and refused to pay attention to it. Interestingly enough, the data collected previously by the researchers at the Faculty of Social Studies (Petrová 2010) showed that ODS had actually send a bit more 120 releases and statements to the media at the last five weeks of the campaign. Nevertheless, !SSD was communicating very frequently (almost on the daily basis) with journalists almost the whole election cycle (as the data from 2008 showed) and as a result, the journalists were overwhelmed by their long-term proactive approach. The parties of ODS, TOP 09, VV, and KS!M reported similar amount of workforce devoted to the media and public relations, however they deployed differen strategies and differed in the frequency of the activities towards the media and public.

TABLE 9 : Overview of party’s press relations’ management in 2008 and 2010

Cooperation Number Number of Informal Number of with external of press press meeting Contact on Party Year employees in consultants in releases conferences with journalist communication PR & per per week media communication week

2008 4,5 Yes 3 to 15 2 to 6 weekly Yes 340 !SSD 5 + 100 (20-25 2010 20 Yes 2 to 3 weekly Yes videos fundamental) very 2008 4 Yes 0 to 3 Yes "hundreds" ODS occasionally 2010 5,5 Yes 5 at least 1 Yes ?? 1 to 2 2008 2,5 Yes 2 to 10 Yes 80 KDU- monthly !SL 200 (20 2010 3,5 Yes 5 1 Yes closely) 2008 2 Yes 2 to 3 2 to 3 weekly No 100

KS!M 6 (joined with 2010 campaign No N/A N/A No 60 department) 1 to 2 2008 1 No 1 to 2 Yes 100 monthly SZ twice a 70 (10 closer 2010 1+ volunteers Yes 1 to 4 Yes month relationship)

2008 N/A 800 (450 TOP09 2+2,5 (online regional), 2010 team) + 2 (video No 2 to 3 1 Yes fundamental team) were some 25 people 2008 N/A VV 100 (10 2010 6 Yes 5 1 No fundamental)

121

In charge of parties’ public relations were mostly highly educated persons in their thirties or early forties. With a very few exceptions, they mostly did not have direct experience from the similar position in the political PR, neither did they study or gained special education in this field. The fluctuation on these positions of PR managers was very high, the persons changed in the post quite quickly, and in general, it is not seen as a very prestigious occupation. The interviewed spokespersons mostly were not party members and they viewed their work for the party as professional conduct. Interestingly enough, they were mostly unaware of the phenomenon of spin- doctoring, which is sometimes being used as a synonym for their work. On the other hand, the interviewed journalist felt that there has been some level of manipulation with information and media deployed on the Czech journalists, however they referred to a different individuals as being spin-doctors than the parties’ public relations staff. As for the foreign influence on the political public relations work, the spokespersons’ primarily mentioned the German or Austrian counterparts or parties within their European party network, as a source of their personal professional development as well as the party’s knowledge-exchange and inspiration base. This finding is in line with the already known and long-term relationships among the Czech parties and their sister parties in Germany, Austria or EP. Despite the fact that the interviewees mentioned the 2008 US presidential race couple of time, the parties mostly watched it on news as something extraordinary. In summary, the research has reported a progressive development in the parties’ public relations. During the campaigns, the work becomes more intense and specialised services are usually outsourced. Despite that, the journalists did not notice an increasing line of professionalized campaigning, but more or less professionalized spokespeople or politicians which could have appeared at present as well as in the past. Moreover, the journalists did not see major differences among the parties concerning the professional quality of the relations with media. Rather, from their perspective, many things were dependent on the personality of each spokesperson. Neither the top politicians have not been becoming much professionalized in the eyes of the interviewed journalists. In their view, there still were countless top politicians who were not prepared for the media’s needs or else were surprised by the journalists’ requests or practices.

Based on the examined data and own field observations, I can conclude by agreeing with Negrine’s statements, that politicians still need to reach, persuade and mobilize the public, but they do so by using both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. Both types of media are trying to reach audience 122 as public in new ways, which enables them to behave as citizens and communicators. With the arrival of new technologies and media tools, the public no longer needs to be a passive mass audience. On the other hand, unchanged remains the need for politicians to find ways to communicate in an effective and persuasive way with voters as citizens. The transformation and professionalization of political communication merely points to the ways in which the fragmentation of the media landscape, the growth of knowledge about how best to communicate, better understanding of what motivates voters, better ways of identifying the needs and wishes of voters and a more cynical approach amongst voters, all add layers of complexity to the essentially simple matter of winning votes. There are other transformations and these indicate much bigger changes than can be contained in the word “professionalization”. Negrine (2008: 195) points out that political communication has been totally transformed by television. Let’s see if internet will do the same. The political leaders have been transformed as well. They are now more aware and knowledgeable of the expectations of the office and public. Transformations point to large, encompassing changes, whilst professionalization points to changes of degrees and to continuities. Professionalization illustrates the process through which change has come. This thesis, grounded for the first time in the conditions of the Czech Republic, describes and systematically summarizes the parties’ communication and its professionalization. Hence, it provides an initial insight into one part of the greater field of the Czech political communication. Certainly, it will be very exciting to see the next development concerning this area in practical politics as well as its reflection in the academic research.

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135

LIST OF INTERVIEWS

2008

Milan Bou!ka, spokesperson of ODS, June 18, 2008. Martin Horálek, spokesperson of KDU-"SL, July 21, 2008. Monika Ho#ení, spokesperson of KS"M, September 12, 2008. Ond#ej Macura, head of "SSD’s PR and marketing department, June 20, 2008. Eva Role$ková, spokesperson od SZ, May 13, 2008.

2009

Karel B#ezina, 2009 EP elections‘ campaign manager in "SSD, October 12, 2009. Jaroslav Polá$ek, 2009 EP elections‘ campaign manager in KDU-"SL, June 12, 2009. Tomá! Pr%!a, 2009 EP elections‘ campaign manager in SZ, September 14, 2009. V&ra 'e(ulková, 2009 EP elections‘ campaign manager in KS"M, September 9, 2009. anonymous source, member of EP elections‘ campaign planning team in ODS, November, 2009.

2010

Petra Hru!ová, spokesperson of VV, September 18, 2010. Jan Jakob, spokesperson of TOP 09, September 16, 2010. Martina Kaderová, spokesperson of KDU-"SL, September 10, 2010. V&ra Karasová, spokesperson of KS"M, September 17, 2010. Martin Kupka, spokesperson of ODS, June 9, 2010. René Kubá!ek, spokesperson of SZ, July 1, 2010. anonymous source, member of campaign planning team in "SSD, December, 2010. anonymous source, member of PR department in "SSD, January 2011.

2011

Erik Tabery, editor-in-chief Respekt weekly, June 8, 2011. 136 Martin Veselovsk!, TV and radio anchor at Czech radio "esk! rozhlas and Czech TV "eská televize, June 6, 2011. Petr Kolá#, commentator at the daily Lidové noviny, September 28, 2011. Jind#ich $ídlo, head of commentators at the daily Hospodá#ská noviny, May 26, 2011.

137 ATTACHMENTS (in Czech only)

138 SURVEY OF PARTY COMMUNICATION AND CAMPAIGNING

Strana Jméno (nepovinné) Oficiální pozice ve stran!

SEKCE I: KAMPA" V KOMUNITÁCH

1. Vyu!ívala Va"e strana b#hem kampan# do plakáty za ú$elem komunikace informací voli$%m? (nap&. billboardy u cest, velkoplo"ná placená inzerce ve m#stech a na ulicích atd.)

Ano (prosím p&ejd#te k otázce 1a) Ne (prosím p&esko$te k otázce 2)

1a. Uve'te prosím p&ibli!n# kolik volebních plakát% bylo po celé republice k vid#ní v dob# kampan#? ______ks

(Pokud si nejste jisti vyu!ijte tuto stupnici:) ne více ne! 10 p&es 10 ale ne více ne! 20 mezi 21 a! 50 mezi 51 a! 100 mezi 101 a! 200 p&es 200

2. Vyu!ívala Va"e strana b#hem volební kampan# slu!eb dobrovolník% p&ípadn# placen( servis na roznos volebních leták% k voli$%m dom%?

Ano (prosím p&ejd#te k otázce 2a) Ne (prosím p&esko$te k otázce 3)

2a. Jaké procento voli$% zhruba podle Va"eho odhadu dostalo leták Va"í strany do po"tovní schránky? % (pokud si nejste jisti, uve'te prosím alespo) odhadované rozp#tí nap&. 2-5%)

3. Sna!ila se Va"e strana b#hem kampan# o osobní kontakt s voli$i nap&. formou náv"t#vy p&ímo u nich doma (tzv. doorstep canvassing)?

Ano (prosím p&ejd#te k otázce 3a) Ne (prosím p&esko$te k otázce 3)

3a. Jaké procento voli$% bylo podle podle Va"eho odhadu zhruba osloveno touto metodou? % (pokud si nejste jisti, uve'te prosím alespo) odhadované rozp#tí nap&. 2-5%) SURVEY OF PARTY COMMUNICATION AND CAMPAIGNING

4. Sna!ila se Va"e strana b#hem kampan# oslovit voli$e prost%ednictvím ve%ejn&ch shromá!d#ní/ mítink'? Ano (prosím p%ejd#te k otázce 4a) Ne (prosím p%esko$te k otázce 5)

4a. V pr'm#ru jak $asto se konaly mítinky v geografick&ch oblastech, kde !ijí voli$i, na které jste se ve své kampani zam#%ovali nejvíce? denn# minimáln# 3-4 krát t&dn# párkrát za t&den minimáln# jednou t&dn# dvakrát nebo t%ikrát za celou kampa( v podstat# jen jednou b#hem kampan#

5. Najala si strana pracovníky (na $áste$n& nebo pln& úvazek), kte%í pomáhali s kampaní vyz&vající voli$e k ú$asti u voleb (tzv. get out the vote campaign)?

Ano (prosím p%ejd#te k otázce 5a.) Ne (prosím p%esko$te k otázce 6)

5a. Odhadem kolik placen&ch pracovník' vyu!ila strana b#hem kampan# a v den voleb?

(Pokud si nejsti jisti, uve)te prosím alespo( odhadované rozp#tí nap%. 20-30, 100- 150)

6. Pokud zapo$ítáte placené pracovníky i dobrovolníky, kolik lidí b#hem pr'm#rného dne pracovalo na tom, aby p%i"lo k volbám co nejvíce lidí v regionu, na kter& jste se nejvíce zam#%ovali?

(Pokud si nejste jisti, uve)te prosím alespo( odhadované rozp#tí nap% 20-30, 100- 150)

SEKCE II: ELECTRONICKÁ KAMPA!

7. Vyu!ila strana b#hem kampan# placen&ch nebo oficiálních slu!eb jednoho z následujících médií? (nap%. byl stran# nabídnut nebo si zakoupila vysílací $as nebo prostor v ti"t#n&ch periodicích?) TV Ano Ne (prosím p%esko$te k otázce 8) Rozhlas Ano Ne (prosím p%esko$te k otázce 8) Printy (deníky, $asopisy...) Ano Ne (prosím p%esko$te k otázce 8) Online zpravodajské servery Ano Ne (prosím p%esko$te k otázce 8)

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7a. Pokud ano, kolik oficiální p!edvolební reklamy bylo umíst"no ve v#$e zmín"n#ch médiích b"hem kampan"? TV Rozhlas Printy Online zpravodajské servery (pokud si nejste jisti, uve%te prosím alespo& odhadované rozp"tí nap!. 10-20, 50-100)

8. Vyu'ívala strana b"hem kampan" telemarketing/telefonní banky jako zp(sob kontaktování voli)(? Ano (prosím p!ejd"te k otázce 8a) Ne (prosím p!esko)te k otázce 9)

8a. Podle Va$eho odhadu jaké procento voli)( zhruba bylo osloveno touto metodou? % (pokud si nejste jisti, uve%te prosím alespo& odhadované rozp"tí nap!. 2-5%)

9. Vyu'ívala strana b"hem kampan" direct mail jako zp(sob kontaktování voli)(? (nap!. dopisy, texty zasílané po$tou p!ímo vybran#m voli)(m prost!ednictvím centralizovan#ch databází) Ano (prosím p!ejd"te k otázce 9a) Ne (prosím p!esko)te k otázce 10)

9a. Podle Va$eho odhadu jaké procento voli)( zhruba bylo osloveno touto metodou? % (pokud si nejsti jisti, uve%te prosím alespo& odhadované rozp"tí, nap!. mezi 2-5%)

10. N"které evropské strany za)aly vyu'ívat po)íta)ov" zpracované databáze voli)(, které umo'&ují efektivn"ji se obracet na jednotlivé cílové skupiny. Do jaké míry vyu'ila Va$e strana tuto technologii v rámci p!ípravy na volby nebo v dob" samotné kampan"? Nevyu'ili jsme (prosím p!ejd"te k otázce 11) P!íle'itostn" jsme pou'ili (2-3 krát) Pravideln" pou'ívám" (jednou t#dn") Velmi pravideln" pou'ívám" (n"kolikrát t#dn") Pou'íváme denn"

10a. Existuje více zp(sob( jak#mi jsou voli)ské databáze vytvá!eny a spravovány v rámci politické strany. Která z následujících mo'ností nejlépe vystihuje zp(sob, jak#m s databází pracuje Va$e strana? Databáze jsou vytvo!eny a dopl&ovány/analyzovány centráln" Databáze jsou vytvo!eny centráln" a dopl&ovány a analyzovány jsou jak z centra tak i z region( Databáze jsou vytvo!eny centráln" a dopl&ovány a analyzovány jsou lokáln" Databáze jsou vytvo!eny, dopl&ovány a analyzovány lokáln" Jiná mo'nost (prosím popi$te)

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10b. Jak !asto jste b"hem kampan" Va#e databáze aktualizovali? (pokud jich máte více, uvád"jte prosím informace pouze k té, kterou jste pou$ívali nej!ast"ji) Neaktualizovali jsme Aktualizovali jsme p%íle$itostn" (2-3 krát) Aktualizovali jsme pravideln" (t&dn") Aktualizovali jsme velmi pravideln" (n"kolikrát t&dn") Aktualizovali jsme denn"

11. Vyu$ívala Va#e strana b"hem kampan" n"jak& typ uzav%eného (my#leno pouze pro !leny strany) internetového nebo intranetového komunika!ního systému? Ano (prosím p%ejd"te k otázce 11a) Ne (prosím p%esko!t" k otázce 12)

11a. Které z ní$e uveden&ch skupin !len' strany spadaly do t"chto „uzav%en&ch“ komunika!ních systém'? (prosím zatrhn"te ty, ke kter&m se skupina vztahovala) zam"stnanci hlavní stranické centrálzy kandidáti lokální zam"stnanci !lenové registrovaní podporovatelé / dobrovolníci v kampani

12. Rádi bychom se také dozv"d"li, jak moc byl pro va#i stranu p%i komunikaci s voli!i b"hem kampan" u$ite!n& internet. Následuje proto tabulka s jednotliv&mi internetov&mi komunika!ními nástroji. Ozna!te prosím k%í$kem na stupnici od 0 do 10, kde 0 = bez v&znamu a 10 = extrémn" d'le$ité, jak& v&znam m"ly tyto nástroje pro volební kampa( Va#í strany.

Nepou!ito 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 tém"% velmi bez d'le$ité v&znamu Officiální web strany Email list(y) E-news/bulletin(y) Stranick" blog(s) Blog(y) leadera kandidátky Sociální sít# (nap$. Facebook) Sdílení videa (nap$. YouTube) RSS %te%ka Twitter SMS/textové zprávy

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13. M!"ete prosím srovnat v#znam technik a nástroj! k oslovení voli$! b%hem kampan%. Pou"ijte prosím &kálu od 0 do 10, kde 0 = bez v#znamu a 10 = klí$ová, extrémn% d!le"itá aktivita.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 bez extr. v#znamu v#znamné Plakáty Letáky p!edávané osobn" Face to face canvassing Ve!ejné mítingy Management databází Telemarketing Direct mail TV Rozhlas Printy/noviny Stranick# web Web (ostatní) Email Twitter/SMS

5 SURVEY OF PARTY COMMUNICATION AND CAMPAIGNING

SEKCE III: !ÍZENÍ KAMPAN"

V této poslední sekci otázek bychom se rádi zab!vali celkov!m "ízením samotné kampan#.

14. S jak velk!m $asov!m p"edstihem p"ed volbami za$ala Va%e strana plánovat kampa& a kdy pak strana kampa& zahájila?

Plánování kampan# Aktivní kampa&

Více ne' rok dop"edu Zhruba rok dop"edu (est m#síc) a' rok p"edem N#kolik m#síc) p"edem Asi m#síc p"edem Pár t!dn) p"edem N#kolik dn) p"edem N/A / 'ádná oficiální kampa&

15. M#la va%e strana centrální komisi nebo skupinu odpov#dnou za vedení a "ízení kampan#?

Ano (prosím p"ejd#te k otázce 15a) Ne (prosím p"esko$te k otázce 16)

15a. Kde byla tato komise/skupina fyzicky umíst#na?

v kancelá"ích strany/ v hlavním sídle strany mimo kancelá"e strany

15b. Jak byste popsal/a slo'ení této komise/skupiny co se t!ká pom#ru zastoupení $len) strany externích poradc)? Pou'ijte prosím následující %kálu, kde 0 = externí poradci p"eva'ovali a 10 = interní $lenové strany p"eva'ovali.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 v#ichni Mix v#ichni externí externist$ %lenové straník$ strany

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16. Jak byste charakterizovali roli p!edstavitel" strany a #len" strany v porovnání s externími pracovníky v oblasti !ízení va$í volební kampan%? Pou&ijte prosím následující $kálu 0 = externí poradci m%li plnou zodpov%dnost za pr"b%h kampan% a 10 = zástupci strany m%li plnou zodpov%dnost za pr"b%h kampan%.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ext. pracovníci strana poradci strany/ext. pln! pln! poradci zodpov!dná zodpov!dní vyrovnaní

17. Pokud budeme hovo!it o roli personálu z centra strany a z kraj", v jakém rozsahu byla podle Vás kampa' !ízena z centra a z kraj" Pou&ijte prosím následující $kálu od 0 – 10:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Lokální centrála organizace strany plnou plnou odpov!dnost odpov!dnost

18. N%které politické strany za#aly vyu&ívat slu&by PR/media konzultant", kte!í jim pomáhají s oblastí vztah" s médii a volební reklamou? Pou&ijte prosím následující $kálu znázor'ujících d"le&itost takov(chto konzultací pro va$i stranu b%hem kampan% do EP. V tomto p!ípad% 0 = bez v(znamu a 10 = extrémn% v(znamné.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 PR PR konzultace konzultace bez extrémn! v"znamu d#le$ité

19. N%keré politické strany si zpracovávají/nechávají si zpracovat pr"zkumy ve!ejného mín%ní (opinion polls) a ohniskové skupiny (focus groups), které jim mají pomoci lépe porozum%t zájm"m voli#". Pokud Va$e strana realizovala takového pr"zkomy, m"&ete uvést jak #asto?

Pr#zkum ve%. mín!ní Focus Groups Nerealizovali jsme Pouze p!íle&itostn% (2-3 krát) Pravideln% (jednou t(dn%) Velmi pravideln% (n%kolikrát t(dn%) Denn%

7 SURVEY OF PARTY COMMUNICATION AND CAMPAIGNING

19a. M!"ete uvést zda si v#zkumy realizovala strana p$evá"n% sama nebo prost$ednictvím nájat#ch agentur? Pr!zkum ve". mín#ní Focus Groups Nerealizovali jsme V%t&inou realizováno stranou V%t&inou realizováno komer'ní agenturou/rami Mix strana a agentury

20. Dal&ím v#znamn#m prvkem novodob#ch kampaní je v#zkum opozice, jeho" cílem je efektivn%j&í sout%" se soupe$ícími stranami. Pou"ijte prosím následující stupnici znázor(ující do jaké míry vyu"ívala Va&e strana této metody b%hem voleb do EP.

V#zkum opozice jsme neprovád%li Provád%li jsme p$íle"itostn% (2 - 3 krát b%hem kampan%) Provád%li jsme pravideln% (ka"d# t#den) Provád%li jsme velmi pravideln% (n%kolikrát za t#den) Provád%li jsme denn%

Opravdu Vám moc d#kujeme za ú$ast v na%em v&zkumu!

8

Podklad pro polostrukturované rozhovory s mluv!ími politick"ch stran v letech 2008 a 2010

1. Téma: organiza!ní struktura Kolik lidí pracuje na tiskovém odd!lení, jak je práce rozd!lena, kdo má jakou zodpov!dnost, jak vypadá b!"n# pracovní den? S kter#mi ostatními odd!leními (analytické, komunikace atd.) v rámci strany spolupracujete? Spolupráce s externími pracovníku nebo agenturami?

Jak se tato struktura zm!ní v dob! volební kampan!?

2. Téma: nástroje Jaké nástroje strana pou"ívá p$i komunikaci s médii? Jak %asto rozesílá tiskové zprávy, po$ádá tiskové konference? Monitorujete tisk?

3. Téma: komunika!ní strategie Kdo ur%uje komunika%ní strategii strany? Jak vypadá, co obsahuje?

4. Téma: osoba tiskového mluv!ího Kdo jsou tiskoví mluv%í, co studovali, jakou mají praxi, kde a jak získali specializaci pro tuto práci?

5. Téma: vliv ze zahrani!í Inspirace praktikami z USA, %ím konkrétn!? Mediální &kolení? Vlastní p'vodní nápady v komunikaci?

6. Téma: spin-doctoring Znáte ten termín? Co znamená? Jsou s ním spojeny negativní nebo pozitivní konotace? Cítíte se vy jak spin-doctor? Jsou v (esku?