Communicating Defence in Slovakia and the Czech Republic: Mapping Actors and Narratives online
Communicating Defence in Slovakia and the Czech Republic: Mapping Actors and Narratives online

Author(s): Martin Brezina, Peter Dubóczi, Matej Kandrík, Veronika Krátka Špalková, Tomáš Kriššák
Subject(s): Media studies, Government/Political systems, International relations/trade, Security and defense, Politics and communication, Comparative politics, Studies in violence and power, Social Informatics, ICT Information and Communications Technologies, Geopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies, Russian Aggression against Ukraine
Published by: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Keywords: Slovakia; Czech Republic; anti-Western actors communicating defence themes; information space; social media; geopolitical sentiment; political actor; Russia; Ukraine; War in Ukraine;
Summary/Abstract: Slovakia has a much larger number of anti- Western actors communicating defence themes than the Czech Republic. There is a significantly higher penetration of anti-Western and pro-Russian narratives in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic. Slovak anti-Western actors are the best-performing group in our study. They consistently gain significantly more reactions, shares and comments than pro-Western actors in Slovakia or any actor in the Czech Republic. The Czech information space is predominantly negative towards Russia, the Slovak towards the West. Most posts in the Slovak infosphere were anti-Western in their geopolitical sentiment. The Czech infosphere was different in that most posts with negative sentiment were about Russia. The Slovak infosphere is much more clustered than the Czech infosphere. This is because of the stronger anti-Western leaning of Slovakia and because Slovak actors are more effective in communicating defence themes than their Czech counterparts. NATO was a significantly bigger topic in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic. While in the Slovak dataset there were almost 600 posts concerning NATO, there were less than 400 in the Czech Republic. But both countries had slightly prevailing negative geopolitical sentiment towards NATO. Following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the war dominated public discourse for most of 2022. Consequently, the majority of the content collected for this research concerned the war in Ukraine. Other prominent defence-related topics included military cooperation (training and weapons deliveries) and NATO, but even these topics were most often mentioned in the context of the war in Ukraine.

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