Prague, Nov 30 (CTK) – Czechs live in social bubbles in which they confirm their own views, and the division of society in opposing camps is likely to last and may even escalate, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes today, based on a project that surveyed which online news servers followers of political parties follow.
The survey showed that supporters of extremist parties mostly prefer alternative media, mainly Parlamentni Listy, Eurozpravy and Protiproud, which are often connected with the promotion of Russian propaganda and unverified news and whose owners are unknown.
These online media are followed by voters of the Communist Party (senior opposition KSCM) the opposition Dawn and the groupings that splintered off it, National Democracy (ND) and Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), as well as the extra-parliamentary far-right Workers’ Party of Social Justice (DSSS) and the We Do Not Want Islam in the Czech Republic movement.
On the other hand, supporters of traditional democratic parties follow mainstream media such as the DVTV news channel, the CT24 news channel of the public Czech Television, the iDnes website of the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) and the Respekt weekly.
The survey was carried out by LN’s website, Lidovky.cz, and it concerned data of 360,000 Facebook users who liked a certain political party or movement.
It showed that the most pro-European parties whose members do not identify with alternative media are the Pirates, the Greens, the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and the right-wing TOP 09. On the contrary, the most anti-establishment groupings are ND, SPD and the DSSS.
The ANO movement of Andrej Babis is different from all other parties, which seems to be a result of the fact that ANO has no clear political ideology, authors of the survey write.
The results of the survey confirmed the fact that the Social Democrats (CSSD) are divided. In short, there is the liberal camp led by Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and the conservative and populist camp supporting President Milos Zeman who left the CSSD several years ago.
A similar split in two camps can be seen in the small Freedom Party with its libertarian stream and the stream looking up to the British Eurosceptic party UKIP.
Sociologist Jan Hartl said the division in society is not new as it was apparent even before the massive use of the Internet and the situation may further escalate.
“The biggest threat that our society and rich societies in general are facing seems to be that the common bond creating social solidarity would disappear,” Hartl told LN.
The U.S. presidential election in which Donald Trump has won proved how society is getting fragmented and turns into isolated bubbles, the paper writes.
“We lived in social networks even before, however, we were not aware of it very much. We simply make friends with people with similar views and a similar social status,” said Josef Slerka, an expert in social networking websites.
Political analyst Josef Mlejnek said the situation in the country may still get worse as the populists try to establish themselves in the mainstream media. The Prima TV was an example of this, he said.
It turned out earlier this year that Prima TV managers ordered that the news coverage should present refugees as a threat.
Slerka told LN that many servers are used for information laundering, yet there also are many frustrated people through whom such information is spread.
He said emotional messages are the most popular on Facebook. All media try to be emotional to some extent to attract attention, but the Parliamentni listy news server is based on it.
