FOREIGN WAR,LOCAL WIN? : The invasion of Ukraine through the lens of onlinepolitical campaigns in the Czech Republic

Abstract: In 2022, Russia started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This act had created turmoil outside of Ukraine’s border and politicians around the globe took this as a chance to promote themselves and their values. This thesis follows how was the war used in the Czech Republic during Senatorial, Municipal, and Presidential campaigns. To do so, a qualitative analysis of multimodal content uploaded to individual politicians and full-party Facebook and Twitter profiles has been conducted. The author argues that a phenomenon discovered in journalism called “media domestication” can be applied also to the field of political communication. Each party and politician has constructed the war in their own way to present their values while sharing the content, due to the fact that in their communication, different elements of the war have been used. This allows its own interpretation to fit the agenda of the sender of said communication.