https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3977-2393
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ABSTRACT
This paper examines a “parasitic discourse behavior,” a strategy used by the Czech antisystem media. A working hypothesis about the nature of parasitization was drawn from close reading: the antisystem media, while creating a false impression of mainstream journalism, attempt to reframe events with a set of recurrent associations. This hypothesis was tested with a combination of three quantitative methods: (1) Keyword analysis for identification of prominent topics, which are further analyzed by (2) Companions and (3) Market Basket Analysis (MBA). Companions, a new method comparing occurrences of keywords in time, reveals antisystem’s imitation of the mainstream, and MBA shows its production of distinct associations to frame trendy news items. As a proof of concept, four instances of parasitization were identified during May–August 2020 – topics that attracted public attention for a sufficiently long timespan to come under the radar of our methods: Belarus presidential elections, followed by brutality on the protesters, the police killing of George Floyd in the US, and the subsequent events against systemic racism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the dispute over the WWII monuments in the Czech Republic. Associations accompanying all these topics weave a set of consistent narratives: anti-West, pro-Kremlin, and a strong anti-Ukrainian stance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Czech anti-system (ANTS) portals can be characterized roughly by the following features: (1) The majority of ANTS media outlets maintain an opaque ownership structure, making it challenging to identify the individuals or entities behind them (the only exception is Sputnik News, which openly acknowledges its affiliation with the official Russian press agency). Several ANTS portals, such as Česko aktuálně, reveal domain ownership information but remain silent about the publisher’s identity. Moreover, there are instances where multiple portals appear under the same ownership (e.g., ePortál and EUportál). Some portals registered under company names, like New World Order opposition, do not disclose media ownership data. Aeronet is associated with a company located in the Trump Tower in New York City, but this company is not registered in the state of New York. (2) Anonymous authors and editorial team. (3) ANTS often lack proper citation of sources or provide sources that are either irrelevant or questionable. (4) ANTS are known for disseminating disinformation and pro-Kremlin propaganda. They promote various conspiracy theories, including anti-Islam theories, the “Deep State Theory” alleging the existence of a covert government within a government, the “Theory of New World Order,” and disinformation tailored to the Czech Republic. Additionally, they propagate claims of covert geopolitical operations conducted under a false flag. A detailed description of recurring themes in ANTS portals is provided by the Czech Independent Journalism Foundation https://www.nfnz.cz/dezinformacni-a-konspiracni-media/ (accessed Aug 28, 2023). The recurring ideological undercurrent in ANTS using MBA is examined in Cvrček and Fidler (Citation2022).
3 The term frame is used differently from Tannen Citation1993, which refers to speech participants’ existing expectations. In this paper the term is used to refer to a set of associations repeatedly linked to a topic, presumably with an intention to later create expectations (Tannen’s frame), which would become part of readers’ knowledge schema.
4 The ANTS servers used for this study are portals classified by Šlerka as political tabloids (parlamentnilisty.cz, prvnizpravy.cz, irucz.ru, zastavmezlodeje.com, necenzurujeme.cz, global.cz, ireporter.cz) and almost 40 portals classified as antisystem servers (the majority of articles come from sputniknews.cz, pravdive.eu, novarepublika.cz, pravyprostor.cz, infokuryr.cz, ceskoaktualne.cz, nwoo.org, protiproud.cz, czechfreepress.cz, svobodnenoviny.eu, euportal.cz, aeronet.cz, ac24.cz, casopis-sifra.cz, zvedavec.org, eportal.cz). Note that some of the URLs might not be accessible as the Czech authorities in February 2022 decided to shut down some of the pro-Russian web portals after the start of Russian aggression on Ukraine. The texts are still available in the ONLINE corpus.
5 MS servers: seznamzpravy.cz, irozhlas.cz, novinky.cz, idnes.cz, denik.cz, lidovky.cz, ceskenoviny.cz, impuls.cz, reflex.cz, respect.cz, ihned.cz, nova.tn.
6 We are aware of a number of differences between online and offline journalism. However, the exact composition of this reference corpus used is hardly relevant to the resulting analysis. The primary aim of the analysis is to compare MS and ANTS, the corpus of offline journalistic texts serves only as a reference point to which we compare the texts from both media classes. The choice of the reference corpus was driven by pragmatic concerns: the two main segments of online journalism (MS and ANTS) are the subject of the analysis, so we do not have online journalistic texts that would be usable for the reference corpus. We therefore used data from offline journalism, which is the most similar to the texts under study in terms of genre-register characteristics and which represent a general usage of written contemporary Czech.
7 As “strong and regular” are considered those associations that co-occur with the seed word with a certain frequency and dispersion across texts (i.e., it is not a co-occurrence appearing only in one or a few texts). MBA can quantify these features using support, confidence and lift indices. (Cvrček and Fidler Citation2022)
8 This term is associated with communism: e.g., Rudá armáda ‘The Red Army’ and Rudé právo ‘The Red Justice/the Red Right’ (the newspaper of the Communist Party of the Socialist Czechoslovakia).
9 The suspected assassination plan was reported by the investigative journalist Ondřej Kundra (magazine Respekt). It was investigated by the Czech Security Information Service. Russia denied the allegations. The report of the attempt and the ensuing conflict between Czechia and Russia resulted in the Czech government’s expulsion of two Russian diplomats. The assassination did not materialize in the end.