Slovak media

The article reviews international standards on the specific right of correction or reply in inter- national law in the context of freedom of expression and freedom of the media. It also provides examples from national law and professional standards of the press in Europe. Part of the article is devoted to the right of reply as envisioned in Article 8 of the Slovakia’s Statute on Periodic Press and News Agencies. It looks into relevant criticism brought in 2008 by the international organizations and traces changes made in this article in 2011. Then it comes to the analysis of the current draft, which, in particular, intends to restore the status quo established prior to 2011.

Témou dizertačnej práce je legislatívny rámec mediálneho systému Slovenskej republiky s ohľadom na slobodu médií. Zameriava sa na formovanie úpravy regulácie prístupu k masmédiám a regulácie obsahu masmédií po roku 1989. Pomocou analýzy a interpretácie právnych predpisov, judikatúry, návrhov zákonov a súvisiacich dokumentov skúma premeny vybraných inštitútov masmediálneho, respektíve tlačového práva, ktoré upravujú postavenie médií, prípadne jednotlivé práva a povinnosti novinárov, a to v dlhodobej perspektíve. Výsledkom by malo byť zachytenie vývojových trendov vo vzťahu medzi pozitívnym právom a normatívnou ideou slobody médií.

Kľúčové slová: sloboda prejavu, sloboda médií, mediálny systém, konsolidácia slobody médií, mediálne právo, tlačové právo, regulácia prístupu k masmédiám, regulácia obsahu masmédií, právo na opravu, právo na odpoveď

This paper offers an overview of Slovakia’s media landscape, putting it into its demographic, economic and political context. It gives a basic
overview of the country’s media structure, including details on media markets; media regulation and regulatory authorities; and journalism culture. The aim is to present this information in such a way as to facilitate comparison across the ten nations studied by the
project. The findings are based on secondary academic sources and a series of elite interviews conducted in Bratislava in July and August
2010. The report was last updated in August 2012.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only marked global events in 2020, but also left its marks on news media functioning. The Coronavirus has become a thematic agenda of the newscast of the last month in global, national, and regional media. While radio and TV stations came up with special programmes on the subject of the pandemic, in newspapers, on the Internet and in mobile applications there appeared specialized sections and columns, in which media published news items thematically related to the Coronavirus. Some TV stations made their archives and other usually paid services available free of charge, and mobile operators offered their customers unlimited data. However, the approach to the charging a toll for the Internet content has also changed.  While some media made all content available to their readers, others unlocked, for instance, news items and various content devoted to the pandemic (comments, analyzes, information graphics, etc.). The purpose of the paper is to point out different approaches to the strategy of imposing a charge on the content of news websites during the COVID-19 pandemic, on the example of the most widely read Slovak news portals.

Objectives: A controversy has been sparked in Slovakia when in January, 2015, more than twelve-thousand military reservists sent letters to official authorities with a refusal to fight in the case of mobilization. The officials were astonished, as in past nine years they have received only 58 letters of such refusal. The influx of reservists’ letters was a result of an online campaign against Slovakia’s involvement in potential NATO military operation in Ukraine. This study demonstrates that using of micro-securitization type of frames in online campaign represents a potential for achieving a successful micro-mobilization towards a specific political behavior. Furthermore, this study shows how important information, which contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon, is revealed in the user-generated discussions in the aftermath of the controversy. Thus, analyses of the online content contribute to academic understanding of the contemporary forms of political communication.
Methodology: Specifically, this study employs mixed-methods approach by combining qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis to explore the mentioned user-generated discussions.
Results: The analyses performed in this study illuminated certain aspects of the case that were not discussed by Slovak analysts and pundits. In the case of Slovak reservists, an important factor that played a role is cultural congruence of the micro-securitization frames.
Conclusions: Beyond just looking at the specific case, this study connects the concept of online micro-mobilization to micro-securitization. Such connection can be applicable for other cases. Furthermore, this study outlines a process of transcending a macro-security issue into a micro-security concern. Similar processes deserve further theoretical and empirical attention. Hence, this article has implications for future studies and building of communication theory.
Keywords: Slovak political communication, micro-securitization, user-generated content, discourse analysis, content analysis
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HOT MOSCOW AUGUST 1991 ON THE PAGES OF THE SLOVAK NEWSPAPERS(ANALYSIS OF PRECEDENT PHENOMENA). The article gives an overview of the fatal actions in the Soviet capital city in August 1991 and sheds some light on the way they were displayed and commented on the pages of the Slovak daily newspapers at that time. We will pay attention mainly to the cases of functional use of precedent phenomena as well as their interpretation and perception by Slovak audience.