Parliamentary Speech as Communication Tool

One of the assumed roles of parliamentary speech is the communication channel between parties and voters. This paper seeks to explore what speeches are communicated by political parties on their websites and facebook accounts. It is hypothesized that the structure of “shared” pieces of speeches is not the same as whole set of speeches provided by party MPs and the difference is affected by personal and biographic characteristics of MPS (leadership, seniority, gender) and characteristics of issues (salience, issue ownership) and party characteristics. The analysis covers all parliamentary parties in the Czech Republic since in electoral term 2013 – 2017. Czech party system is very fragmented including parties from various families what enables to study role of party characteristics. The inclusion of whole electoral term may inform us about potential dynamics in using parliamentary speeches in party communication.