Abstract
For the very first time the president of the Czech Republic was elected directly by the citizens. The electoral campaign was very extensive, expensive and long.
Moreover it brought many new electoral and campaigning trends to the country; especially we could observe the increasing importance of social networks in campaign and fundraising (both strongly inspired by US and French Presidential Elections). And it showed very interesting changes in voting patterns and behaviour.
The main goal of this paper is to introduce the whole process and focus on the second round – duel between Miloš Zeman and Karel Schwarzenberg and emphasized the foreign influence and inspiration. We use comparative approach to describe Czech campaigning style but underline the foreign influence, we also want to discuss if we can talk about the process of Americanization (e.g. the spots showed clear inspiration in US presidential videos etc.).
We want to answer following research questions: What was the decisive moment in the campaign? What were the effects of campaigns? Did the televised debates played crucial role (the format of debates was inspired by UK and US elections). Was the campaign based on issues or would Mr Zeman won just thank to demographics (and increase of leftist voter base).
And what role played social networks, such as facebook, google plus and youtube.