Network analysis approach for exploring dementia representations in the Slovak media.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study is to test the network analysis method on a corpus of media texts with the aim of systematically analysing media representations of dementia in the Slovak media. METHODS: A word-network was modelled from the corpus of media documents using social network analysis. 244 text-documents (web, print, TV and radio) from 2015 to 2018 (inclusive) were retrieved from the Newton media database using the search words 'dementia' and 'Alzheimer's disease'. RESULTS: Twelve clusters of co-occurring concepts corresponding to individual themes were identified. The results of the analysis provide evidence that biomedical themes such as 'medical diagnosis', 'prevalence of dementia' and 'memory disorders' possess the greatest representational strength and centrality and account for roughly two-thirds of the whole corpus. CONCLUSION: Results of the present study provide valuable insights into the representation of dementia in the Slovak media but also demonstrate how media representations can be studied using the innovative approach of network analysis.

East-West European project: transforming and shaping research through collaboration.

This article tells the story of the journey made by an international research group of social psychologists in their collaborative projects carried out over a number of years after the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989. The article explores some relations between the aims of research conducted during a period of rapid political, social and economic change in Central and Eastern Europe, and the ways these studies were shaped and transformed through collaboration. It shows how the collaboration of researchers in the team affected the development of theoretical concepts and methodological ideas over the years, as well as how the team learned from mistakes. Collaborative efforts cannot be viewed separately from the content of research. Moreover, this international collaborative research has shown that the relationships between institutional and cultural changes cannot be understood by means of comparing phenomena across different countries but by case studies in individual countries.