Thematic words in the Slovak pre-election campaign on Facebook

Abstract The aim of this paper is 1. to describe/specify and compare thematic orientations of 735 pre-election microblogs published on the virtual profiles of major six Slovak political parties and 2. based on this description and comparison to identify and sketch features of Slovak political discourse. The conceptual and methodological frame consists of thematic words, that is, autosemantics above the so-called h-point, and the qualitative analysis of these thematic words. The identified features of the general Slovak pre-election communication include: populist communication, ego presentation of the party, leader or the candidate, conflict between government parties and opposition parties, image of Slovakia as a country facing troubles but also hiding potential to solve them.