Project goals

The mission of GLOWIN is to establish a long-term platform for disseminating insight on the global flows of political information. We seek to develop an internationally recognized signature project of political science at Charles University. In doing so, we will build on the rich theoretical and methodological tradition founded by Karl W. Deutsch, a Czech-German Charles University graduate and one of the founders of modern political science in the 1950s, who brought into it the study of communication and information flows.

In more concrete terms, the fundamental objective of GLOWIN is to create the first systematic map of the flows of political information worldwide. The map captures how frequently individual countries are referred to in online media in other countries across the world. We also estimate the sentiment and topics of the news referring to them. In spite of the significance of this agenda, this simply has not been done before. GLOWIN’s key purpose is to start filling this massive gap. Building on this uniquely rich new data, we develop a comprehensive interdisciplinary framework to account for the flows and identify factors that impede them. Our research is guided by a set of propositions rooted in political science, economics, and the sociology of media.

GLOWIN seeks to bring insights about the flows of political information to a broader audience, beyond academia and the scholarly community per se. In line with that, we map the flows of information on key topics driving public debates across Europe and the world, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate, and the Russia-Ukraine war. We are happy for repeated opportunities to present our insights to the national media.

Partners and funding

GLOWIN is based at the Institute of Political Studies at Charles University, Prague. It is funded by the PRIMUS research programme (2021-2023). The research group is led by Michal Parizek, GLOWIN principal investigator, and consists of several post-doctoral level researchers and a wonderful group of student research assistants. GLOWIN has very close ties to the Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP), a six-year Charles University Center of Excellence programme, also based at the Institute of Political Studies. Several GLOWIN members are members of PRCP, and the core idea behind GLOWIN originated in our work in PRCP.