The paper presents the methodological framework of a doctoral research project focused on the strategic construction of the issue of abortion in the communication of Czech pro-life organizations and the Catholic Church on social media. The main aim is to demonstrate the potential of multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) for examining the interplay of textual, visual, and symbolic elements in online campaigns and their impact on shaping emotions and audience attitudes. The theoretical foundation lies in T. van Dijk’s critical discourse theory, complemented by a systematically developed coding book for the categorization of narratives, ideological frames, and visual strategies. Particular attention is paid to methodological issues of sample selection and representativeness, the operationalization of categories, and approaches to systematically handling a large corpus of qualitative data. The paper also discusses the limitations of applying MDA in visually oriented campaigns and the ethical aspects of working with sensitive topics. It proposes an applicable methodological procedure for the analysis of multimodal political and religious discourse in the digital environment.

Keywords: multimodal discourse analysis, methodology, social media, pro-life, Czech Republic, T. van Dijk