Polish Political Science Yearbook

11

Authors: Juliusz Sikorski

The scale of disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has been called infodemic. It involved disseminating various messages and theories that had a significant negative impact on limiting the spread of the disease but also exacerbated existing social antagonisms and emboldened and radicalised fringe groups. Infodemic, to a large extent manifested in social media, also fostered the formalisation of denialist circles, who transferred their sometimes very aggressive sentiments from the web to the real world. Negation and contestation of the pandemic were partly born spontaneously but were also created as part of postmodern hybrid activities. Consequently, narratives of infodemic led to difficulties in functioning health services, but above all, to an increase in morbidity and mortality related to COVID-19. The consequences of the infodemic would also include various economic effects, such as increased medical expenses for unvaccinated people or turbulence in the labour market.

12

Authors: Rafał Klepka

The problem of media visibility of politicians and political parties is at the heart of the interest of political communication researchers. Theoretical reflections and empirical studies focus on numerous media presence determinants. At the same time, attempts to identify the media visibility of political actors in specific periods, such as the particularly important for democracy period of the election campaign preceding the parliamentary election, are relatively rare. This study is intended to fill that gap. It proposes a simple research tool in the form of a media visibility index, which makes it possible to calculate and compare the visibility of electoral committees in selected media during the election campaign. The tool was used to determine the visibility of electoral committees taking part in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Poland in two TV news services “Wiadomości” and “Fakty”, and three weekly opinion magazines “Newsweek”, “Polityka” and “Sieci”. The data to calculate the index was gathered through manual content analysis of the studied media conducted six weeks before the day of the parliamentary elections.

16

Authors: Jolanta Kępa-Mętrak

This article examines changes in Polish local press at the turn of the second and the third decade of the 21st Century, directly or indirectly related to the coronavirus pandemic. For years, statistics have been showing declining sales of printed press. This is mainly the case of the general-interest newspapers – national, regional, and local alike. Internet media platforms are increasingly important and often take over the role of the leading local media. Due to their limited reach, local publishers felt the losses from reduced advertising revenue and copy sales even more acutely than national publishers. Local press and small publishing teams struggled to cope with the impact of the pandemic and demand for digitization. So, what will the local press look like in the following years? How will the pandemic change the face of the local press? This study addresses these issues based on findings from desk research, case studies, and content analysis of relevant media. The result of the research is the confirmation of changes in the field of local communication, especially in its channels. The printed press arouses less and less interest among recipients and ceases to function as the fourth estate.

18

Authors: Łukasz Gołota

The article aims to explain the importance of 5G technology in pursuing power and shaping the international competition between two superpowers: the USA and China. Accordingly, the research focus of this article is to explain how and why 5G technology is being used by China and the U.S. as a key instrument in their growing geopolitical rivalry. The study is framed within the theoretical approach of offensive realism. It is based on the primary assumption that superpowers like China and the United States tend to increase their power not only by expanding their armed forces and territorial conquests but also by using every possible opportunity to do so. The article researches two questions. What is the importance of 5G technology in the rivalry between China and the U.S.? How has the development of communication technologies influenced countries and their ability to shape the international environment? 5G technology is considered more than just the next generation of wireless connectivity, as it goes beyond traditional forms of use and addresses a new category of users. It is a structure intended to facilitate a new category of goods and services: smart cities, autonomous vehicles, automated factories, digital services, and robotization of decision-making processes.

21

Authors: Agnieszka Turska-Kawa

The study’s main aim is to look for relationships between political beliefs and political subjectivity of grey voters (over 65). Political beliefs contain a motivational element, mainly due to being embedded in the values and needs of the respective individuals. This can affect the consciously created place of the citizen within the political system in different directions. The orientation of the study on the grey voters may be cognitively engaging due to the several sources related to historical events that took place in Poland. Political beliefs were conceptualized through dimensions on a left-right scale, where xenophobia and religious fundamentalism were diagnosed in the area of cultural beliefs. In contrast, acceptance of capitalism and anti-welfare were diagnosed in the area of economic beliefs. Political subjectivity was diagnosed using an original tool, whose preliminary analysis made it possible to distinguish three factors of the construct: political initiative, political sense, and identification with the political system.

21

Authors: Maciej Walkowski

The Social Credit System (SCS, 社会信用体系, shèhuì xìnyòng tĭxì), is an extremely interesting, ultimately nationwide pilot project, consisting of establishing the system of social rating, which, based on data collected over decades and stored both analog and with the use of state-of-the-art technologies will create profiles of citizens and businesses in the People’s Republic of China. The system focuses on four main spheres – national enterprises and economy, society, the judiciary, and public administration. It is in them that a higher level of social trust and security will be ensured, law regulations better observed, corruption eliminated, and proper transparency guaranteed. In analyzing the issue of the Western world’s attitude to the mechanism of digital surveillance and control of business and social activity in China, I should seek answers to the following questions, intriguing from the cognitive and practical perspective: Which of the above interpretations seems to be closer to the truth?; can the SCS have, at least partially, a universal character in the European Union, especially in the societies with a different system of values and the countries with a different political system than the one of the PRC?