Still more about history than about the present – picture of Russia, Germany and Ukraine in the Polish media in the second half of 2013

Abstract

The paper aims to present the image of Poland’s neighbours, namely:
Russia, Ukraine and Germany, presented in the Polish media between July
and December 2013. To obtain a possibly complete final image, a database
of textual news articles was created, and its content was gathered from many
various on-line sources, chosen due to their popularity and wide spectrum
of political views. The preliminary dataset consisted of 8096 articles. The
analysis of the final dataset was conducted by applying a mixed-method
methodology, employing CAQDAS (QDA Data Miner and Wordstat).
The results of the analysis showed that all the Polish media were focused
mainly on neighbouring countries and tended to depict them in rather dark
colours; moreover, a surprisingly large share of statements mentioning
Germany, Russia and Ukraine were focused on historical issues, mainly of
the Second World War period. The results of the research lead to emergence
of new research hypotheses: to what extent the image of foreign countries
was a reflection of social moods in 2013 and an indicator of the upcoming
parliamentary and presidential election results? Was it mainly a product of
the publishers aiming to influence the readers’ political choices? Regardless
of which of the above hypotheses is true, it can be assumed that the media
image could be applied in the prediction and analysis of international relations
strategies employed in particular countries. Evidence for the reasonableness
of this hypothesis is provided by the analysis of the current priorities of public
diplomacy in Poland.