%0 Journal Article %T Ośrodek Badań Prasoznawczych jako fenomen %A Pisarek, Walery %J Zeszyty Prasoznawcze %V 2017 %R 10.4467/22996362PZ.17.002.6768 %N Tom 60, Numer 1 (229) %P 11-20 %K CECOM, Press Research Centre, media research, media research in Poland, media research in 20th century %@ 0555-0025 %D 2017 %U https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/zeszyty-prasoznawcze/artykul/osrodek-badan-prasoznawczych-jako-fenomen %X Press Research Centre as a phenomenon The Press Research Centre in Cracow is presented here as a phenomenon or something extremely unusual. The circumstances of its creation in the Polish People’s Republic in 1956 were already quite unusual. A small group of young people were allowed to set up a research laboratory within the framework of the big press publishing house. They were wise and modest enough to invite prominent and well-known university sociologists, psychologists, linguists, economists, historians, lawyers, etc. to cooperate with in the study of mass communication. After three decades, the small provincial laboratory became a research institute with a national range, recognizable globally among researchers of mass media and public communication. It has enriched with the significant publications almost every field of knowledge on periodic mass communication and, in particular, the history of the press (re-release of the first Polish newspaper from the 17th century), social and psychological factors of the reception of the media (based on opinion polls), descriptions of the content of periodic mass media (based on systematic content analyzes), linguistics (the first Polish frequentative dictionary of the language in newspapers and description of the propaganda language of the 1970s), the press law (compendium: law on the press), the economics of the periodical media (“Press as a commodity and enterprise”),