Follow the Money. International Journalistic Investigations Related to Financial and Tax Crimes

The article presents a new phenomenon among the activities of investigative journalists, which consists of exposing financial and tax crimes as a part of international cooperation of reporters and editorial offices. Large I-Teams, the activities of which are usually coordinated by international or national journalistic organizations, using data from confidential informants or existing regulations on access to public information, expose the practice of hiding huge sums of money from tax services by influential public figures. The innovative nature of these activities is a precedent in the history of muckraking. The following methods were used in the study: analysis and criticism of the literature in the field of international journalistic investigations, as well as analysis of sources and comparative analysis.

Prime Minister Candidates’ Communication Management on Facebook During Parliamentary Elections Campaign 2019 in Poland

The article presents the results of a research, which was carried out in the last month of the parliamentary election campaign in 2019. In this research, the processes of communication conducted by candidates for deputies, Mateusz Morawiecki and Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, representing two rival parties (PiS and KO), were analysed – both candidates were simultaneously appointed as potential presidents of the Council of Ministers. The research was carried out using the qualitative method, taking into account the content of the profiles of both candidates on Facebook. Research results are part of the stream of analyzes, devoted to the importance of social media during election campaigns, as well as in the processes of political communication conducted by politicians.

Electronic Media Management With the Use of Blockchain Technology in Scholarly Communication

Blockchain is a revolutionary technology, which has the potential to fundamentally change many areas of activities, including scientific research and scholarly communication, together with the publishing industry. This paper focuses on the blockchain’s potential to transform scholarly communication and research in general. It highlights, how blockchain can touch many critical aspects of scholarly communication, including transparency, trust, reproducibility and credit. Moreover, blockchain could change the future role of every stakeholder, and it could have an important role in all research processes, not only scholarly communication. The paper shows that blockchain technology has the potential to solve some of the most prominent issues the scholarly communication is currently facing, such as issues around costs, trust and credibility, openness, and universal accessibility to scholarly information. The research presents basic information about blockchain technology. Based on the literature, an attempt was made to create a model, how to use this technology as a disruptive innovation in scholarly communication.

Dehumanization in the Internet Comments on Polish News Portals. Identification and Classification of the Phenomenon, on the Example of the Reception of Franz Timmermans

 The paper addresses the issue of the main types of dehumanization in the Polish right-wing portals (wPolityce, DoRzeczy, Republika) and the conceptualization of hypotheses concerning the relationship between framing and the content of comments on the Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans. The premise of the paper is that an article and its comments form a specific entity and in tandem constitute its essence (global sense) together. In the literature review, some types of dehumanization were distinguished: animalization, biologization, objectification, subhumanization, demonization. An insectization was added as an extremely hateful form of de-humanization. Then the role of political hate speech and selected forms of dehumanization in the portals was determined by specially prepared indicators. Comments in the right-wing identity portals like wPolityce and Republika are specific with the noticeable role of insectization and demonization. Subsequently, the dehumanization comments in right-wing portals were compared with the comments on TVPInfo and Gazeta.pl. The latters, in comparison to right-wing portals, turned out to be similar when it comes to dehumanization as such and political hate speech, but contained a limited number of dehumanization forms. Frames based on conflict were consistently used in all the portals. However, the right-wing portals were distinguished by a much greater role of moral frames, which, combined with expressive linguistic forms, constituted strong frames.

In-Audible Experts? Managing the Perception of Expert’s Statements in the Era of Multimodal Media, on the Example of Selected Material From an Information Service ‒ Pilot Study

The article discusses the perception studies of experts commenting political events on television. The aim of the study was to determine to what extent the expert hypothesis works in the era of multimodal communication and information noise. In addition, an attempt was made to identify elements of viewers’ attention management, such as: attractors and visual distractors, and to determine the importance of emblems of expertise in qualifying people who speak to this group. Two research techniques were used in the study: eye tracking and surveys, which allowed for comprehensive analysis of multimodal message. Research shows that in the case of such messages, viewers usually use the face-caption-face scheme, with the face being the attractor for both groups – a single person and a crowd. The elements of the background turned out to be distractors, which can be of great importance in the perception of expert statements, since in the media we recently tend to place the expert outside, in a dynamic surrounding. At the same time, the analysis showed that expert emblems, e.g. title or clothing, are an indicator of the speaker’s belonging to this group. Despite of this, expert statements were considered by the respondents to be aggressive, non-substantive and not adding anything to their knowledge of politics, which supports the recognition of Tom Nichols’s thesis about the death of experts and their expertise, and at the same time about the inadequacy of the hypothesis referring to experts in the age of multimodal media.

The Audiovisual Producer – Concept and Legal Position

The production of audiovisual forms is organisationally and economically complicated. The issues “inside” audiovisual work, as well as the huge costs of production and distribution, or the potential income from their dissemination in various fields of exploitation, may cause conflicts between authors, producers, and users. That is the reason why balancing these interests requires a rational intervention of the legislator. The aim of the considerations is to find an answer to the question about an audiovisual producer and their legal position in the light of legal acts and practice. There are very few opinions on this subject and the article aims to fill the existing cognitive gap. The research problem is presented by law regulations, using the formal and dogmatic method.

Twitter as an Image Management Tool

Twitter is becoming an increasingly popular tool used for political communication, especially in election campaigns. It is also an important element of image creation. Due to its functionalities, it allows for quick, low-cost reaching of recipients. As part of the article, over 130,000 entries from the period of the 2019 European Parliament election campaign in Poland were subject to quantitative analysis. The activity of 397 people running from six national election committees was analyzed. Every second candidate applying for a mandate as an MEP used this service. The article is an attempt to answer whether and to what extent popularity on Twitter translated into the electoral result.

Nudity in Social Campaigns in the Light of Attention Economy

This article offers a quantitative analysis of social campaigns showing naked bodies, with the focus on what social problems are portrayed with the use of nudity and whether the images of nudity are of a direct or indirect character. Other questions posed in this article are whether nudity has a gender, what does it symbolize and what associations does it generates in the recipient. My research shows that nudity (primarily female nudity) is deployed in campaigns of a wide thematic array and is endowed with various meanings.

The article attempts to map and systematise the changes and reactions triggered by the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in media marketing (MM) of VOD platforms operating in Poland. The aim of the authors is to capture general trends and regularities that appear in the industry practices, as well as to indicate, firstly, the most meaningful elements of MM (the product offer, distribution, price, and marketing communication), and secondly – to identify the VOD platforms that excelled in these changes. The paper, using the content analysis method, is the first to present a cross-sectional research perspective on the MM-VOD-COVID-19 line, aiming not only to initially estimate the actual media modifications caused by the pandemic, but also to classify them in order to lay the foundation for further research in case this type of situation recurs.