The thesis of the text is, that growing up and surviving in totalitarian society (People’s Republic of Poland - PRL) had a profound effect on the mentality of Poles. Many authors – sociologists, linguists, and psychologists alike – have noted that living in a world created by totalitarian language determines and deforms the perception of reality, along with the categories in which the social world is perceived and described. This is precisely what I will argue in this paper.

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The aim of this study is to sketch the most representative opinions and assessments of political and media elite representatives, and then place them within the framework of a discourse model regar-ding public media in the Polish public space. It concerns, principal-ly, the period from December 2015 to April 2016, which constituted the key period of radical change in the sphere of ownership and management of public media as well as political, administrative and financial supervision over them.

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The paper presents selected positions emerging in debate over the causes and effects of trust in institutions that has been going on for several decades. One of the key issues is the question of the balance between trust, ne-cessary for the efficient functioning of the democratic system, including public institutions, and the distrust of citizens, necessary for their social control. The above question becomes particularly important in a situation of low public trust in government and growing popularity of radical social and political movements. According to many researchers, the failure of the existing forms of institutionalization of distrust poses a significant threat to the current social and political order.

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The author analyzes the antagonistic consequences of the remembrance policy pursued by the Law and Justice Party in relations with Israel, Ukraine, Germany, Russia and international public opinion. He points to the growing internal dispute over the legitimacy of the system of the Third Polish Republic after the turn of 1989. The author believes that the policy of memory is addressed mainly to foreign partners, but achieves effectiveness only in internal politics in the form of consolidation of the electorate of traditionalist and nationalist groups. Tha author binds the hypertrophy of the remembrance policy with a departure from liberal democracy towards the rule of individuals with strong authority, pointing to three cases outside of Poland: Russia, Hungary and Serbia.

The aim of the paper is to look at the baptism of Poland as a one of the elements used to built Polish national identity. The foucus is on the Piast era in Polish history and the role which baptism played in incorporating Poles into latin civilistation. The articles also discusses the modern references to importance of 10th and 11th century events in building 21st century of the national identity discourse.

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The choice of “post-truth” as the OED’s 2016 word of the year spawned a large number of academic and popular texts. Some authors considered genocide denial to be an example of post-truth rhetoric. This study analysed the emerging literature on the subject and identified the notion of “indifference to truth” as a key defining characteristic that was distinct from neighbouring concepts. User comments to four online Newsweek Polska articles concerning the 1941 Jedwabne massacre of Jews were then scrutinized through the conceptual lens of indifference to truth. As a result, five types of post-truth rhetoric were constructed, identifying, tentatively, new forms of online genocide denial: (i) Explicit Indifference, (ii) Unsubstantiated Fabrication, (iii) Unconcerned Contradiction, (iv) Political Instrumentalization, and (v) Gratuitous Perversion.

The  paper is an analysis of historical issues – with particular emphasis on the problems of the slaughter of Volhynia – in the discourse on Ukrainians and Ukrainian immigrants in the Polish Internet.  The paper was realized using CAQDAS software tools based on source material collected in autumn 2016.

The paper tackles issues related to selected both ethical and practical aspects of conducting research among persons with disabilities and their relatives that constitute a vulnerable social group. The author analyzes its consequences in the research process, discusses the significance of the research problem undertaken both for the development of academic knowledge and for research participants, and analyzes the conditions for obtaining informed consent. Limits of sociological interview and researcher’s engagement are also discussed.

The subject of the article are Polish-Belarussian relations in the Białystok region in the second decade of the 21st century, twelve years after the passing of the bill on national and ethnic minorities and regional language. I discuss the changes brought about by the bill, how it is perceived by leaders of the minority, and its possible influence on the sense of national identity among Belarussians in Poland. In the second part of the paper I describe the main conflict between the Polish majority and the Belarussian minority, centered around the memory and commemoration of the “damned soldiers”, and of one of them in particular: Romuald Rajs, alias Bury.

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the reasons why Polish immigrants in Iceland want to apply for Icelandic citizenship. As a result of the analysis, four main motivations for adopting Icelandic citizenship were distinguished: 1) the possibility of visa-free travel to the USA; 2) applying for citizenship "just in case"; 3) obtaining rights that only the Icelanders have and 4) the ability to decide about the fate of the community in which immigrants live. The analysis is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews carried out in Iceland in 2014.
 

The article discusses the implementation of the Chinese model of transformation and development in post-socialist Southeast Asia, namely, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. It argues that during the systemic transformation, all the above-mentioned countries have widely used the model. The text consists of four parts; first, it describes the essence of post-socialist transformation; second, it analyzes the Chinese model of transformation and development based on the concept of post-socialist developmental state; third, it overviews the transformation in Asia; fourth, it illustrates how the Chinese model was adapted in post-socialist Southeast Asia.

The establishment in June 2014 of the so-called Islamic State (Daesh) in Iraq and Syria, in particular its rapid success territorial, including support, which began Daesh enjoying among some circles of radical Middle East, but also in many European countries, it was a shock for both for of the establishment's rulers in the region and for Western leaders. In order to prevent Daesh from spreading to other countries in the region, Barack Obama's administration organized a Global Coalition Against Daesh. In these actions against the spread of Daesh Russia and Iran was also included, but the main goal of both countries is to prevent the fall of the regime in Damascus. The loss by Daesh majority territory in 2017 does not mean the elimination of the organization radicalism of the Middle East. There are however some new flashpoints, including those related to the Kurdish issue, as well as the problem of radicalized fighters returning to their countries of origin.

The aim of the debate was to look at what patriotism and nationalism in modern Poland are. The starting point for the discussion was a research carried out jointly by CBOS and Collegium Civitas in June 2017, Patriotism and nationalism in the minds of Poles. In the first part of the debate guests discussed different approaches to defining patriotism and nationalism and their mutual relationship. The second part was devoted to public discourse referring to these two concepts. In the last part of the panel guests discussed patriotism among young people, with particular emphasis on university students.