Two distinct countries? Poland in the context of the election campaign - framing differences between public and private broadcasting stations

The presentation attempts to describe and explain the differences in news reporting of the two most important Polish tv channels, the public and the private one, in the context of the 2021 presidential campaign in Rzeszów. The study focuses on news reports and online information. The main differences in framing and news selection between public and private broadcasting stations in Poland are particularly evident in political events, even if they are only of a local nature. This may sometimes give the recipient the impression that the news reporting comes from two distinct countries. I will attempt to examine to what extent public and private broadcasting stations use biased information and which one is the least biased news source, including infotainment and politainment (Dörner 2001; Luginbühl 2017:337). I would also try to analyze if there are differences between traditional tv-news and news available online on Websites of broadcasting stations.. Therefore, my main aim is to study if multimodality and language efficiency are tools to influence the audience and to shape broadcaster profiles. My study is important in terms of the much discussed split in the Polish society. There seem to be even two distinct communities of practice (Hauser/Luginbühl 2010:11) that are defined by the given TV stations. The results of the study not only underline the differences between the two broadcasting systems (private and public) , but also the specific Polish situation, as opposed to global trends. 

References: Dörner, A.(2001): Politainment. Politik in der medialen Erlebnisgesellschaft. Frankfurt/M. Hauser, S./Luginbühl, M.(2010) «Medien – Texte – Kultur(en). Anmerkungen zur kontrastiven Medienanalyse aus linguistischer Perspektive», in Luginbühl, M./Hauser, S.(Hrsg.) Beiträge zur Fremdsprachenvermittlung, Sonderheft 16/2010. Landau: Verlag Empirische Pädagogik (MedienTextKultur. Linguistische Beiträge zur kontrastiven Medienanalyse), S.7-16 Luginbühl,M.(2017) «Massenmedien als Handlungsfeld II: audiovisuelle Medien», in Roth, K. S., Wengeler, M., und Ziem , A. (Hrsg.) Handbücher Sprachwissen. Berlin:de Gruyter (Handbuch Sprache in Politik und Gesellschaft), S.334-353.