The Attitude of Poles to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: a Content Analysis of the Polish Publication Rzeczpospolita

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the results of monitoring the materials published on the pages of the electronic version of the popular Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita (RP) about russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The problems, dynamics and nature of the coverage of russia’s aggression against Ukraine, as well as the reaction of Polish society and the international community to the war in Ukraine have been studied. During the content-analytical study, 73 selected publications posted on the RP website for the period from February 24 to June 18, 2022 were analyzed. Monitoring technologyas sumes that the identified publications that correspond to the research topicare copied and designed in accordance with the internal requirements of the study, fully translated from the original language into Ukrainian to identify all aspects and content of a particular publication, supplemented by annotation (short abstract) according to the current thematic classifier and are entered into the database with a complete bibliographic description of the publication in the appropriate fields. In addition, analysts determine the tone of the publication in relation to the object of study, in ourcase - to Ukraine. With the beginning of russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita has immensely increased the number of publications about Ukraine.The main reason: the concentration of Ukrainian issues in the European information space. Journalists actively comment on all events in the warring Ukraine, and a detailed analysis of the international situation is available thanks to a wide range of authors, including specialized experts, scholars, intellectuals, foreign analysts.The perception of Ukraine in the daily Polish socio-political media is formed on the basis of socio-political events in Ukraine and their consequences, which affected the general political situation in the world. Such images of Ukraine as neighboring country, affected country, democratic country are singled out. They are clearly different from the image of russia: aggressor country, authoritarian country, this statement is often substantiated by excursions into history.

Keywords

• monitoring, mass media, content analysis, poland, rzeczpospolita, russian invasion of ukraine