What is it about?
In 2015, presidential and later parliamentary elections in Poland brought the right-wing and nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) to power. The party’s victory came as a surprise, since most polls and expert analyses predicted the win of the then-ruling center-conservative party, Civic Platform (PO). The following year a similar pattern – polls indicating the success of centrist candidates, followed by surprise triumphs of right-wing agendas – could be witnessed in the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, and in the presidential elections in the United States. In this chapter, I focus on the two main contextual frames for the book: firstly, the current political and media landscape in Poland, the UK, and the US, each informed by their democratic traditions. Secondly, I show the main debates about contemporary “tabloidization” in these countries. It is, after all, a term that has been used at least since the 1990s, well before the dominance of the internet, and news spread via social media. The chapter provides a brief outline how news media function online today, and what made them so.
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Why is it important?
The findings show that studying political coverage and reader comments in, usually ignored, online tabloids is key to understanding people's democratic choices at the ballot box.
Perspectives
In my research I found that you should definitely not dismiss online tabloids as political news sources – their mix of celebrity, politics and comment sections helps them align with the political mood of the public.
Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer
Akademia Leona Kozminskiego
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This page is a summary of: How Did We Get Here?, June 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004692688_002.
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