What is it about?
The article explores in a detailed and empirical way how "Gazeta Wyborcza", the most important Polish daily in the early 1990s, reported on groups who lost out during Poland’s 1989–1993 transformation. It shows two types of coverage: factual reporting, which described the social costs, and opinion-driven commentary, which shaped readers’ attitudes. Humanitarian commentary often presented the losers’ situation as natural or inevitable, while economic-liberal commentary tended to dismiss or undermine protests against market reforms. The latter mainly served an ideological function of legitimizing the neoliberal system by portraying the transformation losers as responsible for their miserable fate.
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Why is it important?
The analysis aims at tracing the roots and origins of the Polish populist revolt of 2015 in the events of the early 1990s, when the losers of transformation were symbolically excluded and denigrated. It created resentment and provoked a backlash against the liberal system in a way that is reminiscent of other populist revolts around the world.
Perspectives
The article and analysis is important for me personally, as I was in my teenage years during the transformation of the early 1990s and had the privilege of belonging to the part of society that benefited vastly from it. My family held liberal views, and my parents have always voted for the liberal center or the left. I wanted to explore in more detail the fate of those who were not so fortunate.
Jan Sowa
Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Four Discourses of (Mis)Representation: Systemic Change Losers in Gazeta Wyborcza between 1989 and 1993, August 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004732940_006.
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