Framing the russian-ukrainian war in polish media: shaping public opinion

Abstract

Today's media serve not only as communication channels but also as platforms for reflecting and shaping public opinion. Amidst the Russian-Ukrainian war, examining the vectorization of public opinion helps to grasp the overall perception of events and the level of support for Ukraine. Employing statistical analysis methods (using Python), anchored in framing theories (E. Hoffman) and agenda-setting (M. McCombs, D. Shaw), the author delves into the nuances of how perceptions of the Russian-Ukrainian war are shaped. This involves analyzing various approaches to interpreting events and conceptualizing reality based on political agendas and historical biases. Notably, emphasis is placed on the construction of a semantic field around key terms ("war," "death," "victory," "fear," etc.), which reveals the emotional tone of messages and the development of an algorithm guiding the audience's interpretation of reported events. Focus is given to the utilization of meta-tags as a strategy for responding to audience queries and search engine algorithms (specifically, Google), which essentially reflect the keywords used by the audience in their search queries. The term "war" entered meta-tags post-2015, but textually emerged in 2021. Analysis of statistical data provided by the State Statistical Service of Poland, coupled with an examination of the media and political literacy levels of the Polish populace (via surveys and subsequent data analysis), helps uncover the correlation between audience media literacy levels and the popularity of specific thematic areas within the "War in Ukraine" category. Notably, there's a surge in the popularity of the Polish Anti-War Movement group on Facebook, underscoring unresolved historical conflicts between Ukraine and Poland, such as the Volyn tragedy.