The problem of media visibility of politicians and political parties is at the heart of the interest of political communication researchers. Theoretical reflections and empirical studies focus on numerous media presence determinants. At the same time, attempts to identify the media visibility of political actors in specific periods, such as the particularly important for democracy period of the election campaign preceding the parliamentary election, are relatively rare. This study is intended to fill that gap. It proposes a simple research tool in the form of a media visibility index, which makes it possible to calculate and compare the visibility of electoral committees in selected media during the election campaign. The tool was used to determine the visibility of electoral committees taking part in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Poland in two TV news services “Wiadomości” and “Fakty”, and three weekly opinion magazines “Newsweek”, “Polityka” and “Sieci”. The data to calculate the index was gathered through manual content analysis of the studied media conducted six weeks before the day of the parliamentary elections.

The scale of disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has been called infodemic. It involved disseminating various messages and theories that had a significant negative impact on limiting the spread of the disease but also exacerbated existing social antagonisms and emboldened and radicalised fringe groups. Infodemic, to a large extent manifested in social media, also fostered the formalisation of denialist circles, who transferred their sometimes very aggressive sentiments from the web to the real world. Negation and contestation of the pandemic were partly born spontaneously but were also created as part of postmodern hybrid activities. Consequently, narratives of infodemic led to difficulties in functioning health services, but above all, to an increase in morbidity and mortality related to COVID-19. The consequences of the infodemic would also include various economic effects, such as increased medical expenses for unvaccinated people or turbulence in the labour market.

China’s modern power is based on traditional sources: territory size, demographics, economy, and army. An important factor of power is soft power, which is based on culture, foreign policy (including economics), and values. Chinese soft power resources have an old tradition and the possibility of using them is large, and most importantly, in the current international environment, they can use them to gain and maintain an advantage over competitors. The article presents the elements of China’s soft power that determine its advantage over other countries and the weaknesses that may limit its influence. It largely determines the research methods used: statistics and system analysis. The latter method makes it possible to determine the scale of China’s influence and the chances of using them in the 21st century.

This article examines changes in Polish local press at the turn of the second and the third decade of the 21st Century, directly or indirectly related to the coronavirus pandemic. For years, statistics have been showing declining sales of printed press. This is mainly the case of the general-interest newspapers – national, regional, and local alike. Internet media platforms are increasingly important and often take over the role of the leading local media. Due to their limited reach, local publishers felt the losses from reduced advertising revenue and copy sales even more acutely than national publishers. Local press and small publishing teams struggled to cope with the impact of the pandemic and demand for digitization. So, what will the local press look like in the following years? How will the pandemic change the face of the local press? This study addresses these issues based on findings from desk research, case studies, and content analysis of relevant media. The result of the research is the confirmation of changes in the field of local communication, especially in its channels. The printed press arouses less and less interest among recipients and ceases to function as the fourth estate.

In turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are many challenges to a country’s international reputation. During the pandemic, Sweden, especially in its first stage, was frequently presented by international media outlets, sometimes negatively. Such adverse reporting may have imposed some reputational threats on Sweden. This research aims to investigate Swedish communication through a short-term perspective of public diplomacy (its day-to-day dimension) with the foreign public during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research was based on qualitative content analysis of official statements made by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the Swedish Institute’s Instagram account, and interviews with the Swedish Institute employees. The main argument of this research is that in Sweden, day-to-day communication within PD served as a tool supporting the crisis management process. The research question refers to whether Sweden, through the activity of the Swedish Institute, used some elements of its public diplomacy conduct to react to the coronavirus pandemic. The hypothesis states that the day-to-day dimension of public diplomacy can be associated with the crisis management process.

This article examines the community radio scene in Hungary, focusing on two stations in Budapest: Tilos Radio and EPER Radio. The authors explore the unique characteristics and principles of community radio in Hungary through desk research and interviews with key players in the community radio movement conducted in October 2022. They highlight how these two stations, while differing in their specific forms of community broadcasting, share a commonality of being independent and offering an alternative to mainstream and public radio programming. Sustainability was identified as a significant challenge facing community radio stations in Hungary, primarily because of unfriendly media policy promoting voices supporting the government. The article also provides characteristics of the community radio concept and the historical context of community radio in Hungary, noting that this country was the first in Central and Eastern Europe to incorporate the third broadcasting sector into media law.

The study’s main aim is to look for relationships between political beliefs and political subjectivity of grey voters (over 65). Political beliefs contain a motivational element, mainly due to being embedded in the values and needs of the respective individuals. This can affect the consciously created place of the citizen within the political system in different directions. The orientation of the study on the grey voters may be cognitively engaging due to the several sources related to historical events that took place in Poland. Political beliefs were conceptualized through dimensions on a left-right scale, where xenophobia and religious fundamentalism were diagnosed in the area of cultural beliefs. In contrast, acceptance of capitalism and anti-welfare were diagnosed in the area of economic beliefs. Political subjectivity was diagnosed using an original tool, whose preliminary analysis made it possible to distinguish three factors of the construct: political initiative, political sense, and identification with the political system.

The adoption of smart card technology in various parts of Africa has reduced electoral malpractices, resulting in election credibility and acceptability. However, its use in Nigeria’s electoral process is believed to have downsides. The paper investigates how adopting smart card technology reduced electoral malpractices during the 2019 presidential election, making it more transparent, credible, and reliable than the traditional technique. It uncovers the flaws of the technology in Nigeria, including card reader malfunction, delays in accreditation and voting, the inability of the INEC staff to operate the technology efficiently during voting, and election postponement, among others. It is therefore recommended that the INEC improve public awareness of the use of the technology and train its staff.

The Social Credit System (SCS, 社会信用体系, shèhuì xìnyòng tĭxì), is an extremely interesting, ultimately nationwide pilot project, consisting of establishing the system of social rating, which, based on data collected over decades and stored both analog and with the use of state-of-the-art technologies will create profiles of citizens and businesses in the People’s Republic of China. The system focuses on four main spheres – national enterprises and economy, society, the judiciary, and public administration. It is in them that a higher level of social trust and security will be ensured, law regulations better observed, corruption eliminated, and proper transparency guaranteed. In analyzing the issue of the Western world’s attitude to the mechanism of digital surveillance and control of business and social activity in China, I should seek answers to the following questions, intriguing from the cognitive and practical perspective: Which of the above interpretations seems to be closer to the truth?; can the SCS have, at least partially, a universal character in the European Union, especially in the societies with a different system of values and the countries with a different political system than the one of the PRC?

The article aims to explain the importance of 5G technology in pursuing power and shaping the international competition between two superpowers: the USA and China. Accordingly, the research focus of this article is to explain how and why 5G technology is being used by China and the U.S. as a key instrument in their growing geopolitical rivalry. The study is framed within the theoretical approach of offensive realism. It is based on the primary assumption that superpowers like China and the United States tend to increase their power not only by expanding their armed forces and territorial conquests but also by using every possible opportunity to do so. The article researches two questions. What is the importance of 5G technology in the rivalry between China and the U.S.? How has the development of communication technologies influenced countries and their ability to shape the international environment? 5G technology is considered more than just the next generation of wireless connectivity, as it goes beyond traditional forms of use and addresses a new category of users. It is a structure intended to facilitate a new category of goods and services: smart cities, autonomous vehicles, automated factories, digital services, and robotization of decision-making processes.

The article attempts to address the issue of the need to distinguish sub-disciplines in security sciences. A scientific discipline is a basic and lowest-order category within the classification system of individual fields of science. Security science in Poland has been classified as one of many disciplines in the field of social sciences. The problem was formulated as a question: based on which criteria can sub-disciplines be distinguished in the security sciences? The aim is to identify the basic sub-disciplines in security sciences and to propose a criterion for their distinction. Critical literature analysis and research design were adopted as the primary methods. There is no established criterion for the division into individual sub-disciplines in Poland. The author proposes to distinguish sub-disciplines based on the following criteria: theoretical, practical, types of institutions, and levels of organization of different security sectors. It is based on the assumption that security sciences require a clarification of the substantive scope within sub-disciplines through which the discipline’s identity can be built up, and research can be carried out as part of further scientific work.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Romania faced the imminent threat of an escalation of the armed conflict. The geographical proximity of military operations caused this, as the Black Sea location and the self-proclaimed republic of Transnistria located in neighboring Moldova. For this reason, Romania, like other European countries, faced the consequences of the outbreak of war and met economic, political, and military challenges. After the outbreak of war, the Romanian government had to take appropriate steps to help Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees who crossed the border into Romania. Although Romania adopted a distant attitude towards Ukraine, it did not block any aid projects and acted following NATO’s strategic actions. The outbreak of war in Ukraine contributed to rapid changes in the scope of the Romanian army. Several decisions were made to purchase new equipment and strengthen the armed forces.

Book Review: Bogdan Góralczyk, Nowy długi marsz. Chiny ery Xi Jinpinga, Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog, Warszawa 2021, pp. 338.