This paper aims at empirically testing the usefulness of Galtung’s model of peace and war journalism in the analysis of the coverage of the 2020 US presidential election by Polish television news programs. The work also aims to investigate whether similar mechanisms can be used in the coverage of elections as in the coverage of wars. We explore through what perspective – peace or war journalism – the election was covered and what specific mechanisms of these models were used. We also discuss whether the war journalism or peace journalism coverage perspective of the event was influenced by polarization and the political affiliation of the Polish media and how these factors influenced the way the US presidential candidates were presented.

Politics as a strategic game: framing of 2019 Polish election campaigns in television news

The research on the information media coverage of elections deals with a concept of strategic game framing. Despite the major importance of the media in elections, there are few systematic research on the media framing in Poland. Using a content analysis of two television news programmes, the goal of the study was to evaluate the frequency of strategic game framing in comparison with issue framing and to test the hypothesis about the relationship between application of the frames and different ownership types in the media (public vs private). The findings show a key role of strategic game framing in the news programmes covering European Parliamentary elections and Parliamentary elections of 2019 in Poland and refute the hypothesis that ownership type of media predicts the frequency of analysed frames.