Barries for consolidaton of local democracy: presentism and recentivism

Constructing collective identity is one of the most crucial challenge for political power which seek legitimization. Pursuing such aim political actors choose different tools due to theirs ideological affiliation and political roots. One may observe in local Poland that depoliticization process play its role. This have a great impact on local communities. That is why local political elites make barriers for disputing history by using two techniques: presentism (is the view that neither the future nor the past exist – past times must meet present political requirements) and recentivism (only present time exist). Such practice of political power makes barriers for consolidation of democracy.

Candidates in the elections for the President of Rzeszów in June 2021 in regional daily newspapers of the Subcarpathian province

The article presents the results of research devoted to the presentation of candidates for the presidential election in Rzeszów in June 2021 by two of the largest regional dailies published in the Subcarpathian region – “Gazeta Codzienna Nowiny”, and “Super Nowości”. The concept of mediatization of politics provided an adequate theoretical framework to describe the involvement of the media in the political process. The research was quantitative and qualitative. In the first case, issues such as the number of texts devoted to candidates, their area and mutual proportions were examined. The qualitative approach was aimed at analyzing the emotional overtones of the examined units – paragraphs – and determining the candidate’s image of a positive, negative or neutral character presented in them. The results of the research made it possible to indicate certain likes and dislikes of both analyzed titles.