Political dispute in Poland in the eyes of Facebook slacktivists

In: Przegląd politologiczny: kwartalnik = Political science review, Heft 1, S. 23-37

Abstract

This text is a report from research on selected aspects of the crisis of democracy in Poland. The problem of the analysis focuses on questions about the attitude of the participants in the political dispute towards opponents, the possibility (and method) of reaching an agreement and the assessment of the situation. I chose the area of analysis considering social media a transparent platform for political dispute (especially during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic). The essence of the research was to find respondents clearly involved in the political dispute. I choose Facebook, among the other things, because this platform creates a place of many actively operating thematic groups which gathers supporters of particular political options. This fact facilitate reaching respondents with the preferred characteristics. The survey was conducted in the period 13/12/2020 to 25/01/2021 on the basis of the author's form consisting of 15 questions. The research sample consists of 220 respondents: 126 women and 94 men aged 14 to 72 years old. Appropriately for the nature of the variables and the sample size, the contingency coefficient and the Kruskal-Wallis test were calculated, together with the statistical significance of the obtained results. All analyzes were performed on the basis of SPSS software version 26 and Microsoft Excel.