Zina Kumok | Feb. 24, 2011
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| Photo by Ryan Dorgan |
| Visiting researcher Lukasz Przybysz shows two campaign posters reading, "I rode my bike here," and "I lived here," demonstrating the candidate's desire to be one with the people. He gave his talk about U.S. and Polish campaigns Wednesday as part of the school's Research Colloquium. |
Przybysz presented “Contemporary Political Communication in the United States and Poland,” a summation of his research in Bloomington and in his home country, Poland. He is visiting this semester from the University of Warsaw, where he is a graduate student working at the Institute of Journalism.
Przybysz says his research is important because many politicians and political advisers try to emulate and imitate what they see in the United States and transfer it to Poland. But the differences between the two countries make it impossible for people to assume that one political campaign style will work for two drastically different nations.
Poland is an emerging democracy, a country where people do not have strong ties to political parties. Przybysz also pointed out the cell phone and Internet usage differences between the two. Cell phone use in the U.S. is at 91 percent, compared to 77 percent for Poland. Internet use is 77 percent for the U.S. and only 56 percent for Poland.
Because of these differences, the use of social media for presidential campaigns is not as common as it is here. Przybysz described how each of the three main Polish presidential candidates used social media in his campaign. He talked about the three candidates (Komorowski, Kaczynski and Napieralski) and compared their use of Facebook, Twitter, their own websites and blip, a Polish Twitter-like website.
The best example of a candidate’s use of social media came from Grzegorz Napieralski, a younger left-wing politician whose website streamed videos two or three times a day, Przybysz said.
Przybysz compared Obama’s famous campaign slogans of “hope” and “change” and said that those types of identifiable words would not work in Poland. He said there was no clear link between any of the candidates and a definite idea or phrase.
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| Photo by Ryan Dorgan |
| Przybysz said chief differences in the two styles are use of celebrity support, negative ads and boasting, common in the U.S. but rare in Poland. |
He then compared avid celebrity supports for Obama, like Beyoncé wearing an Obama T-shirt. He also showed celebrities encouraging young voters with “Vote or Die” T-shirts. He said of that type of celebrity support “it isn’t very popular” in Poland.
While Przybysz described Obama’s campaign methods as “modern,” that style of political campaigning has not transferred well to his home country. When a candidate named himself the president of Poland in ad, he said the Polish people strongly disapproved of the ad, which seemed to be boasting.
“‘He named himself the president before the election,’” Przybysz said of people’s opinions about the ad.
Another difference in the was the lack of negative ads on the Polish side. This was due primarily to the April 2010 plane crash in which the then-current president Lech Kaczynski was killed.
Because of the plane crash, which also killed more than 90 people, the candidates agreed not to run negative ads. This was especially poignant since Lech Kaczynski’s son, Jaroslaw, ran in the 2010 election.
After Przybysz finished his presentation, he opened the floor to comments and questions.
Roy W. Howard Professor David Weaver said that voting, at least in the U.S., is based on more than just the campaign styles of the candidates. He gave an example of how if the economy does not significantly improve by the 2012 presidential election, Obama might be voted out by disgruntled citizens.
Przybysz replied that he is focusing on political campaign styles because Polish politicians seem to be determined to copy American political candidates. But he also explained that he is more concerned about the communication aspect of those campaigns, not the political side.
“I’m a journalist, a PR specialist … I’m not an expert in political systems,” Przybysz said.
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| Photo by Ryan Dorgan |
| Przybysz is focusing on the communication aspects of political campaign styles because Polish politicians seem to be determined to copy American political candidates, he said. |
Johnson said that Przybysz’s presentation may help American journalists understand the type of political system better by seeing how political systems work in other countries.
The Research Colloquium provides researchers and scholars a venue to present current work and garner feedback from colleagues. Check out the semester schedule online.
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