Between 11 and 15 of July 2021, the prestigious IAMCR international conference took place under the theme "Rethinking borders and boundaries: Beyond the global/local dichotomy in communication studies". Due to the pandemic, this year's conference was held remotely, which gave participants from all over the world a chance to share observations and conclusions from their research. Two researchers from the Laboratory of Media Studies attended the event, dr Karolina Brylska and prof. Tomasz Gackowski.
Dr. Karolina Brylska's paper entitled "The role of strategic narratives in shaping collective memory: the case of 2018 Polish-Israeli crisis (at a glance)" was presented within the panel "Crisis, Security and Conflict Communication Working Group". The paper presented a case study carried out through comparative qualitative analysis within the framework of rhetorical, content, and discourse analysis based on several materials from the main TV stations in Poland, specifically the main news editions from TVP 1 TVN, Polsat, and TV Trwam. The discussed study was a fragment of a broader research conducted by members of the Laboratory of Media Studies during the period of the growing Polish-Israeli conflict at the turn of 2017 and 2018, when the amendment to the law covering the functioning of the Institute of National Remembrance was underway in the Polish Parliament. The assumed purpose of the amendment was to more effectively combat disinformation and propaganda spread to the Poland’s disadvantage in the historical context, where the notion of "Polish death camps", which was used in the video published by the Ruderman Family Foundation, was at the centre of the political debate at the time. The public debate was widely commented on in the Polish media, giving rise to a study into how individual television stations addressed and presented the issue.
Prof. Tomasz Gackowski's paper written in cooperation with Grzegorz Kowalczyk, M.A., entitled "Occupy Wall Street 2.0 - #GME Short Squeeze as a revolution through social media" was part of the panel "Mediated Communication, Public Opinion, and Society #MPS". It was inspired by an event that took place in late January 2021. Using the popular social media site Reddit, users caused one of the largest short squeezes in the history of the capital market on GameStop stock, amplifying the stock price upwards by almost 30 times. The impetus for such an impressive action was a comment from hedge fund Citron Research, which included predictions that the stock would decrease in value. However, thanks to the swift and organised action, the shares increased many times instead of falling, with consequences for the entire stock market. According to the researchers, this event created a new narrative about the struggle between the so-called Main Street and Wall Street, i.e. retail investors and professionals who make their living by trading stocks. The paper presented was based on a discourse analysis of posts published on Twitter and memes used by internet users, usually identified with the retail investors' side, in the context of the mentioned event and how they interpreted it.
Final work is currently underway to present the more in-depth results of the two studies mentioned.