Lex TVN, or Polish politicians at war with the media and Joe Biden

This is undoubtedly one of the most commented political topics of recent weeks. Lex TVN. What it is. It’s a parliamentary draft of amendments to the media law, the proceedings of which coincided with the expiration of the license to broadcast the TVN24 television station. Is the topic heating up citizens online? If so, how much?

Lex TVN. What is it about and how do Internet users react?

The topic of the TVN24 station’s concession stirs emotions, as evidenced by the high emotional arousal of Internet users. We examined the discussion of the so-called Lex TVN across the web (not only social media, but also comments under editorials and on forums and blogs and elsewhere). This is a total of almost 180,000 opinions of Internet users. The chart below illustrates the number of statements on the subject online and the average daily intensity of emotional arousal.

Contexts of negative discussion on Lex TVN

As is standard with the topic of media repolonization, the key contexts for negative discussion are: free media, freedom of speech, independent media. A lot of discussion was devoted to foreign capital in the media (here, too, the context is about private business, the civilized world, the owner of TVN). However, the citizen’s right to access the media and to reliable information was pointed out. As standard, criticism went in the direction of the ruling party, the public media were slashed (context: propaganda tube, brainwashing, dark people). Also standard in this type of discussion is extensive reference to other current policy issues. This is another typical clash of tribes in the digital world.

In terms of discussion venues, we recorded the most anger on news portals, i.e. in conversations among Internet users under editorials (level of almost 40%). The most joy, on the other hand, appeared on Facebook. There, many posts and content were published under which people cheered the opposition in taking action to defend their favorite TV station.

In general, however, the dominance of negative emotion is noticeable in all media, although the level of emotion saturation = 50% was not exceeded in any of the sources.

Conclusions

In 2020. Poland has dropped as many as 11 positions on the list of the strongest national brands (Soft Power Index). It seems that Lex TVN is another unnecessary and potentially dangerous image crisis for the country. Such events have a direct impact not only on polarizing citizens and fueling further conflicts. They cause more tangible losses – declines in the rankings of the strongest brands-countries (e.g., Country Index, in which Poland fell 11 notches to position 55 in 2020). The situation around Lex TVN – even if it’s just a holiday substitute topic – could scare off potential investors and damage our foreign policy.

From the point of view of surveys of conversations among Internet users, this is another topic in a whole sea of political topics to stir up the electorate online. It can also be a completely surrogate issue, thrown in by politicians for the vacation season to stoke extreme emotion. There is also no denying that the topic has somewhat run out of steam in recent days.

The defense, according to the opposition, of the so-called “free media” does not break through as strongly in the online world. The issue can also be considered on another level. The ruling party has a plan to win the next election. It can do this with TVN24 (it has succeeded many times), but it may not succeed in the absence of Internet control. Perhaps the next installment of the battle for control in the media will be in this space. The station, which is the subject of Lex TVN, will become a forbidden fruit once the new law is passed. This means that its popularity – contrary to the assumptions of the new law – is likely to soar.