Political Overreach in Poland: New Administration vs. Old

Background:  Public outrage surrounding government restrictions on the media, including correspondents’ access to government representatives, has been building over the past several months in Poland.

Research Question:  Is the political party currently in power limiting the media’s ability to report accurately about government actions? If so, how does this behavior differ from the previous administration?

Hypothesis:  Recent outcry surrounding media restriction issues is probably not indicative of an entirely new problem existing in Poland. Political parties that were previously in power also placed questionable limitations on Poland’s news outlets, and many sources have claimed that the ruling Law and Justice Party is attempting to gain back some of the influence that the previous, more liberal party had within Polish news sources, rather than crossing a line that has never been touched or drastically reducing reporters access to government decisions.

The difference now could be that Polish citizens are more aware of these events, and the stories also get more coverage from foreign outlets because the EU and the Law and Justice Party are at odds with each other. In terms of tracking information sharing by non-government, non-news affiliated individuals in Poland, analyzing twitter and facebook posts may be an important second part of this SNA study. For now, we will focus on part 1 - finding out what SNA can tell us about the government’s relationship with media now and with the last party in power.

Course of Action:

1. Conduct survey with Poland’s most influential news outlets. Extract information regarding which individuals from this administration and the previous administration correspondents had access to. The identities of the survey takers need not be apparent in the dataset.
1. Question should include:
1. Who gave them helpful information and facilitated transparent government proceedings? Did the officials wield significant power in government decisions?
2. Many gov’t officials who are not in the highest positions may be interesting to take note of. Officials at the middle or lower levels of the power structure may have high betweenness because correspondents may use them to get information about their boss who is probably less accessible to news personnel.  
2. Create two, 2-mode network data sets
1. One 2-mode data set will showcase the ties between current government officials and their connections to each media outlet (not the individuals within the outlet).
2. The other 2-mode data set should display connections between the officials who were in office during the previous administration and their ties to media outlets (again, not the individual reporters).
3. For each of the two data sets, there should also be an attribute data set
1. This information should include the job title of each government official, how much influence the official is perceived to have within his/her administration, what the political leanings of the official are purported to be, as well as demographic information such as age, gender, ethnic background, hometown, location of education.
3. Determine what the key differences are in how media personnel as a whole has interacted with officials from each administration.
1. Compare density of connections between media groups and party 1 with the density of connections between media groups and party 2.
4. Depending on what the data analysis renders, it may be wise to go back to the survey and look at the identities of the news people who answered the questions.
1. Special attention may need to be paid to media correspondents who have been at the same job or reporting on similar issues during both administrations, as more follow-up questions may need to be done with them to get a sense of how access to government information has changed overtime.
2. If the first survey does not engender useful information, it may make sense to do another survey or to took at the data in a different way. For instance, focusing more on the news people as individuals and looking at which correspondents have the highest Eigenvector could be helpful in figuring out which reporters we may need to ask additional questions of.

Complication:  This analysis requires extensive cooperation from media outlets in Poland. There are obvious logistical obstacles such as language barriers and the fact that these reporters may not have time to take long surveys or be able to easily recall all of the sources they’ve received helpful information from in the government.

On a more nuanced level, there are likely some complications that we as researchers may not be able to foresee or get evidence of, like the fact that some news correspondents may be incentivized to paint certain government representatives in a more or less flattering light than they deserve.

Implications: If this analysis does show a significant shift between the media's access to information now and before, this could have serious implications for the political future of Poland. At the very least, the SNA results will be a helpful way to contribute information to current debates regarding whether or not Poland's democratic values and institutions are becoming more vulnerable.