Analysis of Polish Deputy Prime Minister's Tweets in Response to Postponed Polish Presidential Elect
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SSRG International Journal of Communication and Media Science Volume 8 Issue 1, 15-27, Jan-April, 2021 ISSN: 2349 – 641X /doi:10.14445/2349641X/IJCMS-V8I1P104 ©2021 Seventh Sense Research Group® Image Restoration Theory: Analysis of Polish Deputy Prime Minister’s Tweets in Response to Postponed Polish Presidential Election in 2020 Joanna Kurnal Ph.D. Scholar, Institute of Communication Studies, Communication University of China, Beijing, China Abstract - Following Covid-19 pandemic emergence in 2020, order, the Deputy Prime Minister from the ruling party Law the Polish presidential election was about to be either and Justice Jacek Sasin has already allocated 70 mln PLN postponed and rescheduled to the latter date or organized (the exact amount is stated as PLN 68,896,820) from the remotely via postal voting. At that time, the Deputy Prime Polish national budget to organize the election by postal Minister of Poland and Minister for State Assets, Jacek voting only on the initially planned election date of May 10th, Sasin, has famously decided to allocate 70 mln PLN to move 2020. As presented by some Polish media, the amount of 70 forward with organizing the election on the initial date of mln PLN was legally bound by few contracts between the 10th of May 2020, which in the end, did not take place. The Polish government and the printing company as well as with incident was widely covered across the Polish press, social the state-owned Polish Post. As ordered by Minister, 30 mln media, and news. Minister Jacek Sasin has become the voting ballot papers have been printed and paid for with the subject of public outcry, online mockery, critical comments public budget money, even though there was no legal basis from the opposition politicians, derogatory press coverage; for such spending. The news about the ‘wasteful’ allocation however, he has retained his political functions. The study of 70 mln PLN by Minister Jacek Sasin, without complying objective is to analyze the image repair strategies that with any legal election procedures, was widely spread among Minister Sasin has adapted in his tweets, and to assess the Polish media. Consequently, his public reputation was effectiveness of these strategies. The study revealed that damaged, requiring solutions to regain public trust and a Minister Sasin had used the following image repair positive image. strategies: evasion of responsibility, reducing offensiveness Image Restoration Theory argues that when one’s and, denial. The effectiveness of employed strategies was reputation is threatened or damaged, one will engage in assessed as unsuccessful. More research is needed towards strategies aimed at restoring and repairing it. The assessing image repair strategies on the Polish political effectiveness of these strategies is context and person scene. dependant. Image Restoration Theory has been widely used in the political sphere. The topic of image repair has been Keywords: Crisis, image repair theory, reputation, Twitter mostly applied to studies of interviews, press releases, television, speeches, or media broadcasts (Eriksson & I. INTRODUCTION Eriksson, 2012; Hambrick, Frederick & Sanderson, 2013). The first round of voting for the Polish presidential The theory was not much investigated in the use of social election was planned to be held on the 10th of May 2020. Due media (Yaqub et al., 2017), for example, Twitter. to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, and an Nevertheless, while an increasing amount of media coverage increasing number of Covid-19 cases, as well as enforced and political debates are occurring on social media platforms, rules of social distancing with imposed lockdown, there was the Image Restoration Theory has progressively started to be a public and political debate as to whether the election should applied within a variety of social media analyses (Briki, be postponed to a later date. The two presidential candidates 2009). included the incumbent president Andrzej Duda, represented As of March 2021, Minister Jacek Sasin is followed by the ruling party Law and Justice, and Mayor of Warsaw by 55 thousand Twitter followers. To compare, Radoslaw Rafal Trzaskowski, with the support of the opposition party Sikorski, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a Civic Platform. The governing alliance, namely the leading Member of the European Parliament, and Donald Tusk, a Law and Justice party with the Agreement party, has former President of the European Council, as well as a eventually come to the mutual agreement that the presidential former Prime Minister of Poland, two most popular Polish election should be rescheduled to another date. This resulted politicians have around 1 million Twitter followers. Thus, in postponing the presidential election to a later date of 28 although Sasin’s Twitter account is not as popular as few June 2020 (first round) and 12 July 2020 (second round) as other Polish politicians, some of his tweets have been echoed ordered by the Marshal of the Sejm (Parliament), Elzbieta and recited across media news on multiple occasions, making rd Witek, on the 3 of June 2020. Nonetheless, prior to this it a valuable source of information for Polish public opinion. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Joanna Kurnal / IJCMS, 8(1), 15-27, 2021 Objective transcendence. Then, the unprecedented speech of Queen The main purpose of this study is to identify and Elizabeth was well-researched in terms of used image repair then analyze the most common strategies and their strategies (denial, bolstering, defeasibility, transcendence) effectiveness used by Polish politician Jacek Sasin on his after the tragic death of Princess Diana (Benoit & Brinson, official Twitter account in response to May 2020 presidential 1999). In addition, the former figure skater Olympian, Tonya election crisis. It is also the study objective to expand Image Harding’s interview was explored (used strategies included: Repair Theory into the Polish political sphere. Literature bolstering, denial, attacking accuser) after the alleged attack review, two research questions, methods, results, findings, on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan (Benoit & Hanczor, 1994). conclusion, and limitations, and future research are included The effectiveness of each proposed by Benoit in the paper. (2006) strategy may depend on many factors such as the context of a crisis or an audience’s characteristics. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Nevertheless, based on past examples and cases, it has been Image Repair Theory generally assumed that one of the best ways to prevent Image Repair (or Restoration) Theory was politician’s reputational damage and protect one’s image is to developed by William Benoit (1995) in order to study apologize for mistakes (Sheldon & Sallot, 2009), hence use organizational response to a crisis. Image is a very important the strategy of mortification (Benoit, 2006). aspect of organizational or individual reputation, impression, and public relations (Benoit, 1997). The image crisis happens 2020 Polish presidential election within the events, when an organization/person is perceived Poland has a multi-party system, with few as responsible for the crisis, and the crisis of the action competing political parties. Commonly, the government is appears to be negative and offensive. The perception of the formed by a coalition of two or more parties, as individual given audience about organization responsibility in terms of parties usually do not obtain sufficient power. Since 2005 crisis and offensiveness of crisis is crucial. Thus, it does not (excluding the year 2016), the right-wing and center parties matter if an organization or a person was responsible for the have dominated the Polish political sphere. The two most crisis in reality. Moreover, organizations invest a great effort influential parties are the Law and Justice party, supporting to maintain a positive image. social conservatism and economic, governmental The theory indicates what kind of message will be involvement, and Civic Platform (later regarded as part of effective in restoring institutions’ image during or after a Civic Coalition together with the Modern party), crisis. Proposed image repair strategies are: denial representing the liberal-conservative approach. (Fundacja (decreasing responsibility for the crisis by shifting blame or Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej, 2011; Ewybory.eu). As denying the act has happened); evasion of responsibility shown, the usual voters support ranges between 20% till 40% (provocation - the reaction to crisis was justified in these for both of the parties, oftentimes with only slight differences conditions or it was a response to another wrongful act; between both parties. For example, only 1% of the difference defeasibility - lack of resources or control to react properly, between voters’ support for each party was reported on May crisis happening due to accident, reaction toward crisis was 2005, June 2006, September 2007, July 2013, September meant to be effective and there were good intentions); reduce 2014, and April 2015 (Ewybory. eu). Since 2015, the Law offensiveness (making the crisis appear to be less negative by and Justice party has dominated the government with the bolstering- enhancing good reputation of the accused, current result of 33% of voters support over newly created in minimization- reducing the perception of the problem, 2020, Szymon Holownia's Poland 2050 party with 17% of differentiation- comparing