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The main purpose of the article is to describe the state of the art in using big data in official statistics. The article presents selected examples of how data from mobile operators, sensors, social media or scanners are used by national statistical offices. The authors also identify chances, challenges and risks related to the use of big data in the field of official statistics.
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The aim of this paper is to rethink three important issues that refer to Communes of the Polish People’s history. Firstly, it proposes a new understanding of organization frames, in which this group acted, using the Eric Hobsbawm’s term labour sects. Secondly, the intention is to undermine the understand-ing of the ideological development of this organization through the prism of theoretical activity of Stanisław Worcell and Zenon Świętosławski. In this case it proposes to show Communes of the Polish People in the context of changing of Polish political vocabulary in the 1830s and 1840s using the Rein-hardt Koselleck’s term Sattelzeit. In this case the most durable achievement of Communes is invention of the term “Poland of the People” (Polska Ludowa). And thirdly, the article shows that references to Communes became extinct in the 1880s, at the time of the twilight of Romanticism.
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Hungarian successes at the Winter and Summer Olympic games preceding 1945 have been linked in numerous cases to athletes who have been, at the same time, officers or sub-officers of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army, respectively the Royal Hungarian Army. The reason for this close association between military and sports life lies in factors pertaining to military education and the various military education institutes, as well as the specific education of the military officers. Physical education and sports have always been an important part of military training in Hungary. During their preparation for military service, the recruits have gained proficiency not only in the so-called “military sports” (such as marksmanship, fencing and horse riding), but sports such as swimming or gymnastics have also played a major role in their military training.
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Borders, especially the political ones, have produced always very emotional oral stories. Based on personal experiences those stories affected not only the narrator and the people around him/her but usually passed to the second generation and even the third one. Political border between ex-Yugoslavia and Albania that “stood” there for less than fifty years and divided Kosovo Albanians from the other part of the nation, from after Second World War until early ‘90s, made that lives of many individuals and families be affected by that border. This “iron” border between two states, whose political relations were very heavy, reflected directly on lives of the people living in border area. These circumstances produced many personal and family histories, opening of which later gave light such stories. A personal history determined by this border is the story of an old lady from Albania who was married in Kosovo, just before they put the political border, and was very diffi-cult and almost impossible to meet her family in Albania for forty-two years. She got married, created family and raised her children in Kosovo (ex-Yugoslavia) without the right to visit her parents and brothers who remained in Albania. Her life was full of memories for her family, photos, handwriting correspondence with her brothers and lot of tears. Her children and even her grandchildren were raised with the memories of mother’s as well as grandmother’s family across the border. Through her personal narrative that I've recorded years ago, (she is deceased seven years ago), as well as stories of her daughter and granddaughter, I brought here an ex-ample of how memory is transmitted on generations. I presented this process by com-paring written historical facts with the recorded oral testimonies, based on theories of authors: Diane Bell, Astrid Erll and Maurice Halbwachs.
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For the collective memory a real challenge is an experience of the traumatic fact. Then it has to cope with a justified wish of oblivion and a repression of dramatic experiences as well as with a danger of imposing it, distorting or an attempt to seize and treat it in the utilitarian way. The group of victims of the construction disaster in Katowice in 2006 had to wrestle with the similar problems. This is a social environment of the fanciers and followers of pigeons who in particular during the first year after hall’s collapse had to consider their future, developing the collective perspective on the experienced tragedy and organizing the social imaginations about it. The article is an attempt to look at the public building of collective memory at that time by the social environment of pigeon fanciers on the grounds of a content analysis basing on the online publications in terms of the care for memories about the disaster and it forms of commemorating.
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After a long history, research on the relation between participative and communicative practices was revived in the late 1990s because of the proliferation of new media. New studies have taken into account both online and offline participation and the ability of new media to provide citizens with easier access to information and a broader repertoire of actions. In this article, which is based on a representative survey of the adult Czech population and a survey of Czech adolescents, we address participative and communicative practices as intertwined sets that are typically preferred by certain groups of citizens. As media-related and political practices usually vary due to generational and historical experience, the aim is to discover whether people with similar generational backgrounds and with similar repertoires of action manifest similar sets of communication practices, i.e. similar media ensembles. Hence, we build this study on the assumption that the political-and media-related agencies are structured by historical experience as well as by biographical experience linked with life-cycle phases. Using cluster analysis, we focus on the various participative and communicative practices employed by three distinct adult generational groups and by contemporary adolescents, all of whom experienced the process of socialization in their own specific historical contexts.
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Security is one of the most important needs of man since the immemorial times. At the moment, one of the areas of security is the security of mass events which regularly take place in many countries of the world. Poland is no exception in this area, in which each year these events come, they are sports, concerts, organized demonstrations, etc. As shown by the Polish experience of previous years and the experience of other countries in this regard, mass events are characterized by a multitude of people among the participants involve a number of risks, both for the participants and for those responsible for their safety. An important role is played by the organizers of these events, as well as state authorities responsible for the supervision and control resulting from the provisions of the law.
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a study on secret collaboration with the Polish communist Secret Service is presented here and analysed in reference to theoretical modelling. I propose a definition of the collaboration, which is based on three categories (hiding actions, betrayal, and asymmetrical relations), and a relational understanding of secrecy and theoretical perspective rooted mainly in the microsociology of Georg Simmel’s secrecy in dyads and triads, Randall Collins’ interaction ritual and Erving Goffman’s strategic interaction. I also develop theses that identify the tensions arising from the creation of a false closeness and the generation of emotional energy, together with the development of an advantage in the relationship between the undercover collaborator and the SB officer.Fields in which the game of dominance take place are described in detail: the cognitive field, the emotional field, and those relating to power and structural holes. Some exemplary situations of failed secret collaboration are considered and some general typological proposals concerning informants are also suggested.
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The article briefly illustrates the political situation after the parliamentary elections in October 2023. It tries to explain and make more understandable political decisions, i.e. voting a person with leftist beliefs for the Law and Justice . Why is the voter of this party distrustful of a party with leftism in its name (New Left)?
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The article examines the representation of the crowd in Péter Nádas’s Parallel Stories. In the plot, there are multiple scenes including the masses that highlight different features of the phenomenon. I argue that the 1956 Hungarian Revolution appears in the novel as a fundamental experience of society, influencing the nature of people’s gatherings even after its defeat. Firstly, I show that the characteristics of the swarm appear in the cooperation of people foraging for food during the revolution. However, the bread queue represents the extreme behaviour and the aggression of the acquisitive masses, whose collective action is always directed at acquiring something. Thereafter, I examine the representations of crowd panic in the basement scene of the 1956 cannonade and of the 1957 railway station gathering. Finally, I scrutinise two scenes with the seemingly liberated and intoxicated crowd. The analysis focuses on the relationship between the crowd and the individual, on the narrative representation of the crowd, on its influence on the participants’ perceptions, and the associated attributes.
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The article examines how László Garaczi’s Weszteg portrays isolation and mass formation in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. In the first part of my essay, I investigate the representation of the “quarantine state.” I argue that in the novel, technology deepens isolation instead of helping to connect with others. In the next section, I examine how the novel depicts the transformation of our relationship with “live” presence, physical proximity, and mass situations due to the pandemic and increasing technological mediation. As I show, physical contact with others and being in a crowd appear exclusively as inconvenient, frustrating, or threatening experiences in the novel. Thereafter, I analyze the dystopian images of violent, barbaric crowds in the text. I claim that they condense collective fears arising from the pandemic, and the novel sensitively points out the mechanisms of scapegoating in times of crisis. Finally, I argue that the novel also vividly portrays a mass experience that is not connected to physical presence. The “virtual crowd,” organized with the facilitation of mass media, is depicted as a multitude of lonely, isolated individuals. I scrutinize the characteristics of this crowd, as well as the role of biopolitical power and mass media—especially aggressive news streams—in organizing the masses and maintaining isolation.
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The 2023 parliamentary elections were characterised by a record turnout, especially of young people. There is a widespread belief that they were the ones who decided on the alternation of power and the creation of a majority by the hitherto opposition parties, at the expense of Law and Justice. Therefore, the author decided to check who the youngest voters are and whether it was indeed the ‘new’ voters who decided the electoral outcome and whether the way they voted differed from that presented by the youngest voters in 2011, 2015 and 2019. The analysis carried out in this way makes it possible to indicate the characteristics of debut voters, the trends existing in subsequent elections and to verify whether the 2023 parliamentary elections were indeed a breakthrough in the issue under study.
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This article addresses the issue of political activity and political preferences of young voters and contains the results of empirical research conducted in 2022-2023 among over three hundred students of the final grades of secondary schools in Bydgoszcz. It covers such detailed issues as: political views, attitudes towards specific political problems, interest in politics and political activity. The conclusions from the quantitati- ve analysis were discussed against the background of nationwide research relating to the discussed issues.
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The article analyses the program of the Freedom and Independence Confederation party in terms of demands for women and examines the reasons for the party’s popularity among voters, including primarily among women. The party’s intended goal was to respond to the needs of the egoist turn in Poland and to target its messages to young people who care about low and simple taxes. The party’s politicians wanted to party voters to create an image of the Confederation as a party of rebellion and, by hiding controversial figures, to encourage people with views not only on the far right but also on the center-ri- ght. The article also discusses why the party failed to achieve its intended goal of a double- digit result in the 2023 parliamentary elections 2023.
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The authors of this article attempt to describe in detail the determinants and structure of the beliefs and views of Polish society on a liberal to anti-liberal values continuum. The first research objective was to determine the extent of social and economic freedom that respondents expect in their relations with others and in their relations with state institutions. In addition, the authors wanted to identify the socio-demographic characteristics that significantly differentiate these liberal orientations, as well as the factors that independently determine the adoption of liberal views. The detailed hypotheses were verified based on an analysis of data collected in a nationwide telephone survey (CATI) conducted on a representative sample of 1,000 adult Polish citizens. The survey used an original questionnaire consisting of 31 quantitative scales, which were used to construct the Liberalism/Libertarianism Index (LLI) and to categorize respondents into “Polish Liberals” and “Polish Libertarians.” Higher index values indicate stronger and more consistent liberal attitudes in economic as well as axiological (social) terms. More liberal orientations were found to be held by respondents declaring higher incomes, younger, better educated, and less religious, although only age, some party preferences, and religious practices act as independent predictors of LLI.
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This paper explores the economic and non-economic factors that could potentially lead to a Polish decision to remain within or leave the EU, following a future potential Polexit referendum. The study aims to determine the relative impact of Polish citizens’ values and attitudes on their support for their country’s continued EU membership and integration, at such a crucial time. The research is based on a survey conducted in December 2021, with a stratified sample of 1,517 respondents, and a statistical analysis of the findings. The results suggest that the relative importance of these factors could vary considerably, with economic factors potentially playing a less significant role than sociocultural and political elements. We argue that this projected outcome is likely to be influenced by citizens’ socio-demographic backgrounds, their perceived levels of economic security or insecurity, and differences in their economic and non-economic values, thereby creating potential opportunities for future populist Eurosceptic politicians in Poland to exploit, underlining the potential implications of these findings.
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This article aims to analyze the phenomenon of populist neo-nationalism in Austria and answer the following research questions: 1. How can populism and its type of populist neo-nationalism be characterized?; 2. What are the determinants of populist neonationalism in Austria? 3. What are the ways populist neo-nationalism has been utilized in Austria? The Chantal Mouffe thesis was verified, according to which the development of populism is a response to the shortcomings of liberal and deliberative democracies. The research process used a methodology typical of the social sciences, especially the political sciences. Since the 1980s, we have addressed the growing importance of radical right-wing populism in European politics. Some researchers refer to this phenomenon as new populism or populist neo-nationalism. The party’s growing importance since 1986 was related, among other things, to the principles of Euroscepticism it proclaimed and its demands to limit or even ban immigration. The FPÖ’s achieved the most tremendous success under the government of Jörg Haider. Its entry into the ruling coalition has confused international relations.
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This paper proposes a typology of entities of public order, including international governance, and argues in favor of the central role of free human persons in the architecture of public life. Attention is drawn to the difference between a morally qualified person and an officially registered statistical unit. In the face of contemporary semantic manipulations resulting from the substitution of natural communities by nurturing institutions, the need for precise use of conceptual categories is pointed out. Selected alternative proposals for dealing with institutional gigantomania and civilizational overstimulation are discussed, and in the Polish case, two attempts to manipulate national heritage, reported from the ideological positions of modernist imitation, are exposed.
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Th e present article demonstrates the ways in which painful history and inter-state resentments are utilizedto construct a narrative. Th e author focuses on selected statements by Serbian president Aleksandar Vučićover the last 30 years to illustrate how such a procedure is conducted in practice. Th rough the analysis ofthe speeches, the author comes to the conclusion that the Serbian politician’s antipathy towards Croatians isstrenghtening his position in the country as a defender of national interest.
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