Opinion dailies versus Facebook fan pages: the case of Poland’s surprising 2015 presidential elections

Introduction

A fundamental shift in the visibility of public discussion has been taking place in Poland with the rise of social media, most notably Facebook. Since its launch in Poland in 2007, the social media platform has become the most widely used social medium in the country. At present, it is used by 80% of Internet users in Poland, more than half of the country’s population (Majkowski, 2015; Wieprzowski, 2015). ¹ The fact that Facebook user activity – technologically limited to likes, shares, and comments – matters not only as an entertaining private pastime but as one with potential influence on the Polish political scene became clearly visible during the 2015 presidential campaign. However, although Facebook fan pages of the main candidates – the incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski, the major opposition party’s candidate Andrzej Duda, and the former punk-rock star Paweł Kukiz – were brimming with user activity, they were largely ignored in analyses offered by major opinion dailies as well as other traditional media, which focused on opinions of experts based on official polls. Hence, after the final election results rolled in, most of the professional observers of Poland’s political scene were surprised to learn that the prognoses had been wrong. In contrast, the overlooked Facebook activities concerning the presidential candidates turned out to be more accurate in revealing voter sympathies. Komorowski, the surprising loser, had the least likes – indicators of sympathy – and shares for his posts among the key candidates, while Duda, the unanticipated winner, had the least comments, the most ambiguous indicators of attitudes (Lipsman et al., 2012; Matuszewski, 2016). Facebook likes and shares matter because they create a snowball effect, and they are more visible for users who do not follow particular profiles – about one-third of Internet users find information on the Internet while looking for something else (Rainie et al., 2005 see also: Valeriani and Vaccari, 2016). In sum, the more likes one receives on Facebook, the bigger and more sympathetic the audience becomes.

Andrzej Duda, a previously unknown politician, was supported by the largest opposition party, the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS). In the second round of the elections, the newcomer beat the president in office Bronisław Komorowski, the candidate of the ruling party, the center-conservative Civic Platform (PO) by three percentage points. Komorowski had held the post since the 2010 plane crash near Smolensk in Russia, in which 96 people died, including president Lech Kaczyński, the twin brother of the leader of PiS. Five years later, Komorowski lost not only despite high ratings held during his presidency but also despite having enjoyed over 60% support still in February 2015, at the beginning of the presidential campaign (KT/PAP, 2015). While all the polls showed Komorowski’s lead, data aggregated from users’ Facebook activity offered a more nuanced picture of political sympathies toward the candidates. This discrepancy opens up several questions: (1) the first one concerns visibility: what information is actually seen and made meaningful, and who speaks in a way that is heard? On one hand, there are professional journalists who present information and opinions on the candidates in newspapers. On the other hand, there are the neither entirely public nor purely private discussions of Facebook users (Papacharissi, 2010). (2) The second issue is what counts as an ‘opinion’ to be noticed? The most common way of asking people about their views on the candidates is anonymous polls, even though they have been found increasingly ineffective in a number of recent elections around the world (e.g. Clark, 2015; Gans, 2013; Zukin, 2015). It is thus worth treating the public/private interactions on Facebook more seriously as predictors of voter sympathies. (3) Finally, given that as these elections show, traditional media are losing their monopoly over shaping people’s opinions; the third issue is how should we define the new online space which people increasingly visit to form their outlooks on matters of major political significance? In the following article, I present a study of discussions concerning the presidential campaign in three main Polish opinion dailies: the most popular, center-left Gazeta Wyborcza, center-right Rzeczpospolita, and populist right-wing Gazeta Polska Codziennie. ² Second, I focus on user activity on Facebook fan pages of the two main candidates, the incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski and the winner of the elections Andrzej Duda. In order to analyse user activity on their fan pages, I used Facebook measurements of user engagement: likes, comments, posts, and shares from 1 January to 30 June 2015.

The article is divided into four parts. In the first part, I discuss the distinction between traditional media consumption and interaction enabled by social media such as Facebook. In the second part, I focus on visibility agenda-setting of arguments and political sympathies presented in the three major Polish dailies on one hand, and on Facebook fan pages of the main presidential candidates on the other. In the third part, I present the findings based on my analysis of the main candidates’ Facebook fan pages and campaign coverage and major dailies. I conclude my exploration by offering an interpretation of the role of Facebook in predicting the result of the presidential election as a sign of a major shift – making public opinion more self-expressive and personal.

What is visible?

While there is growing number of publications which study the intertwining of social media and politics, notably those related to democratic revolutions (e.g. Castells, 2012; Papacharissi, 2012, 2015), everyday political practices and social rituals (e.g. Couldry, 2012; Highfield, 2016), as well as political memes and virals (e.g. Shifman, 2014), I am particularly inspired by Dayan’s (2013) studies on media visibility as the power to reveal and hide. Here, I treat social media visibility as the power of showing particular views and agendas, which in turn may lead to significant political consequences. At the center of attention are two major sources of visibility of opinion that emerged during the presidential campaign: the main opinion dailies, one-directional media which act as gatekeepers by providing space for opinion only to selected writers, and presidential candidates’ Facebook fan pages which offer visibility to any post that succeeds in getting significant traction, whether published by the candidates or their Facebook followers (Boynton and Richardson, 2016). Agenda-setting done by media (Brundidge and Rice, 2012) has also been discussed in the context of social media; scholars such as Couldry (2012), Boczkowski and Mitchelstein (2013), Papacharissi (2015), and Highfield (2016) explored politics as a significant topic in everyday social media use, which is my point of departure for the study of the 2015 presidential elections. I propose that at present, the space for open, multi-directional public discussion has shifted from newspapers to more accessible and less controlled spaces for discussion and self-expression such as Facebook. The social media platform, being neither entirely private (users can find information posted also by people who are not their Facebook friends on public fan pages) nor entirely public (you need to have a Facebook account), offers a contemporary Arendtian (1961) space of ‘in-between’ rationality and emotion, publicness and privacy. By its design which encourages short, attention-grabbing posts and images, this virtual social space strengthens opinion sharing that is expressive and emotional, rather than nuanced and rational. In this sense, it fosters ‘agonistic pluralism’ proposed by Mouffe (2013). Thus, while experts’ predictions were wrong, this does not necessarily mean that public sphere is unpredictable (as argued in, for example, Żółciak, 2015), but that influential discussions on public issues are also held elsewhere, outside newspapers’ doorkeeping.

Komorowski versus Duda, or rationality versus emotion

The sure-to-win candidate Komorowski, then president in office backed by the ruling PO lost to a newcomer, Duda, a member of PiS, the main opposition party, and a Member of the European Parliament who in Poland was known only to a handful of experts specializing in European Union (EU) politics. Although Komorowski led the official polls throughout most of the campaign, which officially launched in February 2015, from the very start, Duda was noticeably more successful in his Facebook campaign, gaining likes, shares, and positive comments on his fan page. Unlike Komorowski, Duda kept a very active Facebook profile; in addition, his negative campaign against Komorowski, which included a viral video and an ‘exhibition’ of the incumbent president’s broken promises – both tailored for Facebook – got significant traction on social media. Nonetheless, however successful his own campaign was, Duda won also because of the help of another unusual presidential candidate with a strong social media presence, the anti-establishment former punk-rock star Paweł Kukiz. The political outsider gained political credibility by broadly criticizing ‘dirty’ and ‘corrupt’ political elites.

Until the end of March, the dailies were not particularly interested in the campaign. However, media attention got bigger each time new poll results were published, allowing for speculation on the election results (see Figure 1). While eleven candidates fought for the post, media centered on two of them: Komorowski and Duda (see Figure 2). The third strong candidate was Kukiz; an outsider with an openly populist right-wing yet anti-party politics agenda, he gained significant support from people, especially young men, disappointed with the entire political class embodied both by Komorowski and Duda (see Maliszewski, 2015; PSZ/PAP, 2015). The results of the first round of the elections came as a big surprise: the newcomer Duda won the first round with 34.76% of votes; Komorowski, who was supposed to secure an easy reelection, came in close second with 33.77%, while Kukiz, the unanticipated strong third competitor, got 20.80% of the votes. ³ The unexpected results of the first round meant that the two main candidates had 2 weeks before the second round, scheduled for 24 May, to persuade Kukiz’s voters. Again, according to the official polls, Komorowski had a slim lead (see Figure 3); nevertheless, in the runoff, he was beaten by Duda 51.55% to 48.45%, with a low voter turnout even for Poland’s generally meager standards, barely over 55%. ⁴ In the aftermath of the elections, a number of conversations took place in the press about flawed polling methods (e.g. Pieńkowski, 2015; Zieliński, 2015), yet it seems that a significant part of the persuasion had been done not by journalists in the papers but in people’s conversations on Facebook – even if these public/private online discussions were usually based on information sourced from the dailies.

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Figure 1.

Support for the main 2015 presidential candidates as stated in polls.

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Figure 2.

May 2015 polls: Bronisław Komorowski and Andrzej Duda.

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Figure 3.

May 2015 polls before the second round.

Facebook visibility: likes versus comments

The campaign reality that emerged on Facebook looked very different from that presented in the dailies (see Figure 4). In order to show his unceasing suitability for the presidential role, Komorowski’s posts focused on two features: first, his activity as president, which on Facebook boiled down to showing his participation in meetings and congratulating Polish artists and athletes on their achievements. For example, in February, Komorowski applauded the film director Paweł Pawlikowski for having won an Oscar for his film, ‘Ida’; that same month, Komorowski cheered the Polish handball team, which landed in third place in the World Championship. He increased his activity at the beginning of April: the candidate praised Poland’s 25 years of success, and listed well-known supporters of his campaign, including politicians, actors, and television personalities, whose authority and popular appeal were supposed to boost Komorowski’s own following (these posts received around 20,000 interactions each). ⁶ Interestingly, after his final post published on 24 May, the day of the second round of the elections – he thanked the voters for ‘every vote’ (over 98,000 interactions) – his Facebook page turned mute for several months. This sudden and extended silence provided additional evidence that Komorowski did not treat Facebook as a serious tool of communication, which could be useful also after the presidential elections or that could help PO win the parliamentary elections held in the fall.

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Figure 4.

Activity on main candidates’ Facebook fan pages 31 March–11 May.

In contrast to Komorowski’s tone of praise, the PiS candidate kicked off his Facebook campaign with a critique of Komorowski’s presidency and the PO government. Duda supported coal miners’ strikes and criticized poor access to public healthcare, both of which have been unsolved problems of every single government in Poland since 1989. In March, the PiS candidate went further and opened ‘Bronisław Komorowski’s Museum of Unity’. Located in an office space in the center of Warsaw, the exhibition-cum-accusation included a stack of shredded paper and displayed posters describing the incumbent president’s negligence, such as signing a much contested bill allowing the use of genetically modified (GMO) seeds, and another bill raising the retirement age by 2 years, to 67. The exhibition was created as an event for the media and it received wide coverage on Facebook. Still, one of Duda’s most engaging posts was a video titled ‘He promised and he cheated’ (over 9000 interactions) with snapshots of Komorowski’s public appearances, which showed the promises he had failed to keep during his presidential term.

However, Duda did not limit his activity to criticizing Komorowski. Already in January, the PiS candidate began posting information about his press and television interviews. Perhaps even more importantly, he added posts about meetings with voters which he held all over the country, next to thankyous given to his supporters. Komorowski lagged behind. He started mentioning his meetings with voters only 2 months later, and in a more formal manner. While Duda posted photos and videos in which he posed together with his audience, and made his fan page personal and conversational, Komorowski kept an official tone. What’s more, Duda quickly started using Facebook tags; #AndrzejDuda2015 emerged still at the end of January. Although the first tag on Komorowski’s fan page, #goPoland was posted at a similar time, it was associated with Poles’ international triumphs, and failed to stand out as part of the presidential campaign. The actual campaign tag, #popieramKomorowskiego (#IsupportKomorowski), appeared a month after Duda’s. Perhaps because of his official obligations as president in office, or perhaps because of his reluctance to communicate via Facebook on a more personal level, Komorowski presented a formal attitude of dignity of the chief of state. Yet, this ‘stately’ approach was prone to ridicule on a platform which values affability. Memes with Komorowski’s gaffes (e.g. misspelling the word ‘ból’, ‘hurt’ in English) quickly became viral on Facebook.

In terms of Facebook statistics, Matuszewski (2016) found that Duda’s posts were far more often liked and shared by supporters of other candidates than those of Komorowski. This suggests that the PO candidate was a less likely choice for people who had voted for other candidates in the first round. Furthermore, although Komorowski’s posts were more often commented than Duda’s, the comments were not necessarily positive. In fact, according to Matuszewski, one of the most common words used by Facebook users when commenting on Komorowski’s posts were ‘wstyd’ (shame) and ‘WSI’ (Polish Military Information Services). ⁷ ‘Wstyd’ was used to imply that Komorowski was a disgrace as president, while ‘WSI’ appeared in the context of the candidate’s alleged informal contacts with military intelligence, which supposedly boosted his political career. On Duda’s fan page, clearly spiteful comments were less visible. In sum, the affects revealed on Facebook augmented some of the sentiments apparent in newspapers, particularly Gazeta Polska Codziennie (especially negative sentiment: Komorowski as a traitor) and Gazeta Wyborcza (especially positive sentiment: Komorowski as the reasonable chief of state). However, which of these emotions turned out more convincing became clear to journalists and experts only after the elections.

Conclusion: where has people’s opinion gone? Reasoning, self-expression, and the in-between

In his analysis of blogs, McNair (2012) observes that many of them are ‘parasitic’ on stories offered by traditional media, and this can also be noticed on social media. ‘Parasitic’ posts on Facebook offer not news but commentary, frequently emotional and sensationalizing, which has more to do with entertainment than thoughtful deliberation (Papacharissi, 2012). If ‘public opinion can only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed’ (Habermas, 1974: 50), Facebook by its design discourages it, favoring catchy posts instead. However, this notion of rational discourse within the public sphere has been repeatedly questioned by Mouffe. According to the scholar, ‘[i]f there is anything that endangers democracy nowadays, it is precisely the rationalist approach, because it is blind to the nature of the political and denies the central role that passions play in the field of politics’. (Mouffe, 2000b: 146) Instead, the scholar proposes agonistic pluralism, a ‘vibrant clash of democratic political positions’ (Mouffe, 2000a: 104), which serves as a form of self-expression. As it turned out in this particular case, showing one’s affect online proved more successful both in gaining Facebook likes and in winning elections. Furthermore, even if the comments were ‘parasitic’ on sources from the dailies, in Facebook interactions, users managed, at least in part, to circumvent the dominance of traditional opinion media. Instead, they used Facebook to show their own stance, even if they used links to these opinion media to do so.

Moreover, if, as Papacharissi (2010) writes, today’s public sphere has become dominated by one-directional mass media and ‘aggregations of public opinion’ through polling (see also: Herbst, 1993), Facebook discussions emerge as a way of taking back public discussions into a multi-directional realm where conversation can take place. These discussions are neither entirely private – they are visible to others browsing the same fan page – nor entirely public, since they are voiced by private individuals, instead of being officially stated by public figures. This very visibility becomes politically powerful (Cordero, 2014) because it ‘presences underrepresented viewpoints’ (Papacharissi, 2015: 130). It is a space quite unlike that of public visibility shaped by one-to-many media. It is also different from the public sphere of rational deliberation, since it is emotional and agonistic. In this sense, it is an answer to Mouffe’s (2000b) warning that ‘[i]f there is anything that endangers democracy nowadays, it is precisely the rationalist approach, because it is blind to the nature of the political and denies the central role that passions play in the field of politics’ (p. 146). On one hand, this theoretical opposition between reason and passion echoes the distinction between ‘reasonable’ Komorowski and ‘radical’ Duda, voiced in Gazeta Wyborcza. On the other hand, it resonates with the moralizing view of Komorowski’s ‘shame’ and ‘treason’ in contrast to Duda’s ‘true patriotism’, as presented by Gazeta Polska Codziennie.

For Mouffe, the lack of open agonistic politics leads to radicalization, and the victory of the ‘unreasonable’ candidate falls into this logic. At the same time, it is perhaps, too, a cautionary tale about how the Habermasian deliberative public sphere made up of major opinion dailies remained blind to the more emotional and agonistic ‘in-between’ public/private sphere of Facebook. As the findings of this brief exploration suggest, media analysts and scholars should pay significantly more attention to spaces where people gather to have their voices heard and to find that they are not alone in their opinions. For now, this open, accessible space can be found on Facebook. Finally, the 2015 presidential elections in Poland showed that no matter how ignored, the affective, irrational ‘in-between’ of public opinion eventually becomes apparent beyond niches such as Facebook, for example, when the election results roll in.