The aim of this paper is to analyse Twitter activity of Prime Ministers of Poland and of the Czech Republic, Mateusz Morawiecki and Andrej Babiš respectively, during the 2019 European Parliament election campaign with the special focus on their ways of creating, imposing and reproducing the campaign discourse. It examines especially the person-alization of the election campaign, namely using the election-related activities to promote their image. Also, the im-portance of hashtags as a strategy for building discursive styles is explored and ways of using political pretexts e.g. the Europe Day to introduce election themes are compared. In this context the answer to the following question pre-sents itself as a research challenge: to what extent PMs’ tweets impact the course and the dynamics of the campaign and to what extent it is just dry information, a press commentary?

In this research note, I examine a set of two interrelated questions about the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) methods institutes. First, I assembled and analyzed a novel dataset that tracks every QCA related training worldwide from 2002 to 2018. My examination finds that although QCA trainings are becoming more popular in Europe, the US is still the single most frequent host country for such events. Secondly, I examine the extent to which gender gap exists among QCA instructors. My findings show that female QCA instructors are severely under-represented, which likely limits their academic and professional opportunities. Thus, the QCA research community appears to be marked by the same structural challenges to diversity and gender equality as other areas of political science. Overall, this paper should of interest to scholars interested in the impact of academic infrastructures on future research trajectories as well as those concerned about gender equality in academia.

The term political culture involves a wide range of contexts and evokes a different spectrum of ideas, opinions, and definitions. Nowadays, perhaps slightly more than ever, we encounter views and statements that refer to the low level of political culture in our country. Many times, these are declarations that apply not only to specific political parties or politicians, but also to citizens, or even to the entire nation, which is (often by itself) described as having no political culture. And this notion, unfortunately, also harmfully affects the formation of our national identity as such; how we perceive ourselves, what patterns we adopt, and what standards we accept. In our paper, we focus on the culture of the Slovak political communication, while paying special attention to the linguistic utterances of selected representatives of the Slovak political scene. In this context, the language will act as a tool for communication between political representatives themselves, between political officials and citizens, but also as a tool of discussion on politics among people.

This article has several aims. With the help of the original survey data, the article will analyse how Polish political scientists perceive the presence of members of their own scholarly discipline in public debate as desirable and what are their opinions on it. Secondly, the article determines to what extent the political changes initiated in 2015 have affected the general approach to media appearances, and assessments of their content and frequency. Thirdly, an attempt will also be made to determine to what extent the political convictions of political science researchers are correlated with the general assessment of the presence of researchers in public debate, the choice of media in which they are active, and the frequency of their appearances.

The main purpose of this article is to present the link between the level of media and information literacy (MIL) and political preferences of Polish students based on empirical research. MIL is a key issue for today’s societies as it equips citizens with the skills needed to use various media and information channels and exercise their basic human rights. Phenomena such as post-truth, the way people are more inclined to accept arguments based on emotions and beliefs than facts, disinformation and fake news are an important context and subject of ongoing scientific discussions. Keeping in mind the limitations of self-report methods, the authors combine the elements of students’ self-assessment with the questions that test their theoretical knowledge and competences related to recognizing fake news. The research sample consists of 870 students of social sciences and journalism. The results of the research provide detailed knowledge about the level of MIL as well as political preferences of students. By that, authors hope to contribute to the global scientific discussion, offering their research conducted in the context of the declining quality of democracy in Poland.