This paper proposes that the emotion of shame is key to understanding the appeal of Poland’s ruling populist right-wing party, Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS). PiS employs shame in its strategy of emotion regulation in mediated party communication in pro-government media outlets. We suggest that there are two pillars of shame that underpin support for PiS: (1) the collective shame that originates from the perceived cultural inferiority of Poland in relation to the West/Europe, and (2) the individual shame of failing to achieve material prosperity in the context of the post-communist economic transformation. We examine how shame and pride have been instrumentalised in the coverage of the 2019 European Parliament elections by the right-wing media outlet wPolityce.pl. The paper demonstrates how wPolityce.pl consistently invoked both economic and cultural shame and highlighted the antagonism between PiS and the opposition by identifying the latter with a ‘pedagogy of shame.’.
CITATION STYLE
Kazlauskaitė, R., & Salmela, M. (2022). Mediated emotions: shame and pride in Polish right-wing media coverage of the 2019 European Parliament elections. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 35(1), 130–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2021.1952551
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