Roczniki Kulturoznawcze

Media Representations of Poverty

Aneta Duda — 2020-06-23

The subject of the article revolves around the media-created images of the social inequalities, determining the positions of individuals in the social structure —to be more precise — focuses on the media representations of the poor. Important questions emerged as to which conceptual network should be used with reference to the poor? The author examines the media coverage (Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza) of the issue of “defective consumers” (according to the proposal by Zygmunt Bauman) against the media representations of the “social normals” who stabilises the socio-political system, but also conservative behaviours. Are the rich consumers, “the winners” overrepresented in the media, as an example to follow? Does a discursive strategy that stigmatised poverty dominate the pages of the most popular Polish daily newspapers. Generally speaking, the discourse on consumers of unequal status was diversified depending on the ideological orientation of the journalists in a given medium. It happened that poor people were presented as “the ones to blame for their own situation” and unlawfully receiving social benefits or as treated unfairly by external circumstances. The macrostructural area of the differences in the discourse on the poverty was also determined on the ideological axis of interventionism (conservatism) versus liberalism.

Emotions as an Element of the Local Government Message Structure on Facebook.com: Case Study of the Official Profile of the Capital City of Warsaw

Krzysztof Kowalik — 2020-06-23

Social networking sites are an increasingly important communication tool for public institutions. Local governments (municipalities—cities) create official social profiles to reach not only their residents, but also tourists and investors. They publish content of diverse nature and content. The author's research shows that this message can be categorized. Each type of content brings not only a portion of information, but some categories of posts contain elements that are designed to arouse emotions and at the same time involve users of the local government profile. Such a message may increase the scope of publication. The author presents the results of his research showing that the local government prefers content that can initiate increased emotional interaction of Facebook.com users. The case study (Warsaw official profile) is an attempt to identify those elements of the message structure (posts) that may arouse online expression in the form of „likes”, comments or „sharing”.

To Frighten and to Amuse: Mediatisation of Emotions in the Radio News Section Headings

Sebastian Misiuk — 2020-06-23

Seemingly objective radio-information sharing often exhibits a significant amount of emotional weight. Senders tend to invoke extreme emotions in order to rivet listeners’ attention. On the one hand, they focus on the feeling of anxiety, however, on the other the primary goal is to amuse and entertain. Media bombards us with news regarding terror, bloody accidents, political disputes or ecological disasters. Senders often use infotainment — light-weight, humorous, and at times infantile information — to release the tension. The strongest emotional impact can be found in the news’ headings. Aforementioned headings presented during the Radio ZET’s broadcasts (for the period ranging from 6^th until 12^th of May 2019) construct the corpus on which the analysis is conducted. The quantitative research indicates which emotions are most frequently exploited, however the qualitative research allows for the further examination and analysis of stylistic devices used.

Silence in Audiovisual Media

Joanna Sosnowska — 2020-06-23

Today, silence is the most desirable phenomenon in the world, and the concept of silence begins to be the subject of interest of many scientific disciplines, becoming an interdisciplinary category. The article is an attempt to gather silence in audio and visual media and to indicate areas where silence is or can be used

Entering into Marriages and Situation of Women in Old Pagan Ruthenia

Katarzyna Kosowska — 2020-06-23

This article analyses how marriages and wedding rites are concluded in Ruthenia in the pagan period. The article also presents the social and wealthy position of Old-Russia women during the studied period of time. The research sources used in the article are Old-Russian chronicles: The Russian Primary Chronicle and Letopisets Pereyaslavlya-Suzdal’skogo.

Analysis of the Old-Russian chronicles allowed the separation of two fundamentally different ways of entering into marriage in the pre-Christian period: “kidnappings” (“umychka”) and “conduct” (“vedeniye”) of wife. In addition, it is possible to reconstruct the third intermediate form of marriage — purchase of the bride (“kuplya-prodazha”). The strength of the marital ties and the position of women in the pagan family was derived from the form of the marriage.

The Specificity of the Efficient Understanding of Intellectual Skills in Culture-Forming Human Activity

Paweł Gondek — 2020-06-23

The suggestion to define culture as “intellectualization of nature” is the starting point for research into the way of understanding an intellectualization. The article indicates that the basis for the process of intellectualisation are intellectual virtues. Intellectualisation as a way of realizing intellectual abilities is first and foremost the improvement of human beings in their personal potentialities. Therefore, the efficiency of intellectual skills in the process of intellectualization takes the form of appropriate directing of the intellect (recta ratio) by the relationship system discovered in the studied subject. The fields of culture (culture domains) highlighted in this context are areas for the personal improvement of man, and, consequently, the cause of various cultural facts.

Bellows in Malaga: Thomistic Insights via Pablo Picasso

Daniel Fitzpatrick — 2020-06-23

The paper begins by clarifying St. Thomas’s teaching on the problem of the one and the many by answering three questions: 1) What is a genus? 2) How are genera organized according to contrary opposition, and what role does virtual quantity play in such organization? 3) How do a knower and the thing known constitute opposite poles of a genus? With these answers firmly in hand, we then turn to an analysis of art, with particular reference to Picasso, with a view to clarifying three complementary points: 1) How the artist and his work constitute a genus, and how the work of art and the viewer constitute a genus; 2) How the work of art affirms the generic relation of sense object and sensate being; 3) How the artist subordinates the practical to the speculative in his work and what this implies for the role of the artist in an increasingly practical age.

The Vices against the Virtue of Temperance among the Atyap Cultural Heritage of Africa: A Philosophical Approach

Abui Abraham Abui — 2020-06-23

The place of virtues in moral discussions continues to occupy a central position. This is because moral arguments revolve around virtues and vices. It is taken for granted that virtues produce commendable good moral actions, whereas vices lead to immoral actions that are widely condemned. Virtue ethicists ground their arguments on the assumption that human actions are directly linked to either virtues or vices. But then, to each of the virtues, there exists a degree of excess or deficit, above or below which we begin to speak of counter habitual predispositions, called vices. If this is so, then there should be a way of ascertaining the measure on the basis of which we distinguish between a virtue and its vice. How do we justify the criteria for arriving at such a measure? More so, there is a traditional classification of virtues into cardinal and peripheral virtues: what exact moral features could a virtue exemplify in order to be classified as a cardinal rather than a peripheral virtue? In this article, the Author attempts the analysis of one of the so-called cardinal virtues, precisely that of temperance. He tries to highlight the concept of shame verses honour as viewed and practiced among the atyap cultural heritage in Africa. The goal is modest, namely: to highlight those moral features which justify the classification of temperance as a cardinal virtue and to account for the standard or measure which account for the distinguishing of the vices associated with temperance.

Jeremy D. Popkin. A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution

Jude P. Dougherty — 2020-06-23