Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which began on the Kiev Maidan in December 2013, is also an example of a mediatized war. Modernity and changing human media habits enforce abbreviation and simplifications, which are associated with the schematisation of various phenomena, events, or problems, as well as their dramatization. Relationships from battles, recordings and photos of death sentences, and live broadcasts from negotiations is the way media today emotionalizes their message, which distances the message from rationality. The subject of the paper will be research results on visual objects (semiological and narrative analysis) - in particular photographs - which appeared in the Polish press in February and March 2014 and 2015 (N=353) and on an opinion poll conducted in May 2016 (Computer Assisted Telephone Interwiev – CATI, N=1650). The study will also provide a triangulation analysis of all obtained results. Selected photos have been subjected to a multi-aspect description in several dozen research categories based on multiple semiotic, semiological, and iconographic-iconological theories. Selected photographs appeared as material illustrating journalistic articles in the Polish press in 2014 and 2015. During the opinion poll, people were asked who was responsible for the conflict in Ukraine, how long it would take, and whether the media in Poland were reliably reporting the war events. The analysis answers the question, how and whether visuality affects the opinion of readers on important social problems.