Holmgren, BethGuillette, Danielle Catherine2013-05-132013-05-132013https://hdl.handle.net/10161/7309<p>This project focuses on the debate over Poland's national significance and future political path argued in the Polish media in the wake of the 2010 Smole&#324;sk crash. It draws on the primary sources of <italic>Nasz Dziennik</italic> and <italic>Gazeta Wyborcza</italic> to represent the most diverse political viewpoints in Poland today. <italic>Nasz Dziennik</italic> voices the perspective of the conservative right addressed to a national audience and <italic>Gazeta Wyborcza</italic> presents a popular liberal view styling on such Western models as the <italic>New York Times</italic>. My methodological approach to this project was informed in some ways by the principles of discourse analysis as I analyzed coverage of the crash (news reports, editorials, interviews) in the period from April 10, 2010 through October 2011; I read approximately eight hundred articles from each publication in the original. My analysis of this debate is organized by what I found to be key themes: issues of authorship (featured authors, their orientation and style), the significance of the crash in Poland's national history and present relationship with Russia, and Poland's place in the European community.</p>Slavic studiesMaster's thesis