The idea for this book came to me several years ago, at my Department’s summer barbeque party. I was casually talking with colleagues about my fascination with political coverage in online tabloids, especially the connections between news articles and readers’ comments, which I found unique. Dariusz Jemielniak, the Head of the Department of Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MiNDS) said matter-of-factly, “You should write about it.” First we laughed, then I decided it was a great idea. This conversation took place after the 2015 spring presidential elections in Poland, which had been won by Andrzej Duda from the right-wing party, PiS (Law and Justice), and fall parliamentary ones, which had also brought victory to PiS. To broaden the scope, I decided to focus on the EU membership (Brexit) referendum campaign in the United Kingdom, which was still several months ahead when I started my research, and on the presidential campaign in the United States, which was even further away. Three is a magic number and, given the relatively short time span between the three events, as well as the extraordinary online-tabloid-style intertwining the different local right-wing, nationalist tendencies that came to light in the three campaigns, it made sense to compare the Polish, British, and US cases. The research turned out to be a thrilling experience, even though finishing this book took me much longer than I had originally anticipated, and as I was writing the chapters I was worrying whether my findings wouldn’t become outdated by the time I completed it. But today, in the spring of 2024, Poland is after parliamentary and local elections which managed to break PiS’s power, yet it remains the second most popular party; the United Kingdom is suffering from the negative consequences of Brexit after more years of Tory government; and in the United States, Donald Trump, charged in criminal cases, is the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election. Thus, slow writing has proven rewarding – although these political developments are not exactly good news for democracy. Nonetheless, the findings presented in this book may help understand some of the reasons behind them.
I would have not been able to conduct the research, not to mention writing a book, without the immense help of many people who had supported me along the way. It goes without saying that it would have never come to life without the enormous trust of journalists, many of whom decided to remain anonymous. I am extremely grateful for their support and insightful conversations. I want to thank Alice Marwick, Matthew Kaminski, and Jakub Krupa, who opened many doors to online-tabloid newsrooms, which otherwise would have remained shut. I am also grateful to Koźmiński University for faith in this project (the