The main aim of the paper is to discuss the scale and nature of the practice of transmitting Holy Mass by parishes of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland through online live-streaming in spring 2020. The authors analyse these issues in a multifaceted and interdisciplinary way, mainly within the framework of communication and media studies and theology. The methodology of the paper combines practical theology (its four stages: “see-judge-act-review”), scientific methods applicable to social studies (especially social communication and media studies and sociological studies), and the technical aspect of communication activities (in the form of live video streaming) performed by parishes on the Internet. As it turns out, 40.8% of Polish parishes carried out online Mass broadcasts. In most cases, the main sources of broadcast signal were YouTube (18.9%) and Facebook (18.7%), while less than 5% of the parishes conducted technically independent broadcasts. The research showed a statistically significant correlation between online Mass broadcasting and the region of Poland. There was a statistically significant difference between the parish size and Mass broadcasting—the larger the parish, the more often such activities were performed; a similar correlation was observed between urban and rural parishes. Research has shown that in the dioceses where bishops directly encouraged parish priests to broadcast from their parishes, the average percentage of broadcasts was higher (46%) than in those in which there were no such incentives (38%). There was a statistically significant relationship between having a website and conducting online Mass broadcasting. Similarly, there was a statistically significant relationship between the type of parish (conventual–diocesan) and online Mass broadcasting. Conventual parishes did this much more often than diocesan ones (68.6% and 38.9% respectively).

The main objective of this study is to determine the media image of dispensation and liturgy mediated during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. The paper is based on interdisciplinary methodology, which combines elements of practical theology (the see–judge–act paradigm) and a communication and media studies approach (media content analysis, critical discourse analysis). The time range of the analysed media discourse is between 12 and 18 March 2020, which was the first week after issuing government restrictions towards liturgy and the Church’s response to that: granting the dispensation and supporting the mediatisation of liturgy. The material for the discourse analysis includes online editions of 20 Polish press titles. It occurs that the general attitude of the media towards dispensation and liturgy mediated was positive, but some media tended to present the topics according to their editorial policies. The paper also formulates a theological reflection: although liturgy mediated as a permanent solution could be challenging to accept, it allowed worshippers to experience the liturgy in times of isolation. It is, therefore, an expression of the Church’s concern for the health and lives of the faithful, although not entirely in line with the official and long-standing position of the Church towards the mediatisation of the liturgy.

This paper presents an integrated approach to social network analysis that combines graph theory, social network analysis (SNA), and Shannon’s information theory, applied to a real-world Twitter network built around the political hashtag Zandberg. Unlike studies based on synthetic data, our analysis leverages empirical content from a live political discourse. We employ classical centrality measures (degree, betweenness, closeness), local clustering coefficients, and community detection using the Louvain algorithm. A key theoretical contribution is the introduction of a novel metric: the Structural Entropy Index of a Community (SEIC), which quantifies internal decentralization of communication independently of community size. The analysis reveals significant variation in community structures and entropy levels. Larger communities tend to be decentralized (SEIC > 0.8), while smaller groups are often dominated by single influential nodes. These findings have practical implications for influencer identification, disinformation resilience assessment, and communication strategy optimization. The proposed methodological framework provides a robust tool for studying the structural and informational dynamics of real-world social networks in digital environments.

This paper aims to discuss the results of studies about the scale of verbal discrimination against the Roma in the Web 2.0 discourse held in Polish. These studies have helped in specifying the scale of not only intentional antigypsyism exhibited by the participants to the discourse but also highlight culture-specific habits perpetuated in the language, which unintentionally foster discrimination against the Roma. In addition, results that have been obtained and interpreted help in clarifying the phenomena in question as components of mediatization of discrimination, developing primarily on the Internet, and above all in the area defined as Web 2.0, and particularly visible in social media.

Artykuł analizuje wpływ mediatyzacji na obraz nieruchomy w kontekście współczesnej komunikacji nowych mediów, badając dwukierunkowe, wzajemne oddziaływanie logiki mediów i obrazów. Podkreśla dominację obrazu w mediach społecznościowych i jego wpływ na ewolucję mediów tradycyjnych. Analiza odwołuje się do semiologicznej koncepcji Rolanda Barthesa (głównie w zakresie trzech sensów oraz denotacji i konotacji), koncentrując się na semantyce obrazu i jego potencjale perswazyjnym. Podkreślona została automatyzacja procesów percepcji i kontekstualizacji, które ułatwiają manipulację odbiorcą zmediatyzowanych obrazów. Wnioski wskazują, że takie obrazy stały się skutecznym, choć często nieprzewidywalnym pod względem skutków, narzędziem perswazji, kształtującym rzeczywistość społeczną. Ze względu na masowość percepcji obrazów i tworzenie ogólnego kontekstu odbiorczego, do sfery odbiorczej przebija się przede wszystkim potencjał znaczeń, co w perswazji pozwala na wykorzystanie znacznej pojemności semantycznej obrazów. Otwarty charakter semantyczny obrazu i łatwość wykorzystania mechanizmów psychologicznych i pragmalingwistycznych w konstruowaniu obrazowych przekazów perswazyjnych, stanowi jedną z wad komunikacyjnych i zarazem zalet perswazyjnych komunikacji zmediatyzowanym obrazem.