Image Restoration Theory: Analysis of Polish Deputy Prime Minister’s Tweets in Response to Postponed Polish Presidential Election In 2020 (Published)
Following Covid-19 pandemic emergence in 2020, Polish presidential election was about to be either postponed and rescheduled to the latter date or organized remotely via postal voting. At that time, the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister for State Assets, Jacek Sasin, has famously decided to allocate 70 mln PLN in order to move forward with organizing the election on the initial date of 10th of May 2020, which in the end, did not take place. The incident was widely covered across the Polish press, social media and news. Minister Jacek Sasin has become the subject of public outcry, online mockery, critical comments from the opposition politicians, derogatory press coverage, however has retained his political functions. The study objective is to analyse the image repair strategies that Minister Sasin has adapted in his tweets, and to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. The study revealed that Minister Sasin has used the following image repair strategies: evasion of responsibility, reducing offensiveness and denial. The effectiveness of employed strategies were assessed as unsuccessful. More research is needed towards assessing image repair strategies on the Polish political scene.
Keywords: Crisis, Reputation, Twitter, image repair theory