ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an analysis of the material of political communication in Polish in a modern social medium, that is on Twitter. The point of departure for the study was a collection of selected tweets generated by two influencers on Polish Twitter – Rafał Ziemkiewicz and Roman Giertych. Those posts pertained to two events: the failure of the Czajka sewage treatment plant in Warsaw and the discussion around the “Women’s Strike”, that is mass protests on the streets of Polish cities after the Constitutional Tribunal announced its ruling on eugenic abortion. The analysis aimed to trace the reactions and ways of expressing ethical judgements towards the mockery and derision provoked by the two influencers towards their political opponents. The theoretical part focuses on, among others, Aristotle’s theory of the negative characteristics of the comic object and Thomas Hobbes’s superiority theory which holds that the subject’s humour experience is superior to the object of that experience.
The study of tweets and retweets, which also contained the non-verbal means of expression showed two types of reactions among the followers. One type is of continuing-modifying character, usually expressed by the amplification and hyperbolisation of provocation whereas the other one is critical, directed against the author of the initial tweet and consisting in rejecting provocation or changing the object of laughter.
