Presence, Masks, Traces, and Absences. The Women’s Strike in the Selected Titles of the Teachers’ Press in Poland

Abstract

The article presents the results of the content analysis of the selected examples of teacher press. The research focuses on the phenomenon of the Women’s Strike, engaging young people at an unprecedented scale in recent Polish history and significantly influencing the youth’s worldview. The research methodology, derived from Protest Event Analysis, applied quantitative and qualitative content analysis and the methods used in ecolinguistics to analyse discursive absences, defined in the form of voids, traces, and masks. The research sample comprised four titles of teacher press with issues published during and after the Women’s Strike. The analysis showed the meaningful absence of the issue of the Women’s Strike, with only some cases of presence, traces and masks, all showing an underrepresentation of the topic in the research sample. Moreover, the press research revealed significant differences between Catholic press and ideologically neutral magazines in quantitative and qualitative dimensions.