Kreowanie autorytetów w mediach poprzez sondaże opinii .......... 81

CREATING PERSONAL MEDIA AUTHORITY WITH USE OF PUBLIC OPINION SURVEYS

The topic of this article is the figure of public personal authority created in the media with the use of public opinion surveys. The author discusses different concepts of real (genuine, traditional etc.) personal authority and media (false, fake, pseudo) personal authority. Then the process of creating media personal authority is described: one of the methods is publishing the results of surveys about the issue, indicating certain persons as public personal authorities. The research part of the article is devoted to the results of 11 surveys about personal authorities of Poles, conducted in Poland between 1994 and 2023, and some devoted to professional (health) authorities, all discussed and published in media. The author analyses and describes the differences between particular surveys connected with methodology (the researched sample, defining the concept of authority in questions, open vs. closed questions with the lists of potential personal authorities etc.), which can affect research and explain the different results of the surveys. The public opinion surveys can create media personal authorities, concludes the author, but at the same time this process can undermine the authority of science and social research in particular. The media authorities created in that way are not necessarily real public personal authorities: these positions are in Poland have for a long time been occupied only by two people – The Pope John Paul II and Józef Piłsudski.