During the reporting period, an election campaign took place in Poland ahead of the presidential elections in May and June. Officially, the campaign began on January 15, but in fact, competition between candidates had already been underway since the final weeks of 2024. The post-election period also required special attention due to ongoing discussions about the legality of Karol Nawrocki’s election to the office of President.
During this period, we identified several particularly widespread false narratives. Some of them concerned Ukraine and Ukrainians in Poland. The social media accounts and politicians we monitored closely claimed that the current government wanted to drag Poland into a war with Russia. In this way, they portrayed actions in support of Ukraine as dangerous to Poland’s security. They repeatedly overinterpreted statements and documents to present them as alleged evidence of sending Polish troops to Ukraine. They also argued that Ukrainians in Poland are a burden on the state budget and a threat to internal security. Contrary to the facts, they claimed that tax contributions from Ukrainian citizens are lower than public spending on them. They attempted to focus attention on extreme cases of Ukrainian crime in Poland without considering the broader statistical picture. Often referring to the Volhynia massacre, and sometimes questioning recent reports about perpetrators’ cooperation with Russian services, they claimed that Ukrainians were committing arson in Poland out of hatred toward Poles. We observed cases of impersonation on social media, where individuals posed as pro-Ukrainian activists and organizations. There were also cases of sending compromising letters to local governments on their behalf.
The second frequently discussed topic was migration. It was claimed that the current government had agreed, under the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, to relocate thousands of refugees from Germany to Poland. A narrative was created suggesting that within just a few months, a very large number of migrants from Africa and the Middle East had already arrived in Poland. As evidence many sources used cases of migrants being turned back at the Polish-German border, recordings of Muslim gatherings during religious holidays, as well as videos and photos taken out of context and often originating from outside Poland. It was argued that immigrants pose a threat to internal security and that Germany is attempting to use Poland as a place to transfer large numbers of the most dangerous foreigners.
The third popular topic was climate change. The European Green Deal was portrayed as a set of absurd solutions that would drive Polish citizens into poverty. Claims were made about enormous costs of the energy transition, often involving manipulation of data. At the same time, contrary to the facts, coal-based energy was presented as a good solution that could provide Poland with cheap energy for hundreds or even thousands of years. Concerns about the effects of continued greenhouse gas emissions were countered with pseudoscientific theories denying global warming.
Additionally, on the days of the first and second rounds of the election, some politicians and social media accounts opposed to the government claimed that attempts at electoral fraud were underway. One civil society organization created a special application allegedly intended to detect individuals attempting to vote multiple times in different polling stations. Due to numerous mistakes in this solution, it led to many false positives. After the election, in turn, pro-government politicians and accounts, as well as some experts, used statistical manipulation to argue that electoral fraud had occurred in many polling stations in favor of the opposition candidate. This resulted in the highest number of election protests in years and a political dispute over the validity of the presidential election. Before the election, we ourselves highlighted a security loophole involving easily bypassed safeguards in the mObywatel application. It led to legal changes and the introduction of a new method for verifying electronic identity documents during voting.
It is worth noting that this was the first election campaign with such extensive and frequent use of artificial intelligence. It was primarily used to create materials supporting various candidates, especially to generate images of young people declaring their intention to vote for them.
