We can pinpoint two significant stages in the history of Polish student media. The first one pertains to their functioning before so called sys-tem transformation (1918–1989) while the second is connected with the expansion of the Internet and the development of new technolo-gies in communication. In this first period numerous student maga-zines were being created along with student broadcasting centres (in the 1950s and 1960s) as well as proper broadcasting studios (1970s and 1980s). Needless to say the student culture, consisting of young people partaking in artistic festivals, musical, theatrical and cabaret events, was the main force of media development.
Polish student media were mentioned for the first time in the first half of 19th century97, when annexation of Poland by Russia, Austria and Prussia was in effect. In the years 1815–1914 student press began its activity and it was releasing materials written, mostly illegaly, by students, political parties, as well as different political organisations.
After Poland regained its independence, in the years 1921–22 stu-dents started to create more and more magazines. In the year 1918 six
96 Paper from in: Anna Zięty, Media studenckie w Polsce, geneza, ewolucja, rzeczywistość, Gdańsk 2014.
97 A. Magowska, Polska prasa studencka w II Rzeczypospolitej, Poznań 1994, p. 12.
different student magazines were being published, whereas in 1937 this number increased to 5198.
Student magazines appearing in the years 1918–1939 were dom-inated by ideological, political and historical matters. Newspapers dealing with social and cultural topics were in minority99. World War II outbreak (1939–1945) stopped the social, cultural and economical development of Poland along with all the forms of creativity. Accord-ing to many authors the years 1945–48 mark the first post-war stage of student press development. In that time many schools and univer-sities were reopened. In the beginning of 1945 students of newly re-activated universities (such as, among others, universities of Krakow, Torun and Wroclaw) started their journalistic endeavours.. In years 1945–56 sixty-four student magazines were appearing in eight higher education schools100. Those endeavours were as dynamic as it were scattered.
The magazines created were mostly periodicals or bulletins func-tioning only within a specific school. They were frequently short-lived, limited to one-two issues. They were mainly political in na-ture101. In the years 1959–1968 student press flourished in terms of its quantity. Waskiewicz claims that the reason for this was the need of people to not merely possess a certain magazine, but to belong to a specific social group, to tighten their bonds with others102. Overall in the years 1945–48 approximately 111 student magazines were be-ing released in schools. In the 1970s and 1980s numerous magazines were appearing unofficialy. Historians claim the year 1976 was the beginning of this situation. It was the time of intense development of free trade unions as well as the origins of many illegal political parties and social organisations. The period is said to have ended in 1990 when censorship in Poland ceased to exist. The student maga-
98 A. Paczkowski, Prasa polska w latach 1918–1939, PWN, Warszawa 1980, p. 406.
99 A. Magowska, Polska prasa studencka w II Rzeczypospolitej, Poznan 1994, p. 21.
100 J. Gomoliszek, Uniwersyteckie pisma studenckie w Polsce w latach 1945–
1989, Torun 2011, p. 24.
101 A. K. Waskiewicz, Czasopisma studenckie PRL, “Zeszyty Prasoznawcze”
1972, nr 4, p. 20.
102 Ibid., p. 27.
Student media in Poland – origin, evolution, the present
zine which played the most significant role in the years 1976–1981 was “Bratniak” (Pismo Mlodych – Magazine of the Youth). It was conceived by the activists of ROPCiO (the Movement for Human and Citizen Rights), unquestionable authority figures for the young gen-eration. According to W. Kajtoch 330 student magazines were being published in the years 1980–89103.
In the beginning of 1990s (due to social and political changes, disbanding of student broadcasting centres and expansion of com-mercial radio stations) KRRiT (National Broadcasting Center) – a national institute which according to the Polish Constitution (arti-cles 213 to 215) defends the freedom of speech, gathering and receiv-ing information and the public trust in regard to radio and television104 – in the years 1994–95 granted first broadcasting licences to student radio stations105. Since then non-commercial students’ radiostations could work under the same rights as commercial ones. Currently there are ten licensed student radio stations in the Polish media mar-ket aiming their programme at young people from the biggest cities (such as, among others, Rzeszow, Lublin, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Poznan, Bialystok, Zielona Gora, Olsztyn, Lodz and Krakow). Modern ra-dio market consolidates two types of student rara-dio stations: licensed stations and unlicensed stations. The latter have to be searched for on-line (their number amounts to approximately 30). Licensed radio stations broadcast both on the airwaves and on-line. Unlicensed ones broadcast only on the Internet. Their key features are: lack of profes-sionalism, low maintenance costs, broadcasting in the afternoons and evenings, lack of commercials, limited number of programmes, low
103 W. Kajtoch, Prasa studencka lat 80. XX w. – agonia czy przemiana, [In:]
Kultura studencka: zjawisko – twórcy – instytucje, (eds.) E. Chudzinski, Kraków 2011, p. 292.
104 Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji, http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krajo-wa_Rada_Radiofonii_i_Telewizji [access: 12.03.2013].
105 Sprawozdanie Krajowej Rady Radiofonii i Telewizji z rocznego okresu działalności wraz z informacją o podstawowych problemach radiofo-nii i telewizji, KRRiT, Warszawa 1996, http://www.krrit.gov.pl/Data/
Files/_ public/Portals/0/sprawozdania/spr1996/spr1996.pdf; Informacja o podstawowych problemach Radiofonii i Telewizji, KRRiT, Warszawa 2001, http://www.krrit.gov.pl/Data/Files/_public/Portals/0/sprawozdania/
spr2001/inf2001.pdf [access: 20.12.2010].
number of listeners, no payment for employees, school subventions as the only source of income106.
The first Polish e-magazine created by students appeared on-line on August 2nd 1989. The creators of this initiative were a group of young scientists from the University of Warsaw. Its editor-in-chief was Ksawery Stojda. The primary goal of the magazine, in its first stage of development, was to provide Poles living permanently abroad with information regarding their country of origin107. The magazine, called “Donosy”, was since its beginnings and is to this day distributed via e-mail, currently reaching to approximately 1600 subscribers. In the years 1996–2002 we were observing the expan-sion of digital student on-line magazines (so called e-zins or electron-ic magazines). The most popular of those, “Reporter”, “Histmag”,
“Wirtualny komputer”, “Bunt”, “Słowa w sieci” were mostly creat-ed by amateurs, hobbists and students interestcreat-ed in a specific topic.
E-zins were non-commercial and hobbistic in nature, were available free of charge and on top of that existed only in electronic form108. Electronic magazines are the most popular student media. They are created by students of nearly every school of higher education and are most frequently financed by them.. Most of them are copies of print-ed releases, only few of them are creatprint-ed specifically for the Internet.
Student e-zins are characterised by a variety of topics handled, as well as diverse typography and editing. Some of them evolved from static websites into more complex structures resembling in look dy-namic platforms or social networking sites created according to Web 2.0 standards. Internet television is the youngest student medium in Poland. It is unquestionably an expression of student social activity, it shows their strong desire to communicate and express their own opinions. Apart from that, according to my research, it is the most at-tractive tool of communication for young journalists-to-be. First Pol-ish on-line televisions were created in the years 2004–2008. Those were mainly projects by the students of Angelus Silesius University of Applied Sciences in Walbrzych, the Academy of Agriculture and Technology in Olsztyn (currently the University of Warmia and Ma-
106 U. Doliwa, Radio studenckie w Polsce, Olsztyn 2008, pp. 11–12.
107 L. Olszanski, Dziennikarstwo internetowe, Warszawa 2006, pp. 12–13.
108 J. Grzenia, Komunikacja językowa w Internecie, Warszawa 2007, p. 175.
Student media in Poland – origin, evolution, the present
zury), University of Szczecin and Warsaw University of Technology.
Currently we can find more than twenty student-run Internet televi-sions on the Polish Internet.