Four Internet Studies in Global Ethics and Global Education. Focus on Poland

Polish Studies – Transdisciplinary Perspectives

Edited by Jarosław Fazan and Krzysztof Zajas

Volume 48

Contents

1. Introduction: Why Republish Internet Studies in 2025? The Case for Historical Analysis of Poland’s Digital Semi-Periphery

2. Chapter 1. The Challenges of Semi-Peripheral Information Society: The Case of Poland

   Piotr Toczyski, Krzysztof Krejtz, Wojciech Ciemniewski

3. Chapter 2. Peer Re-Production and an Extended Culture Industry: The Case of TV Content and Redistribution in Europeanizing and Globalizing Poland

   Mirosław Filiciak, Piotr Toczyski

4. Chapter 3. The History of Sharing video Content in Poland: Analog Copies of the 1980s as a Factor of Digital Peer Re-production in the 2000s

   Piotr Toczyski, Mirosław Filiciak

5. Chapter 4. Global Digital Genre-communication Forms in the Process of Flow to Local Polish Memosphere: The Case of Facebook Art Memes

   Anna Gumkowska, Piotr Toczyski

6. Index

7. Notes on Contributors

Introduction Why Republish Internet Studies in 2025? The Case for Historical Analysis of Poland’s Digital Semi-Periphery

The current four-item proposal includes four separate internet studies on global ethics and global education focused on Poland, previously published separately after peer review by APS Publishing House in Studies in Global Ethics and Global Education. There has been no omnibus edition of these until now. Since the APS Maria Grzegorzewska University journal published at that time was not indexed in Scopus and was ephemeral in nature against the backdrop of the emerging list of journals, the full potential of these papers has remained untapped until now. When combined, the four studies together form a stronger whole than separately. They show the history of Internet development in Poland from a semi-peripheral perspective, leading the argument to the creativity and reproductive practices that such development implies. Poland’s journey toward an information society presents a unique case study of digital transformation in a semi-peripheral European nation. This analysis examines how Poland navigates between Western technological integration and local cultural preservation, particularly through the lens of internet adoption, content-sharing practices, and digital cultural expression. Poland’s digital landscape is deeply rooted in its communist-era media practices, particularly the culture of VHS (short for Video Home System) sharing in the 1980s. This historical foundation significantly influenced the development of modern digital sharing behaviors. The transition from analog to digital distribution represents not just a technological shift, but a continuation of established social practices of content sharing and community-based distribution.