You are cordially invited to a lecture on the topic of
Social Media and the Warsaw Uprising
with
Paweł Rybicki
Friday, July 31, 2015
2:30 PM
The Institute of World Politics
1521 16th Street NW
Washington, D.C.
Parking map
Please contact Sarah Dwyer at sdwyer@iwp.edu with any questions about this event.
About the presentation
Mr. Rybicki’s presentation will focus on the manner in which young Poles attempt to rescue their nation’s history, the anti-Nazi Warsaw Uprising of 1944 in particular, using the social media.
The speaker will begin with a brief introduction to the history of the Warsaw Uprising. He will then discuss the ways in which the communists tried to obliterate the memories of the Warsaw Uprising and the ways in which the post-communists attempted to distort those memories after the implosion of communism-proper. Mr. Rybicki will also address the revival of the memory of the Warsaw Uprising in 2004 and the role of President Lech Kaczyński and the significance of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising.
The lecture will also cover the influence of pop culture on the commemoration of the Warsaw Uprising (comic books, music, movies, etc.), the great involvement of young people in events commemorating the Warsaw Uprising, and important changes in societal attitudes. Mr. Rybicki’s slideshow will also bring attention to the most interesting uprising-related initiatives on the web in the recent past, including this year’s celebration of the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising on the internet.
About the speaker
Paweł Rybicki was born in Wrocław, Poland. A very popular political blogger, he has been writing about politics since 2006, publishing in the oldest Polish political blog site salon24.pl as well as various Polish magazines and newspapers (e.g. Gazeta Polska Codziennie) and websites (niezalezna.pl). He worked as a journalist and an editor of a few websites, including the biggest Polish webportal, Wirtualna Polska (finanse.wp.pl,biztok.pl). His career started at pardon.pl, which, at that time, was the biggest political website in Poland.
Paweł Rybicki is also well-known from his activities in the public sphere. He organized quite a few campaigns and protests, including anti-Putin demonstration in 2009. In 2012, he participated in a campaign against reforms of the Polish educational system attempting to do away with particular forms of national history curriculum.
His main interests revolve around Central and Eastern Europe. In 2006, Mr. Rybicki was involved in Belarussian opposition initiatives and organized pro-democratic demonstrations in Poland and Lithuania. In 2004, he was one of the observers of the elections in Ukraine, and in March of 2014 he went to Kyiv to observe and report on the Euromaidan.
Since January 2015, he has worked on the campaign staff of Poland’s new president-elect, Andrzej Duda, as a social media specialist. As a highly experienced Twitter user (@rybitzky), he was responsible for the candidate’s official Twitter account (@AndrzejDuda2015) and the campaign staff’s other online activities.