The first round of the presidential elections in Poland finished at 8 PM tonight. You can see profiles of all the candidates, as well as the initial results of a poll, on this Gazeta.pl website . According to this poll, Bronisław Komorowski received an estimated 45.7% of the votes, which puts him only a few [Continue]

Central and Eastern Europe is rich in examples of citizen participation projects related to governmental transparency, most of which work in partnership with major institutions that provide financial and methodological support like Open Society Institute, MySociety and Transparency International. Many also work with local organizations and media. [Continue]

Today’s announcement that the Polish presidential couple killed in the tragic aircraft accident over Smolensk last Saturday would be buried on Sunday at 2PM in Krakow‘s Wawel Castle raised a lot of controversy. Lech Kaczyński’s family was given a choice of three burial locations: the Wawel Castle in Krakow, as well as St. [Continue]

The majority of trending discussions this week in Poland evolves around last Saturday’s crash of the Polish plane in Russia. One of the most popular discussions on Wykop, a Polish bookmarking engine, is the new gifting option that Nasza-Klasa social network has introduced: black ribbons. A screenshot example, originally posted on Yfrog, has [Continue]

Poland begins the official week-long mourning period after a plane crash killed the Polish President and 95 other officials yesterday in Russia’s Smolensk region. All major online news portals, social media services, governmental websites as well as portals of Polish organizations around the world have changed their color palettes to gray, [Continue]

Candles in Warsaw, photo by Maria Seidel As we live through the first 24 hours of the tragedy of the Polish nation, social media present various reactions to this morning’s events, when Poland lost its President and 95 other important personalities. On Facebook, people are gathering in newly established groups: for Poles who died [Continue]

Following the shocking news of the death of President Lech Kaczyński and 95 other officials, Poland starts the official week of mourning. Next to an enormous amount of reactions in various online venues, video messages present themselves as a very powerful tool to express the feelings of the nation. Natalia10odd posts her poem, including an [Continue]

The news of the plane crash in Western Russia, which killed the President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and dozens of other senior Polish officials this morning, is reaching the entire blogosphere, as well as the mainstream media now. The President was traveling to Katyn, to take part in commemoration of the anniversary of the 1940 [Continue]

Not only the Polish social media are discussing this one! A discussion of the newest book about life and work of journalist Ryszard Kapuściński, written by Artur Domosławski, has reached the UK, the United States and other regions of the world. ‘Non-Fiction’ was published in early March and raised a lot of controversy due to its [Continue]

‘Buy Yourself a Blogger, Price starts from 699 PLZ’ On March 4, the ‘Buy Yourself a Blogger’ campaign kicked off in Poland to raise funds for Paula (Paulina) Pruska , who won the ‘Blog of the Year 2009′ prize – and who suffers from a rare type of a cancer and uses her on-line journal [Continue]