Mentoring

Academic mentoring requires skills, initiative, time, and above all the willingness to cooperate between a student—an early-stage researcher—and an experienced supervisor. Effective academic mentoring also requires a fortunate match so that people align in terms of mindset, expectations, as well as working style and pace, despite differences in age and experience.

This is what happened in the case of Weronika Wiora, a graduate of the English in Public Communication programme, who in summer 2019 enrolled in the BA seminar “Discursive Strategies in Public Communication.” The seminar was conducted (as almost every year) by Prof. Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska, PhD hab., from the Institute of Linguistics, who conducts research on media language and public communication.

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska: “As a student, Ms Weronika Wiora stood out for her engagement and openness to new challenges. Therefore, she undertook the preparation of her thesis on the media environment of the then ongoing US presidential election and focused on the activity of YouTubers—political commentators representing different political views—and on their journalistic or rather counter-journalistic practices.”

Weronika Wiora: “Vloggers, some of them with tens of thousands of subscribers, published materials criticising the ways in which mainstream media presented presidential candidates. Sometimes they conducted fact-checking that journalists had not carried out, sometimes they presented viewpoints that had been omitted in the debate, and sometimes they pointed out incompetence and lack of political neutrality in conducting interviews or commenting on candidates’ actions. It was possible to gather a substantial sample of such examples.”

The thesis turned out to be an extensive case study of the American virtual public sphere and was defended with distinction in July 2020, despite the challenge of combining knowledge from journalism, American studies, and discourse analysis. Interestingly, it is often precisely such theses that are produced in the English in Public Communication programme, which combines elements of communication theory and knowledge of English-speaking countries’ cultures with practical skills in preparing press materials and advanced foreign language competence.

Usually, after defending a thesis, a graduate sets out on their own path in life, using their new skills in professional work or continuing education, while the thesis, however outstanding, is sent to the archive of theses. And this would also have happened in this case, had it not been for the supervisor stepping in with a proposal to transform the thesis into a scientific article and publish it in an academic journal, preferably open access. This was especially timely, as the journal Res Rhetorica (indexed in Scopus and Web of Science) announced a thematic issue devoted to the rhetoric of new media and new challenges, with submissions closing in September 2020.

Students who have just obtained a BA degree and are applying for MA studies, as well as supervisors who have just finished an intensive academic year, certainly do not dream of spending their holidays transforming a thesis into an article. But Weronika Wiora and her supervisor decided to take the opportunity. The literature review had to be radically shortened and adapted to the scope of the journal and issue, new—this time rhetorical—analytical categories had to be operationalised, and the collected corpus of YouTube videos by counter-journalists had to be re-analysed. Thanks to the author’s and supervisor’s editorial experience, the work was completed on time.

There was no shortcut. The editorial board subjected the article, now titled “Rhetorical strategies of counter-journalism: How American YouTubers are challenging dominant media election narratives,” to double-blind peer review by international (including American) experts and recommended further revisions before ultimately accepting it for publication. Thanks to intensive cooperation and mentoring, the article, although based on a thesis, did not differ in quality from other texts submitted to the issue. It was published in open access at the end of March 2021 on the website of Res Rhetorica. It can be read here: https://doi.org/10.29107/rr2021.1.6

Weronika Wiora: “For an inexperienced researcher, attempting to write one’s first academic publication can be compared to an unpredictable hitchhiking journey. The perspective is constantly changing, and new challenges keep appearing along the way. The final result, which far exceeded my expectations, would undoubtedly not have been achieved without the help of my supervisor. As my academic mentor, she was able to recognise the potential of the work at an early stage of its development, and the enthusiasm and commitment she showed throughout our collaboration constantly reinforced my belief in the value of the effort invested in the research. It was cooperation with an experienced and open academic teacher that transformed general observations and doubts into scientific reflections. Thanks to this, at every stage of writing the thesis, it was possible to maintain the right direction and not lose the motivation necessary for the process.”

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska: “In the context of academic education, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the emphasis is placed not so much on the transfer of knowledge from master to student, but on cooperation and the development of character and so-called soft skills, including creativity, motivation, adaptability to changing expectations, and teamwork. These are competencies that cannot easily be developed through lectures or even seminars. They can, however, be fostered through academic mentoring, an example of which is precisely supporting a young researcher in publishing their achievements.”