From Kilowatts to Sovereignty: The Securitization of Energy Discourse in Polish Pre-Election Media (2015–2023)

In the last decade, energy policy and governance in Europe are increasingly shaped not only by technocratic planning and climate commitments but by political contestation over security, sovereignty, and identity. Against this backdrop, media discourse plays a central role in framing energy as both a policy domain and a political resource. This paper examines how energy security narratives evolved in Polish online media in the 14 days preceding the parliamentary elections of 2015, 2019, and 2023, and how these narratives became embedded within broader processes of political polarization and electoral mobilization. Drawing on a corpus of over 400 articles from 16 major Polish online outlets spanning the ideological spectrum—from liberal Gazeta Wyborcza to right-wing wPolityce—this study investigates how energy coverage shifted from a primarily technocratic policy discussion to a securitized political discourse. It engages with debates in energy and climate politics that emphasize the variable framing of climate and energy transitions in contested political environments, where issues like geoeconomic security, sovereignty, and resistance to external governance feature prominently. Methodologically, the paper employs Structured Topic Modelling (STM), an unsupervised natural language processing technique that allows for the inclusion of document-level metadata as covariates. By introducing time and media outlet as covariates, the model identifies how the prevalence and content of energy narratives fluctuate over time and across different editorial orientations. This quantitative mapping is supplemented by a qualitative analysis grounded in the Copenhagen School’s Securitization Theory. This dual approach allows for the identification of “speech acts” that have successfully reframed energy from a matter of economic efficiency and EU regulatory compliance into an existential threat to national sovereignty. Preliminary findings reveal a significant discursive shift. In 2015, the media discourse was largely dominated by technocratic concerns, focusing on EU climate regulations and the technicalities of infrastructure projects. By 2019, the narrative entered a phase of intense politicization, characterized by a domestic “coal vs. transition” dichotomy and increasing debates over Russian gas dependency. By the 2023 election, the discourse reached a state of full securitization. Energy security was no longer just a policy goal but a weaponized electoral issue, with political actors co-opting the narrative of “energy independence” to delegitimize opponents. The analysis shows that while conservative-leaning outlets often frame energy through the lens of national sovereignty and resistance to Brussels; liberal-leaning outlets focus on the security risks of delayed decarbonization. Conceptually, the paper contributes to understanding how essential resource debates are reframed in polarized political contexts, particularly under conditions of crisis and electoral competition. It shows that energy, traditionally a technical policy field, can become deeply enmeshed in identity politics and national security narratives, complicating efforts to build consensus around energy transitions. In doing so, it contributes to several strands of political science: the media’s role in securitization processes, the politics of energy and climate transitions, and the interplay between electoral competition and public policy framing.