The purpose of the article is to analyze the impact of local press on social capital. A content analysis of Gazeta Lipnicka, a newspaper published between 1997 and 2016 in Bielsko-Biała by the Lipnik Association, is used to examine its communicative and integrative role in the local community.

This article analyses the representation of the Spanish Civil War addressed to the readers of the Polish local press in Siedlce, then in the Voivodship of Lublin. In the period 1936–1939 Siedlce could boast of having three newspapers — the weekly Głos Podlaski published by the Diocesan Curia Siedlce, and two trimensuals, Ziemia Siedlecka and Życie Podlasia, both affiliated with the ruling Sanacja. Each of them showed an unflagging interest in the Spanish war, treated as a violent clash of the opposed forces of left-wing Republicanism and nationalism.