Using Visual Communication to Meet Legal Obligations: Municipal Public Websites in Lesser Poland and Air Pollution Information

This article centers on how a set of informational obligations arising under EU ambient air quality protection law are implemented, putatively, via visual tools at the municipal level in one of Poland’s regions, namely Lesser Poland ( Małopolska ). Poland, a Member State of the EU since 2004, is a unitary state characterized by a well-developed three-tier self-government system. The country is divided into sixteen regions (precisely referred to as voivodeships), including Lesser Poland, which are further subdivided into counties and, at the lowest level, municipalities–public authorities with which residents interact most frequently.