This book compares media and political systems in East-Central as well as in Western Europe in order to identify the reasons possibly responsible for the extensive and intensive party control over ...the media. This phenomenon is widely experienced in many of the former communist countries since the political transformation. The author argues that differences in media freedom and in the politicization of the news media are rooted in differences in party structures between old and new democracies, and, notably, the fact that young parties in the new members of the European Union are short of resources, which makes them more likely to take control of and to exploit media resources.
During the 2015 migration wave, Hungary was a transit, rather than a target, country for migrants fleeing from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe. In reaction to this, Viktor Orbán’s ...right-wing populist government built a wall on the country’s southern border and launched an anti-migration communication campaign, portraying itself as the saviour of European, Hungarian and Christian values. This article reconstructs the messages and effects of this campaign. It finds that in a context of limited political and media pluralism, an anti-migration campaign may exert a significant impact on public opinion and political behaviour.
Media scholars looking into the relationship between political and media systems in the former communist countries have mainly worked on the assumption that parties seek control over the media in ...order to suppress critical voices and to gain favourable coverage so that they can influence voting behaviour, but have barely explored political actors’ other possible motivations. Meanwhile, political scientists studying the region’s countries have often focused on parties’ relationship to the state and the resources that they extracted from state institutions such as ministries and municipalities but largely ignored the relationship between parties and the media. This article, written as part of the project Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, attempts to link these two traditions of research. Introducing the concept of the party colonisation of the media, it looks into what benefits other than suppressing criticism and gaining favourable coverage parties may gain from controlling the media. It uses the example of Hungary to illustrate how the party colonisation of the media works. It also intends to assess how different patterns of media colonisation affect media freedom.
We argue that in Hungary-a country evincing a very high level of political polarisation and a very low level of public trust in the media-two media systems have emerged with two distinct journalistic ...cultures. The journalists of the state media system play a collaborative, while those of the market media system a monitorial role. Based on in-depth interviews with award-winning journalists and editors-in-chief, we explore how media professionals perceive the problem of fake news and suggest that fake news accusations have been instrumentalised as a discursive strategy to discredit the rival understanding of "good journalism." According to our findings, journalists think that fake news stories, including disinformation campaigns serving Russian interests, are widespread in Hungary and make the voter unable to decide which of the competing media narratives is more accurate. Because of a high level of political polarisation and a low level of public trust in the media, the Hungarian case shows like a magnifying glass some of the problems associated with fake news.
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Up in the Air? Jusić, Tarik; Puppis, Manuel; Castro Herrero, Laia
06/2021
eBook
The agenda for transition after the demise of communism in the Western Balkans made the conversion of state radio and television into public service broadcasters a priority, converting mouthpieces of ...the regime into public forums in which various interests and standpoints could be shared and deliberated. There is general agreement that this endeavor has not been a success. Formally, the countries adopted the legal and institutional requirements of public service media according to European standards. The ruling political elites, however, retained their control over the public media by various means. Can this trend be reversed? Instead of being marginalized or totally manipulated, can public service media become vehicles of genuine democratization? A comparison of public media services in seven countries (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) addresses these important questions.
We will, in this paper, argue that the concept of propaganda is still relevant in the context of post-communist Hungary. More particularly, we will suggest that, in contrast to the period 1998-2010 ...when modern political marketing methods were applied widely, the political campaigns launched under Viktor Orbán’s second government (2010–present) have marked a paradigm shift in the history of political communication in Hungary, best described as the revival of old-school propaganda. First, drawing on a distinction by Gunther and Diamond between proto-hegemonic and pluralist parties in the political realm, we will attempt to establish a theoretical dichotomy between political propaganda and political marketing in the communicative domain. Then we will demonstrate – through an analysis of three campaigns launched during the past three years – that the communication of the ruling proto-hegemonic Fidesz party and its Christian Democratic coalition ally meets the criteria of classic political propaganda. Finally, we will apply neo-Durkheimian media theory to describe the selected political campaigns as communication rituals and attempt to show that political propaganda may, under specific circumstances, actively involve, engage and mobilize target audiences.1
This book compares media and political systems in East-Central as well as in Western Europe in order to identify the reasons possibly responsible for the extensive and intensive party control over ...the media. This phenomenon is widely experienced in many of the former communist countries since the political transformation. The author argues that differences in media freedom and in the politicization of the news media are rooted in differences in party structures between old and new democracies, and, notably, the fact that young parties in the new members of the European Union are short of resources, which makes them more likely to take control of and to exploit media resources.
In den 1990er Jahren war Ungarn ein Vorreiter der Demokratisierung in Osteuropa. Zwanzig Jahre später geht das Land erneut voraus: in Richtung Autoritarismus. Eine Schlüsselrolle spielt die ...Medienpolitik. Bereits 2010 hat der Staat den öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk mit neuen Gesetzen an die Kandare genommen. Seitdem haben sie sich in Instrumente der Regierungspropaganda verwandelt. Auch auf dem Markt für Printmedien dominieren mittlerweile die Titel regimenaher Oligarchen. In vielem gleicht die Situation jener in den 1980er Jahren.
Addresses a critical analysis of major media policies in the European Union and Council of Europe at the period of profound changes affecting both media environments and use, as well as the logic of ...media policy-making and reconfiguration of traditional regulatory models. The analytical problem-related approach seems to better reflect a media policy process as an interrelated part of European integration, formation of European citizenship, and exercise of communication rights within the European communicative space. The question of normative expectations is to be compared in this case with media policy rationales, mechanisms of implementation (transposing rules from EU to national levels), and outcomes.
In consolidated western democracies, contemporary approaches to media policy have largely been affected by the social responsibility theory of the press. A number of media policy measures have been ...designed and implemented in an attempt to counter market imperfections such as the concentration of media ownership and the resulting concentration of content as well as to compensate for the inequalities of access to the media created by the socio-economic disadvantages of some citizens. Such policy measures include, among other things, the establishment of public service media, the introduction of press subsidy systems and the allocation of frequencies to community radio stations. These can be described as universalistic media policy measures, and are aimed at equally distributing media resources. But what if a state intentionally pursues a particularistic media policy aimed at promoting some voices and discriminating other ones; that is, aimed at enhancing unequal access to media resources? The example of post-2010 Hungary shows the devastating effects of such a media policy regime.
