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Recent scholarship demonstrated that Facebook is a convenient space for populist political communication as its unmediated and viral nature make populist appeals highly efficient in voters’ mobilization (Engesser et al., 2017). However, less attention has been paid to the way these populist messages appear on political actors’ communication, and what post- and page-level factors they are associated with. We investigate these questions in the context of the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election based on a unique cross-national dataset covering 12 European countries. In our research project we categorized more than 8,074 Facebook posts published on the main pages of 67 parties. Our findings show that the three dimensions of populist communication are used strategically different way and appear in different communication context. Anti-elitist messages are articulated in relation to economy, labor and social policy and immigration mostly by extreme parties. People-centrism is frequently used in relation to labor & social policy, and in European- and mobilization-focused posts all over the political landscape. Out-group messages appear in immigration-related posts and in far-right parties’ communication.

A tanulmány célja, hogy hozzájáruljon a vizuális politikai kommunikáció területéhez egy olyan bimodális (vizuális és verbális) kódolási útmutató létrehozásával és tesztelésével, amely országhatárokon átívelően alkalmazható a populista kommunikációs stílus tanulmányozásához. A kutatás koncepcionális alapját Moffitt (2016) kommunikációs stílusleírása adta, amelyet néhány változóval kiegészítve egy olyan kódkönyvre fordítottunk le, amely nem csupán verbális, de vizuális üzenetekben is képes megragadni ezt a kommunikációs stílust. Ennek megfelelően a kódolási rendszer segítségével kvantitatív tartalomelemzéssel vizsgáljuk Orbán Viktor képes Facebook-posztjait, 2018 és 2020 között. Ez a hároméves időszak magában foglal választási kampányokat, a Covid–19-járvány teljes első hullámát, és néhány, kiemelt politikai esemény nélküli hónapot is. Az eredmények azt mutatják, hogy a Moffitt által meghatározott populista stílusjegyek csak részben vannak jelen a magyar miniszterelnök bimodális kommunikációjában. Továbbá a különböző kommunikációs időszakok összehasonlítása nem eredményezett nagy különbségeket, azonban a verbális és vizuális kommunikációban jelentősebb eltérések mutatkoznak: a populista stílus leginkább a vizuális eszközökben ragadható meg, vagyis a populista kommunikáció tanulmányozása során elengedhetetlen a képi eszközök vizsgálata.

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of how parties across 28 countries use digital political marketing on Facebook by drawing on the example of the 2019 European Parliament election. We introduce a theoretical model of political Facebook marketing and compare the paid media activity (sponsored posts, ads) of 186 parties to their owned media (posts) and earned media (user reactions, comments, shares). Our results concerning cross-country patterns indicate that differences in European parties’ paid media activity exist and only a few parties leverage sophisticated targeting strategies. Regarding temporal dynamics, we find that paid media is used to supplement owned media during similar campaign phases. In terms of engagement-triggering effects, we show that sponsoring posts is a suitable tool to increase earned media. Overall, paid media activity on Facebook is largely embedded into parties’ overall marketing strategy and national countries’ regulatory settings. Our results have implications for the understanding of public opinion, voting behaviour and the regulations of elections in modern European democracies.

The article reviews the main theoretical and empirical contributions about digitalnews media and online political communication in Hungary. Our knowledge synthesis focuses on three specific subfields: citizens, media platforms, and political actors. Representatives of sociology, political communication studies, psychology, and linguistics have responded to the challenges of the internet over the past two decades, which has resulted in truly interdisciplinary accounts of the different aspects of digitalization in Hungary. In terms of methodology, both normative and descriptive approaches have been applied, mostly with single case-study methods. Based on an extensive review of the literature, we assess that since the early 2000s the internet has become the key subject of political communication studies, and that it has erased the boundaries between online and offline spaces. We conclude, however, that despite the richness of the literature on the internet and politics, only a limited number of studies have researched citizens’ activity and provided longitudinal analyses.

Along with the recent boom in support of populist movements in Europe, social media seems to be the ideal place for their interaction with the public. While Facebook has been thoroughly explored for populist campaigning, there is still scarce research on visual aspects of their communication. Analysing the 2019 European Parliament campaign, this study seeks to determine the distinct characteristics of a populist visual communication style and its differences in relation to the non-populist parties. Applying quantitative content analysis to the images ( N = 997) posted on Facebook by political parties from 28 countries enabled us to show that there is a predominance of similarities in both communication styles. Although populists demonstrated a higher propensity to depict their leader and use national symbols, these were exceptions to the overwhelming evidence of uniformity in campaigning methods. Hence, we argue that despite evidence of textual visibility, populist communication does not explicitly manifest through images.

This study is designed to contribute to the debate on whether Facebook is a normalizing or equalizing force in political competition in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections. It argues that conflicting findings in the literature are due to (a) the lack of cross-country investigations, (b) the lack of a multidimensional approach to Facebook performance, and (c) the conceptual confusion around the normalization or equalization theories. This research tests both the absolute and the relative understanding of the hypotheses in all the visibility-related dimensions (adoption, activity, number of followers, user engagement, and ad spending) in a cross-country dataset that includes all the Facebook activity of 186 parties in 28 countries. Findings demonstrate that in absolute terms the equalization thesis prevails in activity and advertising, while the normalization thesis is confirmed in the dimensions of organic direct and indirect reach. At the same time, in relative terms, social media equalize political competition in each dimension.

Populism is presented as a severe challenge to democracies as it delegitimises the institutions and processes on which democratic society is built. The infectious nature of populism within a system drives a shift in the public mood. The authors investigate this phenomenon through a content analysis of party posts on Facebook during the 2019 European parliamentary elections across 12 countries. They find almost a quarter of posts contain some form of populism, with anti-elitism the most common trope. Populist appeals are most likely to accompany critiques of labour and social policy, labelling elites or minority groups as causing inequalities which disadvantage the ordinary people. Both forms of populism enjoy high levels of user engagement suggesting they gain higher levels of reach within social media platforms. As support for populism rose in the wake of the economic and migrant crises, the authors suggest post-pandemic this increase is likely to continue.

Although images have always been part of politics, research on the visual aspects of political communication recently gained momentum, especially with the spread of social media–based political communication. However, there are still several significant research gaps in this field. The aim of this article is to identify and compare the patterns and effects of Hungarian politicians’ ( n = 51) image-based communication on Facebook ( n = 2,992) and Instagram ( n = 868) during the Hungarian parliamentary election campaign in 2018. By doing so, we shed light on two important dimensions of personalization: individualization and privatization. This work is designed to fill three gaps in the literature. We argue that existing research of visual political communication (1) treats images predominantly as illustrations, (2) is limited to single-platform studies, and (3) does not investigate the engagement effects of images. To move beyond these limitations, this study investigates images as objects of interest on their own; it adopts a cross-platform comparative approach and examines the engagement effects of visual cues by applying a combination of inductive and deductive qualitative content analysis. Our results show that images are often used to personalize communication. While on Facebook the individualization dimension of personalization is more common and popular, on Instagram its privatization dimension prevails. Furthermore, on Facebook, users like more politics-related candidate-centered images, but on Instagram we could not find similar effects for more informal visuals.

Filtering strategies enable social media users to remove undesired content from their feeds, potentially creating homophilic environments. Although previous studies have addressed the individual-level factors and content features that influence these decisions, few have solely focused on users’ perceptions. Accordingly, this study applies social exchange theory to understand how users socially construct the process of unfriending. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with young Spaniards, we identify a widespread pattern of rejection over repetitive, opinion-challenging, and offensive posts, which we conceptualize as out-of-place content, a type of social media stimulus that hinders substantive online exchanges and challenges users’ understanding of social reality and individual values. This study contributes to current literature on unfriending by suggesting that filtering strategies are implemented gradually when posts overwhelm users’ tolerance threshold. Our findings also suggest that their deployment hinges on the closeness of the relationship between peers and social commitments formed in specific platforms. Future research is needed to assess to what extent the patterns identified in our interviews are present in the overall population. This work was supported by the National Program of I+D+I (RTI2018-096065-B-I00) oriented to the Challenges of Society and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) about “Nuevos valores, gobernanza, financiación y servicios audiovisuales públicos para la sociedad de Internet: contrastes europeos y españoles.”Azahara Cañedo receives funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), call 2020/3771. Márton Bene is a recipient of the Bolyai János Research Fellowship awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (BO/334_20).

The article addresses the issue of political polarisation in the news media in Hungary. Hungary is an illustrative case of a country which has been studied as the example of high political parallel...

The Hungarian government’s crisis management fits well the illiberal logic of the current regime. It was characterised by the strong leadership of Prime Minister (PM) Viktor Orban who personally controlled the first wave of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. His unquestionable leadership was further reinforced by a controversial law that provoked intense internal and international criticism. These criticisms were used by the pro-government camp to present the government and PM struggling to preserve the safety of a Hungarian people while under constant attack from liberal and global enemies of the regime. During the crisis, similar discursive strategies were used as is usual in Hungarian politics: the threat of immigration, the decline of the Western world and the European Union (EU), the adversarial role of George Soros, the Hungarian opposition, the media and the international liberal mainstream and the effectiveness of nation-states were recurring topics during the crisis. Overall, the country was less affected by the virus, and according to the polls, people positively evaluate the crisis management. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Darren Lilleker, Ioana A. Coman, Milos Gregor and Edoardo Novelli.

The investigation of main features of Hungarian parties’ strategic communication on their central Facebook pages during the 2019 EP election shows huge Fidesz dominance in the level of user engagement. Also, oppositional parties (DK, Momentum) that reached unexpectedly good election results compared to the other opposition parties also performed very well on user engagement. Further, findings show that parties ran highly information- and offline mobilisation-focused campaigns with an extremely poor level of interactivity. Considering the contents of the posts, all parties ran predominantly politics-focused campaigns. Nonetheless, the campaign of Fidesz was primarily built around the issue of immigration that was almost completely ignored by most opposition parties who put the most emphasis on social and labour issues. Generally, it seems that parties use Facebook for similar campaign goals, however, they strategically place their emphasis on different issues.

Parties have limited opportunities to determine the audiences of their organic communication. However, Facebook offers sophisticated advertising possibilities which enable parties to sponsor their organic messages in order to target them at selected and narrow segments of the electorate. Information on advertising activity was not available in Europe until Facebook has launched its ‘Ad Library’ right before the 2019 European Parliamentary election which provided access to all political ads and its metadata. By drawing on this data, our chapter will advance on the previous country chapters and investigate parties’ advertising activity in the 12 analysed countries with a specific focus on sponsored posts. We find that political advertising makes up a significant part of the parties’ digital activity on Facebook, but there are also large cross-country differences in their advertising strategy. Sponsored posts are applied mainly to informing and mobilising voters, but also to strategically emphasise specific issues such as environment and immigration.

The European Election campaign 2019 enjoyed heightened attention in the European and global public due to the recent emergence of populist actors, new parties, and large European issues such as immigration, climate change, and Brexit. Starting theoretically from the issue ownership theory, shareworthiness, and the second-order character of European elections, the study at hand investigates the campaigns of 69 parties from 9 countries on Facebook as one of the current central spheres of electoral contest. Facebook enables parties to provide users with selected issues considered advantageous for themselves. The number of posts’ shares indicates whether the parties manage to reach out to the voters with these issues. The results show that parties use Facebook strategically for highlighting certain issues and focusing on specific political levels in line with the theoretical approaches. However, it seems that users in contrast to the theories do not pay heightened attention to issues and political levels which are strategically emphasized by parties. These findings point to a remarkable gap between parties’ and their followers’ communication. The supply and demand side of campaign communication obviously do not overlap to a high degree. User engagement seems to be driven by other factors.

This article investigates the discursive opportunities for radical-right populist politics in Hungary and Romania. We argue that it is important to assess whether the discursive activities of radical-right media are reflected and included in the chains of discussion in the public sphere. The involvement and visibility of radical-right media in news coverage is considered a cue for their acceptance as legitimate actors in the wider media ecosystem, even when other media may not accept their interpretations. Our findings tell two different stories in the compared countries. In Hungary, we note that radical-right media are to a certain degree incorporated into the wider media networks, while in Romania, radical-right media are observed to be in isolated positions in both of the media networks we examined.

The study investigates 25 viral posts during the Hungarian general election campaign in 2014. These are posts whose numbers of shares were much higher than the average shares of their posters’ posts. The study addresses the question of what kind of content may go viral and how this happens. First, it investigates the most specific and common features of the content of these posts. Second, the way they are shared and the effects they may evoke within personal networks are examined. Results show the prominence of negativity, undistorted message transmission, and a low reactivity level to the shares.

The study addresses the question of what type of political content can trigger reactions from electoral candidates’ followers on Facebook. Citizens’ reactivity is increasingly important in contemporary political communication. The politicians’ posts can reach the wider public through the citizens’ public reactions. While we have extended knowledge about mass media reactivity, citizens’ political reactivity on social media is highly underexplored. This study is intended to fill this gap by examining what type of political content can trigger reaction from followers on politicians’ Facebook pages. The data contain 7048 Facebook posts by 183 single-member district candidates posted during the Hungarian general election campaign in 2014. The unit of analysis is the individual Facebook post, and the dependent variables are the numbers of likes, comments, and shares. The independent variables are the structural (text, picture, video, etc.) and substantial (content, emotional tone, etc.) characteristics ...

The present paper examines the political construction of ageing and conflicts between generations. The process of construction is driven not merely by institutional actors and opinion leaders in the media, but also by citizens who talk to each other about politics. In my paper I have focused on the latter by observing online discussions that appear on the political forum Index.hu. Disagreement between old people’ and ‘young people’ evolved mainly about the pension system, thus the examination of ageing constructions is embedded in this context. In spite of its numerous limits, the method used seems to be suitable for providing hypotheses for further research. In the first part of the study I present the applied theoretical approach in which the concept of stereotype is connected with the concept of social construction. After that I focus on investigating the activity, origin and contents of the stereotypes that influence the construction of ageing. In the third part of the study the components of the constructions are demonstrated.

The study examines the role and impact of Facebook as a central political information source within today’s high-choice information environment among university students. It assumes that the growing role of Facebook as a political information source means the return of the two-step flow of information model: political views and experiences of the less interested majority are largely shaped by the communication of the fewer politically interested peers. Based on a survey among university students in Hungary, the study confirms that Facebook is the primary political information source for university students. The results indicate that only a politically interested minority of university students post or share political content on Facebook. However, posting is shaped by dissatisfaction with the way democracy functions, and accordingly, obtaining regular information about politics through Facebook leads to more negative perceptions about the way democracy works. Based on these findings, it may be assumed that the negative evaluation of democracy by students who are informed about politics through Facebook results from the fact that on this platform information and opinions are mostly provided by their discontented peers. An important contribution of this study is that social influences resulting from using Facebook are not investigated in themselves, but are embedded into the modern information environment where several information sources are used simultaneously.

The study explores the validity of the media visibility thesis in a cross-country comparative framework, concentrating on the position of media outlets sympathetic or affiliated to the populist radical right parties in the public spheres in Hungary and Romania. The visibility of such media outlets in the public sphere is considered crucial in the context of discursive opportunities for political mobilization, whereby the presence of discursive elements of populist radical right communication in mainstream media is understood as empirical evidence for the visibility of populist radical right politics. We analyze first the characteristics of media discourses. We then identify the positions of radical right media products in relation to mainstream media. Using network analysis as a methodological approach, we evince the differences and similarities pertaining to the location of radical right media in the wider network architecture of the public spheres in Hungary and Romania. © 2017 Ov Cristian Norocel, Gabriella Szabó, and Márton Bene.

Despite voluminous literature explaining the emergence and the electoral contours of right wing radicalism in Europe, little is known about the location of radical right mass communication channels in the media sphere. The aim of this article is to fill the gap by identifying and analysing the positions of the radical right media within the network structure of the general media sphere. To do so, Hungary is an excellent illustrative case as a country in which the radical right wing Jobbik party won 21 percent of the votes in the 2014 parliamentary election that cemented its status as by far the largest radical right group in Central Europe. We provide an issue-centred approach in which the media networks of two of the most controversial political topics of the year 2014 in Hungarian politics are explored. To compose the networks, we concentrate on the interaction ties that are defined here as direct, and explicit citations or hyperlinks to the content of other media products. The empirical test of ideal typical networks reveals that the radical right products stay under the radar of the mainstream media. It is our finding that the representatives of the radical media remain on the fringe of the media sphere in Hungary.

As a motivational factor of action, political efficacy is an important predictor of political behavior. The term was invented to capture the extent to which people feel that they can effectively participate in politics and shape political processes. Today, we have a comprehensive knowledge of the individual-level factors (socio-demographic variables, political preferences, etc.) that shape the level of internal and external dimensions of political efficacy. However, while it is widely demonstrated that media consumption influences the level of political efficacy, the country-level media context factors affecting it have rarely been studied. This article reports the findings of extensive research on how two crucial features of the media context, the political significance of the media and the level of political parallelism in the media system, shape the level of external and internal political efficacy. The investigation draws upon the data set of the seventh round (2014–2015) of the European Social Survey (ESS) and includes more than 22,000 respondents from 19 European democracies. The research hypothesizes that in countries where the media play a more important role, people have lower levels of external and higher levels of internal political efficacy. Political parallelism, which shows the extent to which media outlets are driven by distinct political orientations and interests within a particular media system, is expected to directly increase both external and internal political efficacy. Its indirect effect is also hypothesized, arguing that partisan media amplifies the winner–loser gap in political efficacy as a kind of “echo chamber.” The findings show that in countries where the media play a major role in shaping political discourse, people have lower levels of external political efficacy, while the political parallelism of the media system indirectly affects the external dimensions of political efficacy. Internal political efficacy is, however, not related to these context-level factors.