Wood for the trees: Perception of corruption among Hungarian youth

Abstract

The paper presents a research conducted in 2016 on the topic of relations between corruption perceptions and media usage patterns amongst Hungarian youth between 18 and 29 years. The main results can be summarised in three points. First, while half of the Y generation respondents in Hungary have already encountered corruption directly, they feel the presence of corruption stronger in the political sphere than in their everyday life. Second, 71% of the interviewees reported that honest people with a high level of integrity have less chance to prosper than their less honest peers. Third, media usage patterns of the Y generation are based mainly on social media, meanwhile print media use heavily declines. Young people reported to be overwhelmed by big corruption cases involving hardly imaginable sums of money and distant public figures. At the same time, they have very little knowledge of everyday corruption cases.