Framing of Hungarian Youth Resistance Movements by Pro-Government Media under the Illiberal Orbán Governments

Abstract

The post-2010 Orbán governments and the pro-government media have systematically run smear campaigns targeting political parties, independent institutions, and civil society, depicting them as enemies of the nation or Hungarian people. Youth resistance movements have not been exempted from this illiberal, populist practice. From 2010 on, all major student protests against governmental policies have been responded to with negative communication campaigns aimed at discrediting protesters in the eyes of the broader public. How protests impact public opinion largely depends on the type of media coverage. Marginalization techniques applied in the government-dependent mass media can have a devastating effect on their ability to influence public discourse. Arguments and messages of youth resistance movements regarding public affairs fall out of focus and are replaced by the identity of the protesters. In this context, through a qualitative discourse analysis of Hungarian print and online written media outlets, I explored and identified the most frequent marginalization techniques applied in newspaper reports by Hungarian pro-government media while framing four waves of post-2010 youth protests. I demonstrate with illustrative examples how these techniques—namely authentic sources used in a biased way, depicting protesters as puppets of internal and external enemies, emphasizing unacceptable behavior of protesters, and ridiculing the events—serve the governmental goal of discrediting protesters.