A Társadalomtudományi Kutatóközpont (MTA Kiváló Kutatóhely) 

Szociológiai Intézete 

tisztelettel meghívja 119. Jour Fixe eseményére

 

Vidra Zsuzsanna - Messing Vera: The media coverage of the Ukrainian refugee wave in the context of the Hungarian informational autocracy and authoritarian populism 

 

Előadók: Messing Vera, Vidra Zsuzsanna  

Hozzászólók:  Zakariás Ildikó (TK KI), Sik Endre (TK SZI)

Időpont: 2023. június 29. csütörtök 13:00 

Helyszín: Az eseményt hibrid formában tartjuk meg.

Személyesen: Szociológiai Intézet 1097 Budapest Tóth Kálmán utca 4.;  B.1.15 tárgyaló

 

Online: Zoom link: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89601189902?pwd=amNqbWRHRm5SQ251YVdTNGtXWHlSUT09

Meeting ID: 896 0118 9902

Passcode: 601489

 

Absztrakt:

The war in the Ukraine and the refugee influx from the war zones created a radically new refugee situation in the neighbouring countries as well as in the whole of Europe compared to earlier migrant and refugee influx. In contrast to 2015 refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, mainly women, and children were from the very first moment warmly welcomed. While the state in Hungary reacted to the arrival of the refugees belatedly, solidarity of Hungarians was quickly mobilized. This paper aims to study how the positive image of the refugee could so easily replace the demonized image of the refugee that the Hungarian government had been building so effectively for years, since 2015. Using quantitative content analysis of the mainstream media’s news outlet we focus on how the media close to the government constructed and framed the influx of refugees in 2022 and how it was different from the 2015 crisis. While revealing the main characteristics of the government’s communication through the media we also compare it to that of the independent media. We aim to contribute to the field of how the media functions in illiberal populist settings by analysing and conceptualising how the non-threatening refugee is constituted and used by the same illiberal regime that constructed moral panic about refugees a few years earlier and had largely farmed refugees in terms of security and symbolic threat.