Isolated or integrated? Mapping the radical right media in public spheres: the case of Romania and Hungary

There seems to be a wide academic consensus that the media is partially responsible for the radicalisation of the public discourse by covering the preferred topics of the radical right intensively, however, little is known about the location of radical right mass communication channels in the media sphere. The proposal fills this gap by conducting a cross-case analysis focusing on Romania and Hungary. Addressing the issue of media visibility of radical right populism, the examination aims to map the radical right media in public spheres. Hungary and Romania are excellent cases for comparison as the countries with different electoral patterns concerning the radical right. In Hungary, Jobbik party won 20.54 percent of the votes in the 2014 parliamentary election that cemented its status as by far the largest radical right group in Central Europe. While in Romania popular support for the radical right has declined so far. This paper describes a multi-method approach. We apply quantitative (network analysis) and qualitative (discourse analysis) methods by studying different issues of the public debates. In our research visibility is measured in two ways. On the one hand, we will compare critically the discursive elements of emerging interpretive repertoires (such as the combination of phrases, frames, arguments, claims) that are applied by the mainstream and radical right populist media case by case, and country by country. The more discursive elements of radical right populism appear in the mainstream media, the higher level of visibility can be observed. On the other hand, the interactions are analysed. Interactions, which we define as citations of the news items published by another media product, are important indicators of connections. If the mainstream media outlets connect strongly with radical right populist platforms and vice versa, the media sphere can be evaluated as an integrated space. We argue that this condition indicates the mainstreaming of the extreme which legitimatises the position of radicalism. To locate the radical right populist media products in the discursive and interaction network of the media spheres, we will study both the general structure of the media network and the network of radical right populist media outlets in Romania and Hungary. The framework of our analysis concentrates on the two clusters in each country: the 2014 European parliamentary elections (25 May 2014), and the 2014 Romanian presidential elections (2 and 16 November 2014) in Romania; the 2014 European parliamentary elections (25 May 2014), and the Hungarian local elections (12 October 2014) in Hungary. The Romanian case reveals that the low level of media visibility goes together with lack of electoral success of radical right populism. The Hungarian case demonstrates the opposite; higher level of media visibility and higher popular support. As a software support for calculation, we apply the igraph and the tnet packages for R as well as the Ucinet 6 software.