Civil Society Discourses in the Mainstream Print Media – the Hungarian Case

In a populist leader’s democracy (Körösényi 2020), like Hungary, both the mainstream media and civil society struggle with a serious independence deficit. The strong central government seeks to influence the functioning of the media to an extent that its messages can easily reach the widest possible sections of society and tries to block critical voices. It seems that the fight against civil society and the freedom of the media is connected. One of the main indirect means to control civil society is to block its access to the public sphere and to educate the public opinion about a perception of civil society organisations, which favours the legal, financial and other direct measures changing their possibilities to influence politics. On the other hand, civil society is often seen as a saviour of democracy, the last bastille, from which opposition might emerge. Our paper examines how these processes, expectations are represented in the media. Does media and civil society show the same, polarised character in terms of discourses? Can the mainstream written media, which is not directly dependent on the government, have an unbiased, balanced approach to civil society, can it give voices to multiple narratives, or is it characterised by the transmission of a flat, gray-propaganda message? Does the left-wing media in Hungary counterbalance governmental approaches, is it able to provide a more sophisticated variety of information? Our research aims to give answers to these questions using quantitative and qualitative content analysis techniques investigating mentions of civil society in mainstream printed newspapers. Our hypothesis is that the normative assessments of the role and functioning of non-governmental organisations – and civil society in general – differ significantly in terms of party politics in Hungary. While populist, right-wing (ruling) parties tend to be hostile to civil society and try to stigmatise their organisations for gaining liberal, ‘anti-Christian’ and ‘external, foreign support’, left-wing and centrist parties tend to defend their positive role in the democratic process and value their struggles to protect human rights. However, a question can still be raised about how certain civil society discourses are introduced and discussed by certain media products on both sides of the political spectrum. How do the most prominent Hungarian leftist and right-wing newspapers approach the problem of civil society – what narratives are given and how do they relate to party polarisation? In addition, how do these media products outline the definition of civil society that is in itself complicated and a matter of a normative choice of values?