Constructing “Us” and “Them” Online: Elite-Led Narrative Struggles and Political Polarization in Hungary

This paper analyzes how political and cultural elites in Hungary construct, contest, and mobilize political identities through discursive struggles over highly polarizing issues in the digital public sphere. Focusing on three key domains of contention – national sovereignty, migration, and gender politics – the study examines how elite actors articulate these themes across digital platforms and social media, and how such discourses interactively organize followers into politically salient identity groups. The central argument is that contemporary political leadership increasingly operates through narrative control exercised within platform-mediated environments. Digital platforms thus function as arenas of interactive leadership, where elites continuously negotiate meaning with their followers. The paper employs qualitative discourse analysis of elite-level communication, including parliamentary interventions, public intellectual statements, and – crucially – social media posts and online interactions on Facebook (which is the main platform for political debates in Hungary). This allows for an examination not only of top-down framing strategies but also of how elite narratives are reinforced, adapted, or contested through audience engagement, feedback, and circulation. Analytically, the paper draws on the concepts of political cleavages and narrative struggles to show how symbolic boundaries between “us” and “them” are constructed and stabilized. It highlights how national sovereignty is framed as a civilizational imperative, migration as an existential cultural and security threat, and gender-related debates as markers of a broader conflict over social norms and authority. These frames gain political traction through their repetition, amplification, and emotionalization in digitally networked spaces. The findings suggest that in the Hungarian context, rival political and cultural elites – including politically involved influencers – play a pivotal role in translating abstract policy issues into affective identity markers, thereby consolidating political communities. By integrating discourse analysis with elite theory and platform studies, the paper contributes to broader debates on leadership, polarization, and identity politics in contemporary European democracies.