Hybrid Regimes and the Media: The Case of Hungary

This thesis focuses on the democracy decline and hybridization of the regime in Hungary and their impact on the Hungarian media. Additionally, the consequences of these changes on the Hungarian position in the European Union are investigated. The concept of hybrid regimes, media systems, the role of the media in the society and state, their extensive power of influencing people, and the concept of media freedom as one of the essential democratic freedoms are introduced in the opening chapters. In the following chapters, the influence of the Viktor Orbán-led government on the public sphere and mainly on the media sector from 2010 until now is analysed in a case study. The democracy and press freedom indexes, conducted by various organisations to measure these two phenomena, have shown a gradually declining trend since 2010 when the new government took over the power. Individual aspects of its influence, particularly in the media sector, are investigated in this paper. Two of these aspects seem to be the most important. The first one is the centralisation, which the ruling party Fidesz uses to hold power over the information and both the public and commercial media. The other is the threat of heavy penalties and court proceedings set by the media law. The decline of media freedom, as well as other democratic principles, have a negative impact on Hungary's relations with other actors in international relations, particularly the European Union. The EU has been investigating Hungary for not complying with the democratic values, which may even lead to the country’s voting rights suspension.