Gabriella Szabó

The media and attitudes towards crime and the justice system: A qualitative approach

The role of the media in shaping attitudes towards crime and the justice system has been a heavily researched topic. It has obvious relevance to the procedural justice perspective, in that media representations may have a mediating relationship between the behaviour of institutions of justice and public perceptions of them. Most of these studies have used quantitative methods in order to establish a relationship between attitudes and media consumption. A relationship has been demonstrated on several occasions, but its causal nature has not been proven. However, the difficulty of identifying a direct causal media effect should not lead us to abandon completely the idea that the media have some influence in shaping attitudes towards crime and the justice system. We should look for more sophisticated theories to explain the formation of public opinion and the role of the media in it, and, in addition to the quantitative analysis of statistical data, we should move towards audience research and the use of more qualitative methods. The research reported here used focus group methods to understand how and how much people rely on the media when interpreting issues of crime and evaluating justice institutions.

Trends in Political Communication in Hungary A Postcommunist Experience Twenty Years after the Fall of Dictatorship

The paper highlights the trends of political communications (PC) that have arisen in Hungary after the collapse of communist regime (1989). The authors have identified four main trends in the field of PC: fragmentation, the multiplication of PC channels and means, endless amount of PC arenas, Internet, Web 2.0, fragmentation of content, amateurism in PC; post-objectivity, the end of the requirement of unbiased and balanced coverage, more emphasis on the rise of opinion, on media as community focal point rather than window to the objective reality; the performative turn, the representation of self, a strong focus on act, dramaturgy, and aesthetics in PC; and popularization, the convergence of popular culture and politics, fan democracy, entertaining politics, involvement of citizens, etc.

Politically Driven Mapping Political and Media Discourses of Penal Populism—The Hungarian Case

Penal populism, advocating severe punishment of criminals, has greatly influenced justice policy measures in Eastern Europe over the last decade. This article takes Hungary as a typical case in the region and based on a recent criminal policy reform it investigates the roots of the penal populist discourse, which legitimizes and supports punitive measures. The research assumes that policy discourses need specific social actors that construct and promote them. Accordingly, the article explores whether the right-wing political parties and the tabloid media have taken a leading role in constructing the discourse of penal populism as a response to public concerns about crime. Content analysis and frame analysis of political communication and media was conducted to identify the discursive positions of major political parties and selected national media sources. The research found that penal populism was dominant in Hungarian political discourse while most of the media, including the tabloid press, have been rather reluctant to adopt punitive tones. The results thus contradict previous findings and offer a more nuanced view on how penal populism is being constructed and promoted in Eastern Europe.

Media Visibility and Inclusion of Radical Right Populism in Hungary and Romania: A Discursive Opportunity Approach

This article investigates the discursive opportunities for radical-right populist politics in Hungary and Romania. We argue that it is important to assess whether the discursive activities of radical-right media are reflected and included in the chains of discussion in the public sphere. The involvement and visibility of radical-right media in news coverage is considered a cue for their acceptance as legitimate actors in the wider media ecosystem, even when other media may not accept their interpretations. Our findings tell two different stories in the compared countries. In Hungary, we note that radical-right media are to a certain degree incorporated into the wider media networks, while in Romania, radical-right media are observed to be in isolated positions in both of the media networks we examined.