Gabriella Szabo

• PhD
• Researcher at Institute of Political Science Centre for Social Sciences

This book explores how to identify and understand moral emotions—shame, guilt, pride, and hubris—in political messages and news media. Recognizing these emotions is crucial for assessing morality's role in public discourse, particularly as moral debates have deepened public divides on issues like abortion, migration, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom of s...

This chapter explores moral emotional language in Hungarian news media coverage of the Ukrainian war during the 2022 parliamentary election campaign. The invasion altered election discourse, focusing on Hungary’s response to the conflict. Research suggests war projections onto domestic affairs generate moral statements. Media serve as moral compass...

This study examines the perceived relevance and implementation of competing normative ideals in journalism in times of increasing use of digital technology in newsrooms. Based on survey and content analysis data from 37 countries, we found a small positive relationship between the use of digital research tools and “watchdog” performance. However, a...

This paper comparatively investigates variations in journalistic role performances in politicized media systems. Poland and Hungary are included in the quantitative content analysis as illustrative cases of Central and Eastern European countries featuring democratic erosion, political polarization, and media systems with a high level of political p...

This special issue seeks to address this gap by presenting a comprehensive collection of both theoretical and practical insights into moral language, argumentation, and evaluations within politicized environments. Our overarching objective encompasses three main facets. We investigate how studies in communication, media, and behavioral sciences can...

This special issue seeks to address this gap by presenting a comprehensive collection of both theoretical and practical insights into moral language, argumentation, and evaluations within politicized environments. Our overarching objective encompasses three main facets. We investigate how studies in communication, media, and behavioral sciences can...

This article investigates emotionally based solidarity appeals in the Facebook posts from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland) and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Hungary) published in the first weeks of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, between February 24 and April 9, 2022. Our approach involves a qualitative thematic analysis to uncover...

The impact of socio-political variables on journalism is an ongoing concern of comparative research on media systems and professional cultures. However, they have rarely been studied systematically across diverse cases, particularly outside Western democracies, and existing studies that compare western and non-western contexts have mainly focused o...

This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationaliz...

p>Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and le...

p>Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and le...

Social media virality is intertwined with content's ability to trigger specific reactions; however, little is known regarding the behavioural component of political information diffusion. This study uses big data to investigate the significance of hyperactive social media use in the retransmission of information produced by political opinion leader...

Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and leve...

This paper examines politicians’ publicly displayed emotional responses to the sex affair and resignation of a Member of the European Parliament, József Szájer, from Fidesz, Hungary’s one ruling party. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate that politicians displayed various combinations of self-conscious moral emotions: shame, guilt, pri...

The shifting role of journalism in a digital age has affected long-standing journalistic norms across media platforms. This has reinvigorated discussion on how work in online newsrooms compares to other platforms that differ in media affordances and forms. Still, more studies are needed on whether those differences translate into distinct practices...

Despite the significance of historical narratives on populism, the congruence between collective memory and scholarship regarding populism is scarce in Central and Eastern European countries. We address this gap by analysing the commemorative narratives of the competing populist right-wing political parties in Hungary and Poland promoted during cel...

This paper presents a case study of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s delegitimisation discourse on the European Union in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We focused on how the EU and its member states were depicted metaphorically in PM Orbán’s weekly radio interviews. Relying on the discourse dynamics approach, we identified the metapho...

Retrospective rhetoric is considered to be one of the most influential political master frames used in response to the multiple crises in Europe. However, there are significant knowledge gaps in this area. First, there is no comprehensive analytical tool for studying the display of nostalgia in politics. Second, there is limited knowledge regarding...

The article reviews the main theoretical and empirical contributions about digital news media and online political communication in Hungary. Our knowledge synthesis focuses on three specific subfields: citizens, media platforms, and political actors. Representatives of sociology, political communication studies, psychology, and linguistics have res...

The article offers an empirical analysis of the disrespectful online comments-in total, 17,581,659-in Hungary between 2017 and 2019. Considering the name-calling and obscene and abusive phrases as communication practice, we rely on computational linguistics to investigate incivility in comments posted on online news stories and news portals' social...

Beyond Journalistic Norms contests and challenges pre-established assumptions about a dominant type of journalism prevailing in different political, economic, and geographical contexts, to posit the hybrid, fluid and dynamic nature of journalistic roles. The book brings together scholars from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Latin Americ...

Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics.

Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics.

The chapter focuses on the development of political communication and campaigning in Hungary. It starts with a brief overview of the basic characteristics of the political and party system. Then, it introduces the main laws and rules the campaigners must comply with. After that, the authors describe the evolution of communication tactics and techni...

This study proposes the interventionist and the detached orientations to watchdog journalism through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance. Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from sixty-four media outlets in eighteen countries, we measure and compare both orientations across different countries using three performativ...

The article addresses the issue of political polarisation in the news media in Hungary. Hungary is an illustrative case of a country which has been studied as the example of high political parallelism in news media, and one of the most politically polarised societies in Europe. We contribute to the literature in a number of ways. First, to our know...

In this study, we investigate how Twitter allows individuals in Hungary and Poland to experience different political views. To comprehend citizens’ exposure to political information, “who’s following who?” graphs of 455,912 users in Hungary (851,557 connections) and 1,803,837 users in Poland (10,124,501 connections) are examined. Our conceptual poi...

This special issue brings together scholars of media, sociology, and political science to examine the discursive opportunities for radical-right populist politics across Eastern Europe. The articles concentrate on such soft factors as the role of media, the radicalization of public discourse, and the communication repertoires of radical-right popul...

The article introduces a discursive-interactive approach in the analysis of political leaders’ communication during the ‘European migration crisis’ of 2015 in Hungary. We argue that a leader is successful in the popularity race if s/he constructs a situation and handles it in the spe-cific way and style the voters prefer. Neither the situation, nor...

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...

The study explores the validity of the media visibility thesis in a crosscountry comparative framework, concentrating on the position of media outlets sympathetic or affiliated to the populist radical right parties in the public spheres in Hungary and Romania. The visibility of such media outlets in the public sphere is considered crucial in the co...

A "Kvantitatív szövegelemzés és szövegbányászat a politikatudományban" c. kötet legfontosabb célja az, hogy bevezetést nyújtson a nemzetközi politikatudomány egy kurrens irányzatába, a szövegek kvantitatív elemzésébe (quantitative text analysis – QTA). A szövegek és más minőségi adatok (filmek, képek) elemzése annyiban különbözik a mennyiségi (kvan...

This paper proposes new approach in understanding political polarization by presenting an explorative research that focuses on the Hungarian media sphere. Given the heavily partisan, increasingly post-objective and highly fragmented nature of the Hungarian media, we provide an issue-centred case study approach to comprehend whether mass communicati...

A tanulmány a népi radikális politikai közösség szemiotikai konfigurációját mutatja be. Azokat a jeleket soroljuk fel és írjuk le, amelyek a közösség tagjai és a külvilág számára azonosítják a népi radikálisokat. Másképpen fogalmazva: arra a kérdésre adunk választ, hogy milyen jelek segítségével igazodhatott el akár a népi radikális közösség tagja...

(Politikatudományi szemle XXV/1. 29-47 pp.) A tanulmány célja, hogy a Politikai kommunikáció Magyarországon 1990–2015 című kutatás számára tisztázza a politikai kommunikáció és a közösség összefüggéseit. Olyan konceptuális keret kidolgozására teszek kísérletet, amely lehetőséget ad a politikai kommunikáció által teremtett közösség elgondolására, il...

The aim of this Special Issue of Central European Political Studies is to bring media scholars together and to reflect on the current trends in political journalism in our region. The focus of the articles is trained on the discovery of the shifts and continuities in journalistic practises 25 years after the collapse of the communist regimes. Some...

The article introduces the results of an empirical examination of journalistic role performance in Hungary. In reference to the “Journalistic Role Performance Around the Globe” research project (led by Prof. Claudia Mellado from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, in Chile and Lea Hellmueller, from Texas States University, www.journalist...

The aim of this Special Issue of Central European Political Studies is to bring media scholars together and to reflect on the current trends in political journalism in our region. The focus of the articles is trained on the discovery of the shifts and continuities in journalistic practises 25 years after the collapse of the communist regimes. Some...

The article introduces the results of an empirical examination of journalis-tic role performance in Hungary. In reference to the "Journalistic Role Performance Around the Globe" research project (led by Prof. Claudia Mellado from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, in Chile and Lea Hellmueller, from Texas States University, www.journalis...

This study identifies and examines the positions of the radical right media within the general network structure of the media sphere in Hungary. We suggest a case study approach in which the media networks of four controversial political topics of the year 2014 are explored. To compose the networks, we concentrate on the interaction ties that are d...

Despite voluminous literature explaining the emergence and the electoral contours of right wing radicalism in Europe, little is known about the location of radical right mass communication channels in the media sphere. The aim of this article is to fill the gap by identifying and analysing the positions of the radical right media within the network...

This volume entitled ‘Politics Beyond Institutions: connections, interactions, experiences’ includes the manuscripts of some of the presentations at the 20th Annual Conference of the Hungarian Political Studies Association, Panel ‘Politics Beyond Institutions: identities, engagements and communication.’ which was held on the 6th and 7th of June 201...

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 m...

This paper aims to contribute to the growing body of literature that investigates the polarization of the Hungarian politics. Based on previous reflections on the heavily partisan, increasingly post-objective and highly fragmented nature of the Hungarian media, we provide an issue-centred case study approach to comprehend whether mass communication...

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...

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 ha...

Our paper is aimed at reviewing the most important aspects of internet-related research in political science, where the World Wide Web is conceptualized as a communications network. We would like to summarize how political scientists approach the importance and impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), in particular, the inte...

Talán nem hangzik túlságosan szerénytelennek, ha a beszámolót azzal az állítással kezdjük, hogy a kutatás sikeres volt. 1. A munka három résztvevője összesen 24 közleményt készített a kutatás négy éve alatt. Ez fejenként és évenként két-két publikációt jelent. 2. A publikációk között egy már kiadott könyvet találunk, továbbá egy előkészületben levő...