There are mornings when you wake up to a war zone before you have even had your coffee. Not a front line in the physical sense, but on the screen in the palm of your hand: war, climate catastrophe, another scandal, another “ultimate truth” about who the enemy is, who to hate today. The news feed tells us that the world is burning, and at the same time, we should not even think about what to do about it – and especially not about the possibility of another way of living.
This article is not about the oft-repeated complaint of “fake news.” It deals with a much more unpleasant topic: the fact that our everyday lives have become a constant barrage of information from which there is no escape – and that Hungary is not an average case in this situation, but an extreme one. It is not simply that an authoritarian power has built a propaganda machine, but that an entire society has learned that the news is not about reality, but about inciting citizens against each other.
The author of these lines – while not fooling herself with a sudden, idyllic, “post-populist” vision of the future – honestly sees no short-term way out of this situation. Not even if there were a government change tomorrow. In the following, I argue that our information crisis is not only a political issue, but also a matter of mental health and civilization, and that in Hungary this crisis has reached a level that would take decades to resolve – if we even attempted to do so.
Info-Tsunami: When Reality Falls Apart in News Flow
In recent years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has popularized a new term: “infodemic” – an information epidemic in which “too much information, including misleading and false information, floods digital and physical spaces,” and people are simply unable to filter out what is reliable knowledge. Formally, this originally referred to a communication problem related to epidemics, but the phenomenon has long since spread beyond healthcare. Psychologists are presenting more and more data showing that constant news consumption, especially so-called doomscrolling – when people compulsively scroll through negative news – causes anxiety, sleep disorders, depressive symptoms, and difficulty concentrating.
It is not that we have become “weaker mentally,” but that the media and platform structure have completely changed. Instead of the classic rhythm of information based on daily newspapers and evening news, notifications break up time 24/7. There is no “news time,” only a news stream. Social media algorithms demonstrably favor outrage, fear, and anger because these keep users glued to their screens.
The problem is therefore global: in most parts of the world, we try to live a normal life while being constantly bombarded with all the disasters and conflicts in the world via our phones. The climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East, and domestic political culture wars – they all tap into the same emotional wavelength. The final result: a constant feeling of threat and an ever-growing temptation to simply not believe anyone anymore. Hungary, however, is in an even worse situation. Because here, we are not simply lost in the information tsunami, but we have also been deliberately directed against each other.
Hungary: When Propaganda Is System, Not Just Background Noise
In 2024, Hungary ranked 67th on Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) press freedom index, among the three worst-performing countries in the European Union. The organization describes Viktor Orbán as a “predator of press freedom” who has built a media empire in the service of his party.
The picture is broadly familiar, but it is worth reviewing from the perspective of everyday experience: the public media has effectively become a mouthpiece for the government, where the government narrative is not simply predominant, but practically exclusive.
Business circles close to the government have bought up regional newspapers, radio stations, and online portals, some of which have been incorporated into a holding company called KESMA – a conglomerate that the Hungarian government has exempted from competition law investigations on the grounds of “national strategic importance.”
Hundreds of billions of HUF in state advertising flow into pro-government media, while critical outlets have little access to such resources. According to a 2022 exposé, the Prime Minister’s Office alone spent approximately 19.6 billion HUF on campaigns described as “social purpose” advertising, most of which ended up in pro-government media outlets.
This structural transformation has resulted in the information interests of the Hungarian state and the ruling party becoming virtually merged. Much of the media market does not simply show “pro-government bias,” but functions as a communication infrastructure for political power.
However, the problem is not just that many media outlets are pro-government. The situation is much worse than that: the government itself has become one of the most important actors in disinformation. The EU DisinfoLab’s 2023 report states outright that Hungary is a “special case in Europe” where the government itself is one of the main sources of disinformation.
Campaigns called national consultations, posters, and media campaigns related to migration, George Soros, Brussels, or even war regularly mix half-truths, manipulated data, and fear based on enemy stereotypes. In this environment, ordinary citizens do not suffer from a lack of information. Rather, they suffer from information poisoning: in a crowded, emotionally charged news environment, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between propaganda, partial truths, and facts based on solid evidence.
Not Just Systemic Failure: Responsibility of the Opposition and “Independent” Media
It would be tempting to stop here and blame everything on the “propaganda machine.” However, this would be false and a convenient excuse. The opposition and independent media also bear some responsibility for the information crisis in Hungary.
It is important to note right away that without investigative journalism exposing corruption and documenting human rights abuses and abuses of power, we would know very little about what is happening beneath the surface in Hungary today. Several independent media outlets have received international awards, and many journalists take real personal risks. That is one side of the picture.
But the other part is that, in a market distorted by the government, even independent media are forced to survive according to the brutal logic of the attention economy. The advertising pie is smaller, the financial background is uncertain, and competition for a narrow readership is fierce. This has consequences, such as the constant need to provoke outrage.
The news competition is often based on “who can say the bigger thing” about how much the system has deteriorated – while headlines, introductions, and cover photo choices often push the same emotional buttons as the government media: anger, contempt, schadenfreude, etc.
The strengthening of camp logic can also be mentioned here: While the opposition or independent press should, in principle, serve pluralism and critical thinking, in practice, much of the content is primarily tailored to the emotional needs of the “own camp”: venting frustration, asserting moral superiority, demonizing the “other side.”
Loss of trust in everyone – according to the Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report, Hungary and Greece have the lowest proportion of people in the entire group of countries surveyed who “generally trust the news”: only 23%. This is not only a testament to the government media but to the entire ecosystem, including independent media.
The “outrage industry” thus closes in on society from two sides. One side generates fear and hatred against “Brussels,” “migrants,” “gender,” and ” pro-war advocates”; the other side generates anger with similar intensity against “Fidesz supporters,” “brainwashed people,” and “rural rednecks.” The spaces in between – where real discussion, nuanced thinking, and self-criticism could arise – are slowly being eliminated by this logic of emotional warfare.
Fragmented Reality: “News Islands” and Tribes Locked in Media
The 2023 research by Mérték Media Analysis Workshop talks about “news islands” in the polarized Hungarian media system: isolated information spaces have formed where people basically only consume media from “their own side” and almost completely avoid sources from the other side.
In these parallel realities:
The same event (e.g., the conflict between the EU and Hungary, the war in Ukraine, a protest, or a corruption case) appears in completely different narratives – not only in terms of commentary, but often at the level of basic facts as well.
Algorithms tailor users’ social media news feeds to them personally, leaving less and less chance for “cross-pollination” between bubbles.
Politically motivated advertisements – especially large-scale social media campaigns financed by Fidesz and pro-government actors – are designed to reinforce people’s fears and prejudices.
According to a report by the European Commission’s Network for Action against Radicalization, the media – including online platforms – play a key role in social polarization: when sensationalism and conflict take precedence over journalism, a spiral of mistrust and enemy-making begins.
In Hungary, this spiral has reached the point where even the minimal core of shared reality has been eroded. We are no longer simply arguing about how to interpret the same facts. Rather, we live in separate sets of facts and separate moral coordinate systems. Those whose media experience is based on the idea that the West is decadent, warmongering, and oppressive to Hungary live in a completely different country than those who read independent or foreign media on a daily basis.
The result is not only political division, but also general hatred and mistrust. In this environment, it is easy to say, “everyone is lying.” But if everyone is lying, then there is no longer any basis for reference to reality, only “who do I believe?” And at that moment, politics, science, and even the press become mere tribal identity games.
Political Economy of Ignorance and Mental Exhaustion
Hungarian public life is often described in “dualistic” terms: on the one hand, there is the “brutal propaganda machine,” and on the other, there is an “enlightened, informed opposition intelligentsia.” However, this image is misleading and can even be dangerous. Most people are not part of either group!
The everyday experience is that a significant proportion of people work from morning to night, often in multiple shifts, sometimes in precarious living conditions. They have at most a few minutes to spare for news in terms of time and mental energy – typically in the form of social media news feeds or the front pages of tabloid websites. Most politicized media content does not help people make sense of things, but rather generates further anxiety and anger. Psychological research shows that information overload and constant consumption of negative news deplete cognitive resources, impair concentration, increase feelings of helplessness, and can contribute to the development of depressive and anxiety symptoms in the long term.
When we combine this with the fact that Hungarian public education has not been preparing students for media literacy, critical thinking, and digital hygiene for decades, it is clear that we are talking not only about a crisis of misinformation but also a crisis of literacy. The EU and professional organizations have been emphasizing the importance of media literacy for democratic participation for years, but in Hungary, this area has remained marginal.
Meanwhile, truly essential, long-term issues – adapting to global warming, the sustainability of the healthcare system, the future of education, the labor market effects of technological changes (such as artificial intelligence) – are rarely at the center of public discourse. Or if they do, they often become tools of the same polarizing logic: climate deniers vs. “green hysterics,” “gender ideology” vs. “fascists,” and so on.
The final result is a society where people really are wolves to each other, where even the smallest space for shared thinking is shrinking, and where the mental health crisis is quietly but steadily deepening. In this state, “political opinion” is often no longer a rational position, but an attempt to find at least some semblance of a solid identity in the chaos.
Why Wouldn’t Government Change Solve Everything?
Based on the picture above, it would be easy to think that if the current government and its media machine disappeared, everything would be “fixed.” This is an illusion.
For years, Freedom House’s Nations in Transit report has described Hungary as an “autocratizing system”: formally democratic institutions, but gradually emptying checks and balances, and concentrated media and economic power. In such systems, political change – if it occurs at all – does not automatically bring about a transformation of social habits, trust structures, or media culture.
There are at least three reasons for this:
- Trust cannot be built by decree.
In a society where trust in institutions, the press, and the EU has been deliberately undermined for many years, it is not enough to enact new laws. The reflex that “everyone lies,” cynicism, and fatalism are deeply ingrained. This cannot be reversed overnight.
- The distortion of the media market is permanent.
The pro-government media complex is not merely a political “product”: it is also a business and infrastructure network that has been built up over many years with state resources, regulatory concessions, and ownership restructuring. Even a government seeking to restore media freedom would struggle for years to dismantle this without slipping into political interference itself.
- The mentality of the comment section survives every government.
The culture of hatred, mockery, gloating, and quick moral judgments is not party-dependent. Social media and news consumption habits simultaneously reward radicalism and punish complexity. This mentality would remain with us even if the political actors were replaced.
If we are honest, we must admit that the information crisis we are living in is as much structural as it is political. It has been created by the global infodemic, platform capitalism, the dismantling of domestic institutions, the distortion of the media market, and our own everyday decisions – what we read, what we click on, how we talk to each other.
There is no quick, painless way out of this situation. Even in an ideal scenario – in which populist regimes weaken and democratic institutions strengthen – it would take decades for the culture of public discourse, trust, media literacy, and willingness to debate to truly and measurably change. Until then, we must face an uncomfortable truth: we live in an information space that exhausts, divides, and manipulates us – and yet we try to understand the world through it. It is not certain that we can escape this… The question is rather how we can exist in it as human beings without giving up on each other for good.
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