social media

On December 18, 2025, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) invited Lithuania’s education community to discuss why ethical judgment matters in a fast-changing, digital world—and why ethics and civic responsibility are essential. The conversation took place during the awards ceremony for Lithuania’s national ethics competition for 7th–8th graders, “Beside Me: Another Person”, hosted by Vytautas Magnus University (VDU).

Twenty years ago, politics was the domain of debate, analysis, and long-form interviews. But today, in an era of short-form content and the dominance of TikTok in particular, has it become a spectacle? Algorithms favor viral content, politicians adapt to trends, and voters make decisions based on catchy messages rather than in-depth arguments.

The X platform (formerly Twitter) might not be the most popular platform in the CEE region, but posts regarding a European Parliament committee’s visit to Hungary in May 2023 gained attention nevertheless. An analysis revealed that the posts about the visit were targeted by suspected inauthentic accounts in an attempt to discredit any perceived opponent of the Hungarian ruling party.

Do you also feel that communication is somehow getting faster and easier for us before national election? Statuses, clickbait headlines, short Tik-Tok videos, captions on Instagram photos. If you do not condense the information into three words, do not even bother saying anything. Okay, maybe my age and nostalgia are writing this out of me and it has always been this way, just by analog means. But what I see, even without nostalgia, is the decline of electoral agendas.

During the second decade of the 21st century, liberalization of the media has been significant. By liberalization I don’t mean that liberal voices are more popular than ever, quite the opposite. In Hungary you don’t have to be a hired journalist anymore in order to spread your ideas and opinions on the internet. With the help of social media all you have to do is download the app, sign up and your journey as a political influencer can begin.

Last year, in the countries ruled by populist leaders, attempts to influence the social-media content through laws have intensified. The state began to interfere in the removal of content from the Internet in Russia and Brazil, among others

In this episode, Leszek Jażdżewski talks with Maciej Kuziemski about the recent takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, its implications for liberal democracies, and the future of social media.

Despite overwhelming and publicly available evidence, pro-Kremlin media have denied large troop movements and continue to spread disinformation about their purely defensive motives and Ukrainian provocations.

Amid Russia\'s growing military build-up along Ukraine\'s borders, the Slovak pro-Kremlin media are increasingly turning to aggressive rhetoric directed against NATO and Ukraine.

After the recent protests against Slovak doctors and experts, the government has now become the latest target in a series of anti-vax/anti-pandemic measures protests. Hundreds of people gathered outside the Slovak parliament to voice their discontent with new pandemic measures.