Sharing political nostalgia in Hungary is yearning for the past successful on social media?

Abstract

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 role of social media in disseminating nostalgic narratives. Third, there is a lack of data on citizens’ responses to nostalgia during election campaigns. This article addresses these gaps by identifying the patterns of political nostalgia in the Facebook communications of the Hungarian political forces running for seats in the 2019 European parliamentary election. In addition to a qualitative content analysis of the nostalgic posts, the paper investigates their reception by the social media users who reacted to the messages. The data was gathered during the seven-week official campaign period until the election on May 26. The study confirms that right-wing, nationalist politicians expressed nostalgia more often than left-leaning leaders, and the analysis also shows that nostalgic messages are not very efficient in terms of user engagement and the numbers of emoji responses. Our results therefore mitigate the concerns about the influence of political nostalgia in Hungary.

Keywords:

• Nostalgia
• politics
• election campaign
• Facebook
• Hungary

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/276767/social-network-usage-penetration-of-european-populations/

2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/pdfscache/2549.pdf

3 https://www.statista.com/statistics/276767/social-network-usage-penetration-of-european-populations/

4 https://medialandscapes.org/country/hungary/media/social-networks

5 http://abouthungary.hu/blog/pm-orban-europe-can-only-be-saved-if-she-returns-to-her-christian-identity/

6 The coding process was performed by the authors. The agreement among raters was 90% in selecting nostalgic posts, and 71% in categorising. After the interrater test, the deviant cases were discussed and the necessary revisions of the coding instructions were introduced to increase the consistency of the database building and the coding processes.

7 https://www.facebook.com/gyurcsanyf/videos/2788634651147409/

8 The leaders of the party had been charged with throwing smoke bombs towards the police at a large demonstration.

9 https://www.facebook.com/feketegyorandras.momentum/photos/a.128591407817799/306926186650986/?type=3

10 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=328380597767195

11 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=643921502700159

12 https://www.facebook.com/298090296092/posts/10157055825196093

13 https://www.facebook.com/orbanviktor/photos/egy-%C3%A9ve-ezen-a-napon-a-year-ago-on-this-day/10156965821156093/

14 https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2788634651147409&ref=watch_permalink

15 Helmut Kohl was the Chancellor of Germany between 1982 and 1998.

16 https://www.facebook.com/orbanviktor/posts/10157080847826093/

17 https://www.facebook.com/karacsonygergely/posts/2767143543318474/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office: [Grant Number Grant Agreement no. 131990].

Notes on contributors

Gabriella Szabó

Gabriella Szabó is a senior research fellow at Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest, Hungary). Her research interests lie in the area of political communication, expressivity and public sphere.

Balázs Kiss

Balázs Kiss is a senior research fellow at Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest, Hungary). His field of interest is political commucation and emotions.