European Union, Geopolitics and the War in Ukraine: an Analysis of Geopolitical Discourses in Hungarian Media in 2021-2022

Abstract

The paper analyzes Hungarian media discourse related to the geopolitics of the European Union between July 2021 and March 2022. The qualitative analysis draws on a sample (n=100) of the geopolitics-related media corpus of the MEDEU project. Before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the questions of migration and border control, the enlargement of the European Union in the Western Balkans, discourses about the future of Europe, and the assumed divide between the “Eastern” and “Western” Member States dominated the geopolitics-related media content. Following the Russian attack, the Russo-Ukrainian war became the most salient topic, while older themes were also reframed in light of this event. Governmental narratives and terminology dominated the analyzed media contents, which were reinforced through (so-called) experts presented in pro-governmental media. At the same time, the political opposition and government-critical media were rarely able to present and/or disseminate their own narratives.