PurposePoliticians' response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic worldwide relied on war scenarios having a tradition in disease management. The study contrasts how the political measures introduced during the state of emergency were presented by the Prime Minister of Hungary in his social media posts and his speeches and announcements broadcast by public media.Design/methodology/approachA computer-assisted content analysis was conducted to extract data on war and military metaphors, followed by a qualitative analysis of the metaphor scenarios used for explaining the situation and justifying action. The role of the prime minister (PM) indicated by the social media posts and by his transcripted speeches was compared with the suggestion of the visual illustrations.FindingsThe study’s findings were that verbal communication shifted between war-related metaphoric to military-related realistic. The third conceptual domain identified was fear. Messages were mostly about national cohesion, however, visually, the PM was the protagonist of the events. The communication proved efficient according to opinion polls.Originality/valueThe research revealed how the securitization of the pandemic took place via the political discourse constructed both for Internet users and traditional media consumers. Metaphors of fear, war and military action created the justification of the declaration of a state of emergency. The PM as a capable and responsible leader was placed in focus of the events. Although verbal messages by the PM were centred on a sense of community and joint action, the personalization of political action was remarkable by indirect means, such as visual messages. The personalization of politics throughout the period researched served the purpose of securitization of the pandemic with the PM as a charismatic leader attracting attention and giving credit to the severity of the threat along with the introduction of extraordinary measures.

This comparative paper examines the reasons and the features of the rising Euroscepticism in Italy and in Hungary in the light of economic, financial, and political crisis. The financial crisis became the main focus of the political debates and discourses among the Italian and the Hungarian political parties between 2008 and 2013. In Italy and Hungary, Euroscepticism is still on the rise. In the first chapter, I will shortly summarise the conceptual framework of Euroscepticism. In the second chapter, I provide an overview of the way Hungarian and Italian political discourse has envisioned Europe in the post-bipolar, or post-Maastricht, period that began in the early 1990s. The fall of the Berlin wall had a decisive impact on the domestic politics of Hungary and Italy, and subsequent international changes created the basis for different forms of transitions in both countries. Hungary left behind dictatorship and the one-party system to create a functioning democracy, whereas Italy experienced the end of the political party system of the “First Republic,” giving birth to the highly promising “Second Republic.”

A nemzetközi jelenlét Líbiában 2011-től napjainkig Tanulmányunkban a nagyhatalmak (Egyesült Államok, Oroszország és Kína), az európai vezető hatalmak (Franciaország, Olaszország, Németország) és a regionális szereplők (Egyiptom, Szaúd-Arábia, Katar, Egyesült Arab Emírségek és Törökország) szerint csoportokra bontva, az említett államok líbiai szerepvállalásának legjellemzőbb vonásait foglaljuk össze, megjelenítve az adott állam által használt puha és/vagy kemény külpolitikai eszközöket is. Khalífa Haftar Tripoli ellen indított 2019. áprilisi offenzívája tovább bonyolítja a líbiai belpolitikai helyzetet, így a külföldi szereplők befolyása és líbiai kapcsolatrendszere is várhatóan komplexebb lesz. A vizsgált államok líbiai érdekei azonban alapjaiban nem fognak változni, így ha az általuk használt külpolitikai eszközökben változás következik be, az a kemény eszközök irányába történő elmozdulás lesz/lehet, ami spirálszerűen tovább nehezítheti Líbia stabilizálását.

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Purpose The European Union’s (EU’s) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has gained increasing attention as the EU faces new threats and challenges from its surroundings. As part of its CSDP, the EU currently runs six military operations and 11 civilian missions. This paper aims to analyze the EU’s social media use of four CSDP missions and operations running in two regions: in the Mediterranean and in the Western Balkans. Design/methodology/approach The paper has a mixed-methods research design. A computer-assisted content analysis was conducted to extract data on the Twitter communication of the chosen missions, followed by a quantitative analysis on which elements of the EU’s strategic communication can be identified. The timeframe for investigation was set up between 1 January 2019 and 31 August 2020. Findings Patterns of communication cannot be recognized either based on regional or on the civilian-military division. The strong connectivity with the accounts of other European actors and/or institutions is striking. This study finds that the concept of local ownership can be observed only at European level, local populations of the host countries are usually not targeted. Even though several elements of the EU’s strategic communication are recurrent on the missions’ official Twitter account, Twitter communication seems to be an intra-European communication tool. Originality/value The research revealed the main features of the Twitter communication of four CSDP missions. Due to the software-assisted methodology, measuring influence score was made possible, a feature that was still missing from academic literature regarding this specific area, the EU’s CSDP.