For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties' 'lead candidates'. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU's lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called 'Eurovision Debate', a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience.

The paper presents an attempt to study national-ethnic images and cultural distances with a new conceptual approach and a revival of the Buchanan–Cantril-technique utilizing contemporary network methodology. The conceptual framework related to cognitive maps derived from perceived attributes of other nations and their own called for a renewed application of the catnet concept introduced by Harrison White. Our survey took place in 2016/17, administered online in a joint project with samples of Greek and Hungarian internet users. Respondents’ three choices out of sixteen adjectives for six national/ethnic objects (Americans, Greeks, Hungarians, Russians, Arabs, and Germans) provided the basic data for mapping national stereotypes and their configurations. The analyses build on the conceptual separation of ingroup and outgroup foci, the distinction of the stereotypes alongside the dimensions of warmth and competence, and the differentiation of cognitive–instrumental, expressive–self-presentational and ruling–symbolic skills/knowledge styles. The visual patterns outlined by Ucinet/Netdraw two-mode analyses manifest varieties of semantic networks under various sociocultural settings and historical-political backgrounds. Our findings, employing a selected set of segmentation criteria, show the impact of recent financial and migration crises on the cognitive maps of various segments of the Greek and Hungarian study populations.

Tanulmányunk közvetlen célja, hogy feltárjuk a 2010-es és 2014-es magyarországi parlamenti választási kampányok legfőbb médiadinamikai jellemzőit. Elemezzük a tömegmédia valóságkonstrukciójának legfőbb empirikus tényeit, rendszerszerű strukturális jegyeit, és a kampányokhoz kapcsolódó dinamikai finomhangolását. Tanulmányunk az első lépés azon törekvésünkben, hogy egy empirikus médiadinamikai vizsgálatot összekapcsoljunk Niklas Luhmann-nak a tömegmédia valóságkonstrukciójára vonatkozó elméletével.

This chapter centres on polarised rearrangements of the imageries of ‘Others’ both in the Greek and the Hungarian public, during a period witnessing the impacts of the global financial crisis and the so-called ‘refugee crisis.’ We examined varieties of imageries of ‘Others’ in crisis situations, based on an online survey that was conducted in parallel in Greece and Hungary. Concurrently, we analysed the auto-stereotypical features of Greeks and Hungarians, along with their hetero-stereotype characteristics concerning some key nationalities (Americans, Arabs, Germans and Russians) to capture emerging patterns of sympathies, perceived skills and cultural distances. We found a substantial core of positive expressive auto-stereotypes among the Greek population. Hungarian auto-stereotypes reflected somewhat more instrumental-oriented self-images. The cognitive maps outlined by the two-mode network methodology displayed groupings of nationalities with related stereotypical attributes, such as ‘Western,’ ‘Eastern’ or ‘Peripheral.’ We also examined the beliefs of certain segments of the overall population depending on their exposure to financial and refugee crises. Media analyses of various activity domains conducted correspondingly for the respective countries highlighted substantial shifts between pre- and post-crisis patterns regarding both these countries’ positions and their characteristic features, as portrayed in the Greek and the Hungarian public discourse.

This article studies national-ethnic images and cultural distances utilizing contemporary network methodology. The conceptual framework related to cognitive maps of perceived in-group and out-group stereotypes builds on an extended application of the catnet concept introduced by Harrison White. Employing an adapted version of the classical comparative approach by Buchanan and Cantril, the survey took place online in 2016/17, in a joint project with Greek and Hungarian samples. The analyses build on a two-mode network approach of attributes attached to these two, and four other nationalities, highlighting emotional and competence dimensions and skills/knowledge styles in an attribute/nation perspective. The impact of recent crises is also treated by contrasting the cognitive maps of various segments of the Greek and Hungarian populations.