CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Attila Balla |
|---|---|
| Title | In the Same Place but in the Same Way? The Effects of the Change in the Editorial Structure of Index.hu on COVID News Coverage |
| Summary | Abstract: In July 2020, in one of Hungary’s most prominent online news sites (index.hu), the entire editorial staff resigned because of political pressure from the autocratic government. While the site has not started to publish hard propaganda with the new editorial team, strong doubts remain as to whether it remained independent. I hypothesize that after the change they are using sophisticated forms of information manipulation. Reporting less bad news (censorship), showing a more positive sentiment of the new (farming bias), or framing the government as a competent actor by attributing positive events to them while blaming external actors for the negative event (selective attribution) are possible ways to implement less visible news manipulation. With a corpus of COVID-19-related news - a salient topic both before and after the editorial change - from index.hu and four other news sites I analyzed news manipulation. The frequency of reports on indicators, news headlines, and news fragments with relevant governmental or external actors are analyzed, using historical data and human coders. The findings support only the claim for framing bias, and while a larger sample or different techniques can reveal media bias of the site, it also implies that the regime intends to maintain the credibility of the site in the public eye. Keywords: media bias, media capture, propaganda, censorship, selective attribution, natural language processing, difference-in-differences, Hungary |
| Supervisor | Simonovits, Gabor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/balla_attila.pdf |
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