@Pol_Cap
🗣️ Political Capital’s Head of Programme, Bulcsú Hunyadi, recently participated in #Disinfo2026, Europe’s biggest conference on #disinformation. Organised by @DisinfoEU, an independent European civil society organisation, the conference attracted 650 participants from civil society, the media, academia, tech companies, and government institutions. 🌐
🔎 The conference discussed the latest trends facing the counter-disinformation community. During a panel on securitised information and shrinking civic space, Bulcsú discussed the establishment of informational autocracy and state-sponsored disinformation in Hungary under Viktor Orbán's premiership, why this system proved ineffective in the 2026 elections and the lessons it may offer counter-disinformation actors in other countries.
🤝 We are deeply grateful to @DisinfoEU for the organisation of the conference and for the invitation. By doing so, we stand in solidarity with them in the face of pressure from foreign actors, regardless of its origin.View quoted post on X
How do you dismantle a propaganda machine?
A great piece by @lilirutai Rutai in @ForeignPolicy on the legacy of Orbán’s “public media”, —and the challenge of rebuilding public service journalism. I was glad to contribute.
“Orban’s Hungary was an informational autocracy, in which the main tools of the system were hatred, disinformation, and conspiracy theories,” said Peter Kreko, director of Budapest-based research institute Political Capital (HU) . The public media was part of this.”
Kreko likened M1 under Orban to Breitbart, a far-right U.S. news outlet that fiercely supports U.S.President Donald Trump. “They didn’t even attempt to feign objectivity,” he said.
“The information autocracy has caused a kind of destruction that we don’t see anywhere else in the EU,” Kreko said. “The [fearmongering] campaigns had an immediate, measurable, and evaluable impact on public opinion.”View quoted post on X
