Situation analysis, introduction

Over the past sixteen years, institutional, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns have been conducted in Hungary. The Hungarian state used (dis)information as a weapon against its own citizens. The “public media” became the flagship of these disinformation campaigns.

The distortion of the Hungarian information environment over the past sixteen years is having a clear and measurable impact on public opinion. Various opinion polls – including surveys by the Mérték Media Monitor, the Dimenzió Foundation, the Political Capital Institute, the 21 Research Centre, Eurobarometer and other research institutes – reveal a lasting loss of trust, polarization, the spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation narratives, as well as severe and lasting damage to trust in institutions. Disinformation campaigns reinforce fear responses, prejudice, and anxiety within society.

In Hungarian society, there is a significant receptiveness to pseudoscientific views, conspiracy theories and anti-science narratives, even by international standards. This is not solely a consequence of political campaigns. Numerous domestic and international studies highlight that a significant proportion of the population is uncertain about the scientific consensus and open to conspiracy explanations, pseudoscientific theories and alternative medicine. In Hungary, the acceptance of alternative, scientifically unsubstantiated claims is higher than the EU average. This phenomenon is partly linked to low levels of trust in institutions, shortcomings in critical information processing, and a polarized and fragmented information environment.

The erosion of media freedom, shrinking pluralism, and the dominance of state-controlled communication leave a growing proportion of citizens following politics in an information environment that is both narrow and distorted.

In an information environment where state-funded disinformation poisons public discourse, it becomes difficult to educate people in the conscious use of media, and media education suffers as a result. According to international research, Hungarian children’s digital literacy depends largely on where they are born and the family environment in which they are raised. The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS 2023) – which examined pupils’ digital competences and literacy at the end of primary school – found that Hungarian children rarely use digital technology for schoolwork; instead, they typically spend significant time online outside school, not for learning purposes. Based on an assessment of students’ digital reading comprehension, two-thirds are digitally illiterate; they are unable to identify the characteristics of scams in digital communication and have difficulty assessing the reliability of social media content. This finding is supported by the OECD’s PISA 2022 study, which shows that Hungarian students’ performance in reading comprehension and information interpretation is declining, particularly in tasks requiring the critical evaluation of online information. According to domestic and international analyses, the development of media literacy in Hungary remains fragmented and under-institutionalized.

While these effects are reversible, a change in government will not automatically resolve them. The problems of the information environment cannot be addressed merely through a political shift, spontaneous social adaptation, or market self-correction. Instead, it requires institutional responses across three domains: media regulation, the protection of media pluralism, and educational programs that develop media literacy and critical thinking. In the information autocracy established by the previous government, domestic and international actors used information as a weapon against Hungarian citizens. Thus, strengthening resistance to disinformation is simultaneously a matter of democracy, social cohesion, and national security.

This package of proposals aims to formulate policy recommendations for creating a higher-quality information environment, implementable at the Member State level, that will facilitate the more effective enforcement of European Union regulations and reduce administrative and political obstacles arising during implementation and practical application.

The proposals adopt a deliberately differentiated approach, recognizing that the state's role in regulation and social domains is neither uniform nor unlimited. Where structural risks require it, stronger coordination and institutional safeguards are recommended; elsewhere, the emphasis falls on bolstering civil society, market actors, educational institutions, and international cooperation. Thus, our proposals are fundamentally based on the premise that citizens are active and competent participants in the democratic public sphere, not merely passive victims of disinformation and manipulation. The approach is not paternalistic or restrictive – it treats citizens as partners with the aim of enhancing their informational autonomy and critical capacity. Democratic resilience, in the long run, is not built through bans or censorship. It is built through transparency, media literacy, participation, and trust. The aim is not for the state to mould ‘right-thinking’ citizens, but to create an information and educational environment where citizens navigate autonomously through a digital space saturated with manipulation, disinformation and pseudoscientific content.

We set out our recommendations in the following areas:

The full proposal package is available here: