Contents – Autumn 2017

Cseke, Balázs:

The sensation of misery

This paper looks into the history and press coverage of a settlement in Budapest’s District 9 called „Dzsumbuj.” It is based on the narrative life interviews I have conducted with former Dzsumbuj inhabitants in the framework of the social art project called “A város peremén” (On the Edge of the City) and the findings of the content analysis of written media sources. It aims at examining the narratives and motives the press used to present the settlement in different periods of time and at analysing how these narrations may have contributed to the categorisation and stigmatisation of its inhabitants.

Kovács, Blanka:

Can we speak about media poverty?

Changes in the media affect everyone’s life as media have become the number one device for mass communication in modern societies. Such changes require us to change our own media consumption patterns. But how can one keep up with innovations and new trends if lacking in cultural and economic capital? One needs money and knowledge in order to be able to process all the new information. This paper focuses on the most challenged district of Budapest called Józsefváros, examining how vulnerable local residents’ awareness of media is because of their low levels of cultural and economic capital. The current and sinister trim in Hungary’s public and private media is also emphasized in this study.

Nagy, Krisztina:

Teachers' media perception, their attitude to freedom of the press and the importance and place of media education in the educational system

School education plays a key role in the development of media literacy, and teachers’ knowledge and attitudes shape media education in Hungary. While media awareness is part of the educational headline targets of the National Curriculum and media studies are widely taught, teacher training is still not in line with the provisions laid down in the National Curriculum. This research project chiefly examined teachers’ attitudes towards media freedom, their knowledge of the operation of the media market and the possible topics of formal media education. The findings suggest that teacher training should be more focused on the role of press freedom in the democratic culture, the operation of the media market and the co-dependence of content supply and market mechanisms.

Nagy, Ágoston – Pap, Milán:

Nation-building, modernization and "creeping capitalism"

In the second half of the Cold War era, the East/West relationship was more often characterised by the political doctrine of peaceful coexistence and the practice of aware cooperation than by martial ideological rhetoric and the politics of closeness. The success of the former partly depended on the mutual recognition of the citizens of the two superpowers’ blocs. National Geographic Magazine played a leading role in presenting the countries and the peoples of the world to the American middle and upper-middle classes. The number of reports covering East European countries reached its peak in the 1970s and 1980s. These reports had three recurring narrative patterns on state-socialist Eastern Europe, including 1) surviving national traditions and peculiarities versus the official dogma of communist internationalism, 2) a certain way of social modernisation differing from the Western one, and 3) the local practices of capitalism versus the dominance of the planned economy. This paper attempts to describe these narrative patterns based on National Geographic articles from the abovementioned two decades. It follows the theoretical frames and analytical methods of critical discourse analysis, focusing on the differentiation of the societies of the Soviet bloc and explanations of socialist modernisation from the perspective of the dominant discourse of Western modernisation.

Veszprémy, László Bernát:

A derailed village explorer

This paper discusses certain aspects of the far-right columnist György Oláh’s previously unexplored journalistic career. It draws to a large extent upon sources from between 1927 (the year Oláh’s first sociography was published) and 1944. It quotes books and articles written by Oláh and published in his journal Egyedül Vagyunk (We Stand Alone) in order to understand his worldview and his role in anti-Semitic redistribution and the Holocaust. It also presents Oláh’s particular euphemisms for anti-Semitic hate-mongering, his choice of propaganda and his revolutionary economic views. Contrary to the statements of the historiography of state socialist system, Oláh did not represent the interests of great landowners. From his writings emerge the silhouette of a propagator of radical anti-Semitic redistribution, a firm believer in the total role of the state and a revolutionary journalist who celebrated the Holocaust as it was happening in Hungary.

Murai, András – Tóth, Eszter Zsófia:

How to interpret a revolutionist in a dictatorship that claims to be revolutionary?

This paper describes the representation of Che Guevara in the Hungarian media during the state socialist period on the basis of newspapers, and finds that the portrayal of Che Guevara varied throughout this period and ranged between the images of the revolutionary hero and of the dangerous man.