Contents – Summer 2023

Pintér, Róbert:

Some aspects of childhood video gaming in Hungary

Most children start gaming between the ages of 6 and 10 in Hungary. This article explores the motivations behind gaming, gender differences, and the differences between casual and hardcore gamers. Because of the differences, it is difficult for both parents and children to understand each other when it comes to gaming. The article briefly covers the parents’ responsibilities and possible strategies. The study also shows the relationship between video games and sports, as well as the importance of e-sports as the main media content to reach young men today. The paper includes both negative (violence and “addiction”) and positive themes related to video gaming. Finally, the article concludes with video games both as a means of escaping for young adult men and as a path for choosing a career in IT. The purpose of this paper is to outline a bigger picture, while its novelty is that it uses comprehensive research data from eNET that is not available to the scientific community in the depth presented in this paper.

Keywords: addiction, career choice, children, digital parenting, e-sports, gender differences, motivations, video gaming, violence

Szász, Veronika Sára:

Personal brand in the context of creative arts

This study briefly presents the personal branding strategies of emblematic Hungarian creative artists who have gained professional recognition and built up their following before the advent of information technologies. It is based on research related to the discourse on digital identity construction previously discussed in the media studies quarterly Médiakutató and expands it with the specificities of the artistic context.

Keywords: consciousness, creative arts, digital identity, interaction, personal brand, self 2.0, self-brand, social media

Kiss, Balázs:

Communication formulas

Since the early days of rhetoric, it has been known that the impact and effectiveness of a political speech is not only determined by its topical political messages or ideological content, but also by its structure and the way it is organised. This paper analyses a longer and a shorter text by the Hungarian prime minister, studying how they reflect the recipe for success in popular culture: the structure of the Hollywood formula and the energy curve of pop music songs.

Keywords: addiction formula, Hollywood formula, multimodal analysis, Viktor Orbán

Sarány, Orsolya:

An overview of the current state of the Hungarian print media in Transylvania

The autumn of 2022 brought about drastic changes in the Hungarian newspaper market in Transylvania: several publishers decided to close down their print publications or to move them into the online sphere. This paper presents the market processes leading to these decisions against a background of the production mechanisms of minority daily papers. This dual perspective has been chosen because of the focus of the author: as a PhD student in sociology she looks at these processes from the outside, but as a Hungarian journalist coming from Transylvania, she sees them from the inside. This study also discusses some of the structural characteristics of the Hungarian print media from Transylvania and lists the most important daily newspapers of the past 30 years, comparing the markets of dailies in 2012 and in 2023. It also presents some aspects of the newspaper market, detailing the non-market-based consequences of these processes.

Keywords: media economy, minority language media, newspaper production

Torbó, Annamária:

A (self-)critique of participatory culture

The name of Henry Jenkins has a prominent place in the study of media culture, especially in that of popular culture. In addition to his research, which has set out the main lines of research on fan culture, he is also credited with creating the concept of participatory culture. Participatory culture is closely related to fan practices but encompasses a wider range of activities. The acquisition of the skills associated with it plays an important role in developing users’ media literacy. However, Jenkins’ original ideas about participatory culture have been subject to a number of criticisms. Although studies focusing on participatory culture have been published in the field of media research in Hungary, there are no texts available that focus specifically on Jenkins’ reflections on the critiques and the concept of participatory culture as further elaborated by him. This article attempts to fill this gap. It presents the (fan) participation possibilities that he has further developed in the meantime. Participatory politics in the context of civic engagement, while drawing heavily on it, goes to some extent beyond the boundaries of the phenomenon of participatory culture.

Keywords: fan activism, media literacy, participatory culture, participatory politics, popular culture