News

Political participation and the culture of protest in today’s Hungary

04 May 2026

The joint workshop of ProTest and INTERFACED Horizon projects, held on April 16, 2026, at Corvinus University explored key questions surrounding political participation and protest culture in contemporary Hungary. The event focused on how different forms of participation are evolving and how protest movements construct and contest their discursive frames.

Four presentations with lively discussions took place in the first, closed-door part of the workshop. The presentation by Réka Várnagy (ProTest) and Zoltán Dujisin (ProTest) provided an in-depth empirical and methodological overview of protest dynamics in Hungary since 2018 through four case studies. Gabriella Szabó (INTERFACED) outlined the methodology for analysing grievance-related emotions in petition texts. Miklós Hajdu (ProTest) analysed the selective representation of protest discourses in mainstream media, where complex narratives are often reduced or filtered through dominant political actors. Dániel Mikecz (CSS) held a presentation on the relationship between civil society and political parties in the Orbán regime.

In the second – public – part of the workshop, the focus shifted toward broader theoretical and comparative perspectives. Attila Melegh (ProTest) highlighted the importance of understanding the global-local interplay in shaping protest narratives, showing how diverse and sometimes conflicting personal perspectives coexist within collective movements, often leading to “frame struggles” where certain interpretations dominate while others are marginalised. Márton Gerő’s presentation (INTERFACED) outlined the theoretical basis and key objectives of the Interfaced project, examining political participation as a process that increasingly connects online and offline spaces, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19.
The concluding discussions raised critical questions about declining engagement, cultural constraints on participation, and the capacity of different participatory forms to provide meaningful influence in decision-making. Overall, the workshop underscored both the diversity and the limits of political participation in Hungary today, pointing to the need for further research on how fragmented discourses might be transformed into more cohesive frames.