Digital media, democracy and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

CEE countries faced significant political, economic, social, and technological transformations over the last four decades. Democratic processes, after relative stabilization, tremble again around polarizing values, populist leaders, or nationalistic ideologies. Online communication, especially social media platforms, play a vital role in shaping how citizens interact with the state, political actors, media, and other citizens. The collection of manuscripts focuses on some of the challenges democratic institutions in the region face, in transforming and sustaining civil society and attempts to capture how the digital media environments mitigate or exacerbate those challenges. Included manuscripts focus on the role that online platforms play in the satisfaction with democracy in the CEE region, the interactions between journalists and political actors, the strategic media coverage of elections, affective polarization and political antagonism, and discursive attempts to discourage young people from civic engagement.

Keywords:

• Digital democracy
• Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
• social media
• citizenship
• political communication
• affordances

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.BBND.P2

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karolina Koc-Michalska

Karolina Koc-Michalska, Professor at Audencia Business School and Affiliated Researcher at CEVIPOF Sciences Po Paris, France, and University of Silesia, Poland. She studies the strategies of political actors in the online environment and citizens’ political engagement. She employs a comparative approach focusing on the US and European countries.

Darren Lilleker

Darren Lilleker is Professor of Political Communication and Bournemouth University, UK, Co-Editor of the Journal of Visual Political Communication and Director of the Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research

Christian Baden

Christian Baden is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the collaborative construction of meaning in dynamic, political public debates, with specific emphasis on the modeling and measurement of textual discourse.

Damian Guzek

Damian Guzek is an associate professor in digital media and communication at the University of Silesia in Katowice. His research is driven by questions related to media consumption and digital media, religions, and politics.

Marton Bene

Márton Bene (PhD) is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence, and an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). His research interests are in political communication, social media and politics, and political behavior.

Larissa Doroshenko

Miloš Gregor is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. He is dealing with topics such as political communication and marketing, propaganda, disinformation, and fake news.

Miloš Gregor

Larissa Doroshenko is a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Communication and an Affiliated Faculty at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University. Her research interests are centered on the effects of new media on political campaigning, with a particular focus on populism, nationalism, and disinformation campaigns in Eastern Europe (Ukraine and Belarus).

Marko Scoric

Marko M. Skoric is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, where he leads the Political Communication and Culture Research Cluster and acts as the PhD Program Coordinator. His research interests are focused on new media and social change, with a particular emphasis on the civic and political implications of digital technologies. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Michigan and a B.Sc. in Psychology from the University College London.