The Discursive Construction of the Concepts of LGBTQ and Roma People in Hungarian Online Political Communication [védés előtt]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

The research project aims to unveil and systematically compare the meaning-making tools and strategies with which Hungarian politicians discursively construct the concepts of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (henceforth LGBTQ) and Roma minorities in their online political communication. Understanding how these political actors portray different minority groups is crucial as the research project perceives politicians’ communication not only as portraying minorities but also as constructing their concepts in the Hungarian public discourse and, thus, social reality. As such, it relies on the theoretical approach of discourse analysis and understands discourse as a social practice that shapes social reality and is simultaneously shaped by it. The research project also draws on social media’s possible equalizing or normalizing effect on the power balances between major, well-resourced, and minor, less established parties. To understand politicians’ meaning-making strategies regarding Roma and LGBTQ people, 45 prominent Hungarian politicians’ 2019 minority-related Facebook posts were analyzed with a discourse analytic approach. This approach led to the following new scientific results: • Regarding the similarities in the portrayal of the two minority groups, both minorities were frequently depicted as generalized, passive, silent actors; their voices and opinions rarely appeared in Facebook posts, and their most frequently ascribed social role was that of the victim. Many of the inclusive-toned posts were short, emotionally saturated, morally condemning, vague posts in which minorities appeared merely as empty signifiers of the politicians’ ideological stances. • As for particularities, the LGBTQ minority’s portrayal significantly differed between the left-leaning opposition politicians and politicians of the governing parties. Both constructed the concept of sexual minorities predominantly in the roles of being devoted to family and victims, but the former did so in an inclusive tone, while the latter in an exclusionary, sometimes even hostile mode. • The portrayal of Roma people was divided between the Roma nationality advocate and the left-leaning opposition politicians. In the portrayal of the nationality advocate, Roma people were portrayed as individualized in the roles of artists and as politically active, while opposition politicians’ inclusive-toned posts represented Roma primarily as generalized in the roles of victims and workers & professionals. • Regarding the events that triggered the mention of minorities, the portrayal of minority groups was heavily influenced by certain exclusionary events initiated by members of the governing parties or their radical right-wing satellite. At the same time, politicians rarely connected non-minority-related events to the two minority groups, therefore sharply separating the concepts of minorities from other public issues and events. As such, minorities were seldom connected to the European Parliament elections and the Hungarian municipal elections of 2019. • Another key finding of the research was that while politicians’ language use constructed the concept of sexual minorities through their inclusion into or exclusion from the social dimension of ‘family,’ ethnic minorities’ social exclusion or inclusion was constructed along the dimension of the nation. • The results of this research project highlight the shortcomings of minority-related political communication, which often constructs minority groups as passive citizens or even makes them invisible in minority-related discourses. Therefore, its findings could be leveraged in initiatives that foster more inclusive political communication, in educational programs conducted by NGOs and advocacy groups that promote inclusive language usage among politicians, and even within journalism education. Concerning further research directions, the study provides a basis for examining the shift in political communication in 2020, when substantial changes took place in Hungarian political communication and action regarding the two minorities.