Keywords

Illiberalism is increasingly mentioned among the key threats faced by contemporary liberal democracies, typically alongside populism, right-wing nationalism, democratic backsliding, polarization, and hate speech. Yet, while other threats to democratic institutions and values attracted significant scholarly attention, illiberalism remains poorly defined and explicit attempts at its conceptualization are rare. As Marlene Laruelle (2022) observes, illiberalism is an ‘emerging concept’ in social sciences and is often used ‘as a fuzzy and inconsistent classification, an intuitive way to describe ideologies and practices that diverge from liberalism […] without being entirely identifiable with authoritarianism or dictatorship’ (p. 303). This conceptual fuzziness is reflected in the wide array of uses and meanings of the terms ‘illiberalism’ and ‘illiberal’, which have been stretched to encompass a plethora of phenomena that are seen as hostile to liberal democracy. These include different types of political regimes, ranging from dictatorship and despotism to totalitarianism and illiberal democracy (e.g. Dimitrijević, 2021; Zakaria, 1997); a variety of political practices, such as discriminatory procedures in the justice system or regulatory interventions that limit public debate or restrict democratic participation (e.g. Behrend & Whitehead, 2016); as well as diverse ideological convictions and attitudes, from right-wing nationalism and ‘new conservativism’ to hostility to LGBTQ+ rights (e.g. Bluhm & Varga, 2018; Yue & Zubillaga-Pow, 2012).

In communication and media research, a similar conceptual confusion is present and studies that explicitly foreground ‘illiberalism’ or the adjective ‘illiberal’ in relation to media and communication remain rare. Instead, phenomena that might fall under the umbrella of illiberalism are often studied under a range of other terms, especially populist communication (Reinemann et al., 2019; Van Aelst et al., 2017), but also democratic backsliding, media capture and media freedom (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2013), as well as hate speech and incivility (Fiss, 1996; Levin, 2010; Titley, 2020). The first studies to explicitly focus on media and illiberalism appeared in the 2010s (Nakano, 2016; Yue & Zubillaga-Pow, 2012) with research accelerating from the late 2010s onwards (Akser & Baybars, 2022; Bakardjieva, 2023; de Albuquerque, 2021; Fong, 2022; Imre, 2019; Jensen & Chen, 2021; Nagy, 2018; Polyák, 2019; Surowiec et al., 2020; Surowiec & Štětka, 2020). As with discussions in social sciences more broadly, this body of research applies the term ‘illiberalism’ to a variety of phenomena that are seen to undermine liberal democracy, from political and regulatory practices to different forms of communication and discourses, without providing a clear definition. Especially in the context of public debate, this absence of conceptual clarity often goes hand in hand with the use of illiberalism as a pejorative term and as a rhetorical device employed to discredit political opponents, which presents a further obstacle to measured debate and analytical precision.

This conceptual fuzziness raises fundamental questions of definition. What is illiberalism and how, if at all, does it differ from other phenomena that undermine the quality of democracy and public life? And, in relation to that, what is the added value of studying illiberalism, as opposed to populism or democratic backsliding? We contend that the key advantage of illiberalism over its main conceptual competitors lies in its ability to offer both a more precise and a more comprehensive way of accounting for the grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism. The concept of illiberalism has the capacity to capture both the ideological and institutional dimensions of contemporary challenges faced by democratic societies and their media, and is better attuned to the dynamic, changing character of societies affected by these challenges. However, for the concept to be used in this way, its meaning and application must be better defined. In this chapter, we first outline our understanding of illiberalism and explain what makes illiberalism distinct from other related phenomena, such as populism and democratic backsliding. We then build on these initial observations to introduce the concept of the illiberal public sphere which provides the conceptual backbone to the analysis presented in the rest of this book. We also identify three ideal-typical stages in the development of the illiberal public sphere and conclude with an overview that charts the evolution and current stage of illiberal public spheres in the four countries that are at the forefront of our analysis in the chapters that follow.

2.1 Conceptualizing Illiberalism

Our approach to illiberalism is informed by existing conceptualizations (e.g. Kauth & King, 2021; Laruelle, 2022; Sajó & Uitz, 2021), as well as by the empirical research presented in this book. It foregrounds three distinctive features of illiberalism: its paradoxical relationship with liberalism, its dual character as both an ideology and a set of practices and institutional arrangements, and its dynamic, processual nature.

First, illiberalism is paradoxically both opposed to and dependent on liberalism: it contributes to the erosion of liberal democratic institutions and undermines liberal values and attitudes but does so by relying on the very institutions and values it seeks to challenge. As Laruelle (2022) puts it: ‘illiberalism […] represents a backlash against today’s liberalism […] often in the name of democratic principles and thanks to them (by winning popular support)’ (p. 305). Sajó and Uitz (2021) concur, arguing that illiberalism is ‘associated with the waning of individual liberty’, while at the same time being ‘compatible with the political rituals of a competitive democracy’ (p. xxiii). This central paradox of illiberalism is clearly apparent in the instrumental use of appeals to freedom of expression to legitimize different forms of hate speech that reject multiculturalism, gender equality, and minority rights (Fiss, 1996; Levin, 2010; Titley, 2020). In a similar manner, illiberal politicians in positions of power—from Viktor Orbán in Hungary to Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil—have used complaints about biased reporting in mainstream news media as a pretext for refusing cooperation with established news channels, or even to justify policy changes that end up undermining media impartiality and professionalism (e.g. Jamil Marques, 2023). This constitutive paradox of illiberalism also means that illiberalism is at its strongest and most visible when it has a liberal competitor to challenge and rely on. When liberal democratic values and institutions collapse and give way to undemocratic ideologies and political systems, illiberalism becomes a taken-for-granted part of shared political culture, articulated primarily in attacks on liberal democratic values and institutions abroad. This is the case, for instance, in contemporary Russia, which often fashions its identity in opposition to the liberal democratic West.

The second feature that helps differentiate illiberalism from its competitors is its dual nature as both an ideology and a set of practices and institutional arrangements. On the one hand, illiberalism is clearly an ideological or symbolic phenomenon. It comprises specific ideological convictions, narratives, values and attitudes that are defined by their opposition to liberal alternatives and can range from anti-immigration attitudes and opposition to abortion or LGBTQ+ rights to the privileging of majoritarian and collectivist solutions over individual and minority rights. Laruelle (2022) develops a particularly elaborated understanding of illiberalism as an ideology, identifying five ‘liberal scripts’ or ‘metanarratives’ that illiberalism seeks to contest (pp. 312–313). These range from the political script that emphasizes the protection of individual freedoms and rights of minorities, to cultural liberalism that foregrounds individual rights and the recognition of a variety of ethnic, sexual and other identities. However, as we have argued elsewhere (Štětka & Mihelj, 2023), restricting illiberalism to an ideology or to a set of narratives or values is insufficient and misses a wide array of articulations of illiberalism that are often at the forefront of existing literature on illiberalism (cf. Smilova, 2021, p. 190). These comprise various practices and institutional arrangements that undermine liberal democracy and aid the proliferation and consolidation of illiberal attitudes, such as new policy and regulatory measures designed to undermine professionalism and independence and increase government control over key institutions, including civil services, the police, judiciary, and media (e.g. Vachudova, 2020).

The third distinctive feature of illiberalism is its dynamic, processual nature. Defined by its opposition to liberalism, illiberalism is never static. It persistently challenges the liberal democratic status quo and seeks to implement fundamental legislative, institutional, and ultimately social and cultural changes, which are predicated on the proliferation and acceptance of illiberal ideals. These ideals can vary depending on the specific combination of liberal scrips a particular version of illiberalism opposes, but typically include majoritarian solutions, an ethno-nationalist vision of society, and a commitment to traditional cultural hierarchies (cf. Laruelle, 2022). Through such changes, illiberalism contributes to a gradual decoupling of democracy from constitutional liberalism, leading to the establishment of what Yasha Mounk (2018) aptly called ‘democracy without rights’. Such changes also potentially open doors for the establishment of a fully undemocratic political system within which illiberalism becomes a self-evident and widely accepted part of political structure and public life.

Aligned with these key distinctive elements, we define illiberalism as an ideological universe that (a) underpins a set of practices and institutional arrangements that are both opposed to, and dependent on, liberalism; (b) pursues a vision of society that is governed by majority rule and underpinned by ethno-nationalist ideals and traditional cultural hierarchies; and (c) leads to a gradual decoupling of democracy from constitutional liberalism, potentially opening doors to authoritarianism. This definition of illiberalism informs our conceptualization of the illiberal public sphere and helps us differentiate illiberalism from its key conceptual competitors. Chief among these is populism that is often conflated with illiberalism and, therefore, deserves a more extended discussion.

To start with, populism—like illiberalism—relies on a paradoxical relationship with contemporary liberal democracy. It is often fuelled by a general disenchantment with political participation and representative democracy, while at the same time relying on democratic institutions and principles to gain popular support. However, populism has been used to describe phenomena that are ideologically considerably more disparate than illiberalism. Described as ‘promiscuous’ (Oliver & Rahn, 2016, p. 190), as a ‘thin’ ideology (Stanley, 2008, p. 95), and as an ‘empty shell’ (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007, p. 4), populism can be observed in a wide variety of ideologies and movements, from far-right parties in Europe to left-wing movements in Latin America, all of which use recognizably populist appeals to the people to justify their actions or fuel anti-elite sentiments in a bid to win the popular vote, but are not necessarily opposed to liberalism. Approaches that define populism as a type of discourse, frame, logic, or style of communication (e.g. Aslanidis, 2016; de Vreese et al., 2018; Laclau, 2005; Moffitt, 2020; Wodak, 2015) are particularly well suited to capture this ideological heterogeneity of populism, as they help foreground the shared discursive or stylistic features of populism that can be adapted to suit a variety of political ideologies, only some of which deserve to be labelled illiberal.

Furthermore, populism—unlike illiberalism—does not inherently constitute a threat to democracy. Although opinions on the subject vary, several authors have pointed out that populism can, at least occasionally, act as a corrective to democracy (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2012), by virtue of its potential to mobilize hitherto excluded groups and encourage debates on marginalized issues, thereby making democracy more inclusive (cf. Laclau, 2005). This ambivalent relationship between populism and democracy has led some scholars to argue against the overly indiscriminate use of populism when describing contemporary political actors, warning that such a use can serve to euphemize and trivialize problematic phenomena such as racism or the far right and ultimately contribute to their mainstreaming (Brown & Mondon, 2021). This was also an important reason that motivated our decision to foreground the concept of illiberalism, rather than populism, in this book. Even though the key political actors in the countries examined here—especially Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the Polish Law and Justice Party, and Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia—have all used recognizably populist discourses and strategies, describing them merely as populists misses some fundamental features of their ideological convictions and governance practices. These include a shared commitment to ethno-nationalism, disdain for cultural liberalism, and a propensity for adopting majoritarian solutions and undermining key democratic institutions, such as the judiciary and independent media (cf. Bayer et al., 2019; Przybylski, 2018; Surowiec & Štětka, 2020; Vachudova, 2020). As such, we argue that they are more accurately described as illiberal.

It follows from this that populism can be combined with illiberalism, but should not be equated with it. For instance, political actors can use appeals to the people and anti-elitist rhetoric to promote illiberal attitudes towards immigration, abortion, or LGBTQ+ rights, as is the case in the four countries examined in this book. In this case, populism can facilitate the shifting of political contestation towards polarizing issues, paving the way for the proliferation of illiberal attitudes in the public domain that ultimately help illiberal actors win the popular vote. However, populist discourses and strategies can also be used by actors that are not illiberal at all. For instance, during the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders regularly attacked economic elites and adopted a rhetoric of blame. He even used appeals to ‘our American people’ and ‘Americans’ considerably more often than his Republican rival Donald Trump (Oliver & Rahn, 2016, p. 194). Conversely, not all illiberal actors rely on populist discourses to further their political agenda. An example is provided by Vladimir Putin who, in his rise to power and during his first presidential term, did not use the characteristic antagonism of Russian people against the elites, but rather emphasized the restoration of state autonomy (Robinson & Milne, 2017, pp. 415–416). Further differences between populism and illiberalism emerge when considering specific ideological or organizational elements—notably, illiberalism does not necessarily require a charismatic leader and is rarely anti-elitist (cf. Laruelle, 2022, p. 318).

2.2 The Illiberal Public Sphere: A Communicative Approach to Illiberalism

To capture the communicative aspects of illiberalism and to provide a basis for analyzing the role that media play in the rise, spreading and everyday operation of illiberalism, this book introduces the concept of the illiberal public sphere. Following in the footsteps of a longstanding tradition of theorizing about the public sphere within media and communication scholarship (Curran, 1993; Dahlgren, 2005; Garnham, 2000), we define the illiberal public sphere as a communicative space comprising both traditional and new media that promote and amplify illiberal actors, views, and attitudes. As will be further explained in the paragraphs that follow, and consistent with the conceptualization of illiberalism advanced in the previous section, the illiberal public sphere is explicitly set against the liberal public sphere, seeking to displace its liberal opponent. The concept of the illiberal public sphere also helps us to adequately capture the dual nature of illiberalism in the communicative realm, enabling us to show how illiberal media and communication practices work in tandem with mediated illiberal attitudes and narratives to undermine liberal democracy.

The classical theory of the public sphere, originating from Jürgen Habermas’ seminal study The Structural Transformation of Public Sphere (1962/1989), traditionally treats the public sphere as an inherently liberal project. For Habermas, the early modern bourgeois public sphere emerged in Western Europe at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century as both a physical and a virtual space, enabled by new institutions such as coffee houses, salons, and newspapers. This new communicative space—a ‘sphere of private people come together as a public’ (Habermas, 1989, p. 27)—facilitated the formation of public opinion. Propelled by progressive liberal ideas, such as individual political rights and equality of participation regardless of social status, the bourgeois public sphere has played a vital role in the historical struggle against absolutism. Despite Habermas’ own pessimistic account of its alleged decay from the late nineteenth century onwards, driven by processes of commercialization and étatization of society, the public sphere remained a cornerstone of modern liberal democracy.

Because of the wide-ranging impact of Habermas’ theory, his liberal-bourgeois public sphere model has come to be seen as the predominant—or even the only possible account of—the public sphere. However, various scholars have pointed out that Habermas’ model is too hegemonic, marked by structural gaps in relation to gender, class and ethnicity, and unable to accommodate alternative types of the public. In one of the first critical responses to Habermas’ model, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (1972/1993) coined the concept of a proletarian public sphere that exists to protect the specific interests of the working class and opposes the bourgeoisie. Nancy Fraser (1990) has talked about ‘subaltern counterpublics’ as ‘parallel discursive arenas’ for members of subordinated social groups—including women, workers, people of colour, gay and lesbian people—who ‘have repeatedly found it advantageous to constitute alternative publics’ (p. 67). The concepts of counterpublics or alternative/counter-public spheres have since been adopted by various authors, especially following the rise of the Internet, which has been seen as a particularly suitable channel for traditionally marginalized groups (Downey & Fenton, 2003; Wimmer, 2005; Dahlgren, 2005; Toepfl, 2020).

However, the existence of alternative public spheres that allow marginalized groups to formulate their interests, generate solidarity, and strengthen their collective identity, does not automatically mean that such communicative spaces advance progressive social ideas and embrace liberal democratic values. As Fraser (1990) herself noted, ‘I do not mean to suggest that subaltern counterpublics are always necessarily virtuous; some of them, alas, are explicitly anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian’ (p. 67). Likewise, Downey and Fenton (2003) cautioned against falling prey ‘to a Left cultural romanticism that sees all forms of grassroots cultural expression as ‘resistance’ (p. 193). They provide as an example the extensive use of the Internet by radical right-wing groups in various countries, including the United States and Germany, at a time when the newly emerged communication technology was still largely on the fringes of the hegemonic public sphere. The rise of right-wing populism in many Western democracies in the 2010s, driven by an anti-establishment ethos, has also been analytically captured by referencing the concepts of counterpublics and ‘counter-sphere’. In this respect, Korstenbroek (2022) talks about an ‘uncompromising counter-sphere’ that cannot be absorbed into the hegemonic public sphere (a scenario envisaged by Habermas) as it ‘alludes to structural incongruence between liberal democracy and radical-right populism’ (p. 74). Following this line of argument, Bennett and Kneuer (2024) argue that such right-wing, illiberal movements, parties, and other actors are best seen as ‘transgressive publics’ rather than counterpublics, because they do not seek inclusion into the liberal democratic system but rather seek to exclude others and adopt illiberal forms of communication that violate basic liberal democratic norms such as civility, inclusion or reasoned exchange.

While the scholarship outlined above has attempted to expand the theory of the public sphere beyond the Habermasian liberal-bourgeois model, it has still largely remained within the perimeters of the democratic political system. Other authors have, however, demonstrated that the public sphere is not necessarily tied to democracy and may exist even outside of its boundaries. Juxtaposed as an antithesis to the ‘democratic public sphere’, Alexander Dukalskis (2017) has coined the concept of the ‘authoritarian public sphere’, defined as ‘a realm of political discussion and information that is dominated and manipulated by the authoritarian regime and/or its allies’ (p. 4). Building on empirical examples from authoritarian states, such as North Korea, Myanmar and China, Dukalskis displays how these regimes are in full control of the public sphere—particularly of the information that is unable to circulate freely—and use their domination ‘to preclude a democratic public sphere […] from emerging’ (p. 3). Under these conditions, any dissent in the authoritarian public sphere is suppressed.

This is not the case with the ‘contentious public sphere’, a concept introduced by Ya-Wen Lei (2017) to describe the communicative situation in China during the brief period of liberalization of the communist regime in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The move towards liberalization opened some opportunities for people’s expression and participation, facilitated by the spread of the Internet. Lei tracks how, during this time, the previously fully hegemonic, authoritarian public sphere started opening up to make space for the formation of public opinions that were not under the communist party’s control, thereby enabling people to contest dominant ideological narratives. Similarly, Zhongxuan (2014) talks about the Internet as a channel for an ‘alternative public sphere’ in China, which is not synonymous with a ‘democratic public sphere’, but rather designates a system of ‘alternative, subaltern, and resistant spaces’ that bypass the ruling power, without however seeking to confront it directly (p. 146).

A similar range of arguments about the nature of public communication under conditions of authoritarian control was developed also in historical research on communist countries. For instance, Stuart Finkel’s (2007) study of the transformation of Soviet intelligentsia during the 1920s shows how Bolsheviks established a distinctly Soviet version of ‘publicness’ (obshchestvennost), one that was ‘purged of the political heterogeneity, partitioning, and divisiveness that characterized the bourgeois public sphere’ (p. 4). A similarly restricted, ‘official’ public sphere, largely dominated by the Party-state, is discussed also by Rittersporn et al. (2003), who draw on case studies from a range of communist countries. However, building on Nancy Frazer’s arguments, Rittersporn et al. point out that ‘Soviet-type’ societies also gave rise to an ‘alternative public sphere’ (p. 441), removed from the gaze of the state, and associated with dissident opposition. This sphere, they argue, was still permeated by ‘the symbols, themes and dreams of the official canon’ (p. 441), but also enabled critique of the state apparatus.

While representing an improvement on a monolithic conception of the Soviet-style public sphere, a binary conception that juxtaposes ‘official’ and ‘alternative’ spheres of communication is nonetheless problematic, as it glosses over the many ways in which the two spheres interacted and overlapped. As Fielder and Meyen (2015) showed in their analysis of communication in the GDR, even the official, staged public sphere could enable citizens to participate in discussions with the ruling elites and gain insight into their actions and intentions. Especially during periods of relative liberalization, for instance during the 1960s, mainstream media in countries such as Poland or Yugoslavia explicitly encouraged popular participation and social critique, leading to relatively open discussions of the rift between political ideals and the reality of life under communist rule (Mihelj, 2013; Mihelj & Huxtable, 2018, pp. 138–140). Another aspect of communication that defied a neat opposition between official and alternative public spheres under communist rule was the widespread practice of letter writing addressed to media professionals. All major media outlets typically possessed a department for processing audience letters, many of which not only commented on aspects of news coverage or individual programmes, but also expressed criticism of various aspects of life under communism and asked media professionals to challenge the inadequate behaviour of authorities (e.g. Fitzpatrick, 1996; Kozlov, 2013). Although such communication was removed from the public gaze, it nonetheless provided an important means of interaction between citizens and authorities, using the media as key intermediaries. In light of such examples, Mihelj and Huxtable (2018) proposed to think of the public sphere under communist rule as a semi-public communicative space that spanned both official and alternative domains and was stimulated ‘both by conscious attempts of dissident circles to create an alternative space of communication and by Party-endorsed promotion of popular participation and social critique’ (p. 136).

All these conceptual alternatives to the Habermasian public sphere—from Dukalskis’ (2017) ‘authoritarian public sphere’ to Finkel’s (2007) notion of a distinctly Soviet public sphere, confirm that a form of public sphere can indeed exist outside of the framework of liberal democratic political systems. At the same time, the debates outlined here also point to the importance of acknowledging the dynamic nature of public communication outside of the realm of liberal democracy, with both Lei’s (2017) concept of a ‘contentious public sphere’ and Mihelj and Huxtable’s (2018) arguments about the ‘semi-public’ nature of public communication under communism highlighting the shifting, porous boundaries between official or state-controlled communication and alternative or dissident communication. A similar recognition of instability is also at the core of our conception of the illiberal public sphere which we see as a dynamic, rather than a static, phenomenon. Following the previously outlined processual nature of illiberalism, we propose that the illiberal public sphere also changes its scope and character over time, depending on its level of success in setting itself against the dominant liberal public sphere. However, if the concepts of contentious public sphere and semi-public communication under communism enable us to capture trends that could potentially democratize an authoritarian public sphere, or even turn it into a liberal one, the illiberal public sphere allows us to conceptualize the processes by which a liberal public sphere gradually morphs into an authoritarian one. As such, our concept also helps us break away from the implicit teleological, West-centric vision of history and social development that often underpins theorizing in the field and which assumes a largely linear progression of public communication from authoritarian to liberal models, without considering the possibility that this trajectory might be reversed.

2.3 The Three Stages of the Illiberal Public Sphere

To facilitate a mode of analysis that is sensitive to the dynamic nature of the illiberal public sphere, we identify three ideal-typical stages in the development of the illiberal public sphere: incipient, ascendant, and hegemonic. These three stages differ in several key aspects: the relative scope and reach of the illiberal public sphere and its relationship with the liberal public sphere; the media forms and outlets that support it; the key political and cultural actors involved in it; the nature of media policies and regulation; and the nature of media ownership and independence. In the paragraphs that follow, we outline the key characteristics of each of these stages and discuss how they change as the illiberal public sphere progresses from the edges of the liberal-democratic system to a place of dominance, overthrowing its liberal counterpart.

Before proceeding with our analysis, we must clarify that, although we mostly refer to it in the singular, the illiberal public sphere—much like its liberal competitor—always operates on several scales, from the local to the regional, national, and transnational. This is perhaps clearest at the incipient stage, where the illiberal public sphere effectively consists of several loosely connected layers tied to a variety of actors, ranging from fringe political movements, cultural institutions, and influencers operating exclusively locally or nationally, to wider, transnationally networked illiberal organizations and movements. As the illiberal public sphere gains strength and colonizes key mainstream media outlets, all the while becoming embedded in national media and cultural policies, it grows increasingly integrated and ‘national’ in scope. However, transnational channels and connections remain important throughout and play a central role in supporting transnational alliances between illiberal actors, facilitating the transmission and adaptation of techniques aimed at undermining the liberal order.

In the first, incipient stage, the illiberal public sphere is relatively limited in its scope and reach, and is confined to a handful of minor, fringe, or hyper-partisan outlets, as well as social media platforms, which act as vehicles of illiberal attitudes and narratives and provide channels for attacks on mainstream media and individual journalists, as well as on other actors associated with ‘liberalism’. It can be argued that, to some extent, this form of illiberal public sphere is present in all democracies, but in most of them it operates either as a counter-public sphere, as outlined above in relation to the works of Fraser (1990) and Downey and Fenton (2003), or as a ‘transgressive public sphere’ that does not seek inclusion in the liberal democratic system, but rather actively excludes others and disregards the norms of civility and tolerance (Bennett & Kneuer, 2024). Under these conditions, political actors advocating illiberal values who, for the most part, overlap with right-wing populists, are not among the strongest players in the national political arena. Although they might make it into Parliament, or even reach a notable one-off electoral success, as has been the case with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), they typically remain outside of central power. These actors and their voters and adherents are commonly vilified by mainstream media and elite discourse, an aspect that they instrumentalize to secure continuing electoral support.

At the second, ascendant stage, the illiberal public sphere has grown in size and influence to the extent that it is on par with its liberal counterpart and competes with it for dominance. Apart from an expanded and consolidated communication ecosystem, comprising hyper-partisan outlets and social media channels, it now also incorporates some of the mainstream news media outlets, including major legacy news brands with well-established broadcast, print or online channels. Such mainstream channels have been co-opted into the illiberal public sphere using different techniques, including legislative changes enabling government capture of media regulatory authorities or public service media, as well as media ownership changes that consign previously independent media into the hands of oligarchs and other owners allied with illiberal political actors (Bajomi-Lázár, 2017; Štětka, 2012). The process of colonization of the liberal public sphere is also carried out via discursive practices that normalize illiberal attitudes while simultaneously undermining liberal values, such as the adoption of a more xenophobic and exclusionary rhetoric by mainstream political actors (cf. Korstenbroek, 2022), or attacks on independent journalists, often combined with misogynistic or racist slurs, or accusations of bias and ‘fake news’ (e.g. Jamil Marques, 2023). These legislative, ownership and discursive shifts typically go hand in hand with the rise of illiberal actors to positions of power. No longer confined to the fringes of the political systems, these parties and individual leaders by this stage occupy central positions of power, including within the government. Both political and media landscapes are polarized along the liberal/illiberal axis, a situation typically discussed in the context of contemporary US politics, but that also affects other democracies where liberal and illiberal governments or presidents have been recently taking turns at power, including Brazil, Poland, Slovenia, and Bulgaria.

The third, hegemonic stage, indicates the moment at which the illiberal public sphere has become dominant, having colonized most mainstream news media channels, and forced the liberal public sphere into retreat. The liberal communication landscape has been limited to a handful of independent outlets, mostly existing online and struggling for survival. Social media and foreign-owned radio stations (such as Radio Free Europe), as well as foreign-owned cable and satellite channels, might also play an important part in sustaining the remaining liberal media ecosystem. Public service media have been nationalized and transformed into channels of government propaganda and most other mainstream news outlets have fallen under the control of the illiberal government or its business allies. Apart from the media, illiberalism pervades other institutions of the public sphere as well, including museums, galleries and scientific organizations, and is supported through illiberal cultural policies (Bonet & Zamorano, 2021; Rosenfeld, 2023). The illiberal government has managed to cement its power and has been winning consecutive elections also by bending existing legal and constitutional frameworks to weaken the system of democratic checks and balances and, thereby, gain a comparative advantage over its liberal opponents. Hungary under the government of Viktor Orbán (2010–) is arguably among the best-known examples of this stage, but other countries can be mentioned as well, including India under Narendra Modi (2014–), and Serbia under Vučić (2014–).

However, despite having achieved a clear dominance in this third stage, the illiberal public sphere is still different from the authoritarian public sphere, as described by Dukalskis (2017). In contrast to it, the illiberal public sphere is neither all-encompassing, nor fully controlled by the government. Although the dominant political and cultural narratives are produced and disseminated by channels that adhere to illiberalism and independent journalists are subject to intimidation, hostility, and other forms of pressure, the liberal public sphere is still present—and to some extent tolerated—as long as it does not threaten the power of the government. In this sense, the illiberal public sphere follows a different trajectory than Lei’s (2017) contentious public sphere: while the latter helps to gradually open up and pluralize the authoritarian political system, the illiberal public sphere is set to undermine liberal democratic rule, potentially paving the way to authoritarianism.

The three stages of the illiberal public sphere and their key characteristics are summarized in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 The three stages of the illiberal public sphere (IPS)
Full size table

2.4 Eastern Europe as a Battleground for the Illiberal Public Sphere: The Four Cases

Following the introduction of the illiberal public sphere as a concept, we now move towards outlining how it manifests itself empirically in the four countries investigated in this book: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. While all four countries have been affected by the rise of illiberalism (Buzogány, 2017; Guasti, 2021; Hanley & Vachudova, 2018; Kapidžić, 2020; Pirro & Stanley, 2022), the actual history and dynamics of this rise, as well as its impact on the public sphere, have varied considerably. Thanks to this, these countries provide suitable case studies to illustrate the different stages of the illiberal public sphere sketched above. This does not mean that each of these countries fits neatly into one of the three stages, or that their positions are static within this framework. Rather, the three stages should be treated as ideal-typical developmental points on what is effectively a continuum, with the actually existing illiberal public spheres positioned at different points on the continuum and often moving from one stage to another (or back again) over time.

The overview must start with an acknowledgement that at the time of conducting this research (2019–2022), the illiberal public sphere has moved beyond the incipient stage, in all four countries. The Czech Republic was positioned between the incipient and ascendant stages (but closer to the latter), Poland between the ascendant and hegemonic stage, and Hungary and Serbia in the hegemonic stage. Looking at developments over time, the incipient phase could have been observed in three of the examined countries—Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary—roughly from the end of the period of democratic consolidation in the late 1990s, which concluded the tumultuous post-1989 transformation process and was symbolically marked by the accession to NATO and the EU in 1999 and 2004, respectively. For all three countries, this was a period of relative political and economic stability, characterized also by fairly high levels of media freedom, as evidenced by the position of these countries in the World Press Freedom ranking.Footnote 1 This stability, however, started to crumble around the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, as the populist wave—aided by the impact of the 2008 global economic crisis—shook political systems across Europe and prompted the strengthening of the illiberal public sphere across all three countries.

The trajectory of the illiberal public sphere in Serbia was substantially different, as the country never reached the stage of consolidated democracy and, therefore, never experienced the incipient stage of the illiberal public sphere. Rather, illiberalism has been an important aspect of Serbian politics throughout the post-communist period. Key political players that emerged victorious from the country’s first multi-party elections in 1990, in fact, never fully embraced democratization. In particular, the Socialist Party of Serbia, led by Slobodan Milošević, used a combination of illiberal techniques and right-wing nationalist and populist rhetoric to retain control over the political system, including the media (Gallagher, 2000; Lutovac, 2020). The illiberal public sphere played an important role in fostering virulent nationalism during the Yugoslav Wars and the subsequent territorial conflict over Kosovo (Mihelj et al., 2009; Thompson, 1995). Despite an exponential increase in private media outlets, their independence—and therefore their ability to foster the growth of a liberal public sphere—was stifled by a lack of advertising revenues, continued government control over media regulation and allocation of frequencies, as well as over key legacy outlets, including public service media. Key private media outlets at the time, including commercial stations Pink TV and BK TV, were owned by Milošević’s allies, while main opposition media, such as Radio B92, relied on funding from international donors (Castaldo & Pinna, 2018, p. 269). The situation deteriorated even further during the Kosovo Crisis in the late 1990s, when a new media law drafted by the then Minister of Information and now president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić enabled the government to further increase control and harassment of opposition media (Jovanović, 2019).

It is only after the NATO bombing of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, in 1999, and especially after the electoral defeat of Milošević in 2000, that Serbia embarked on a more fully fledged attempt at democratization, which also saw a brief retreat of the illiberal public sphere during the first decade of the twenty-first century. However, progress remained slow and marred by clientelism and corruption, as well as obstructed by internal tensions over Kosovo and EU accession (Bieber, 2020, pp. 42–44). These internal tensions were compounded by the spill-over effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing populist wave which contributed to the strengthening of illiberalism in the country during the second decade of the twenty-first century. These developments also went hand in hand with the re-consolidation of the illiberal public sphere.

In the paragraphs that follow we take a closer look at the evolution of the illiberal public sphere in each of the countries over the last two decades, thereby setting the stage for the empirical analysis presented in the rest of the book.

2.4.1 Hungary: Towards Illiberal Hegemony

Hungary was the first of the new EU member states to turn away from liberalism and to see the illiberal public sphere expand from the fringes to the mainstream. This process has been, at least in part, explicitly orchestrated by Fidesz—the once-liberal-turned-conservative party that later grew to dominate the country’s political system. According to Bátorfy and Urbán (2020), Fidesz was systematically building its own media empire following its electoral defeat in 2002, with ‘the openly professed goal … to create a “second national public sphere”, to offer an alternative to the left-liberal dominance in the media and among opinion leaders’ (p. 50), and calling onto its supporters to subscribe to specific media outlets, particularly the daily Magyar Nemzet, the weekly political magazine Demokrata and the online publication Heti Válasz (Bátorfy & Urbán, 2020, p. 50).

However, it was only after Fidesz’s decisive victory in the parliamentary elections in 2010 that the illiberal public sphere moved from the incipient stage to the ascendant one. The results of this watershed election gave the party two-thirds of parliamentary seats, thereby enabling it to change the constitutional order in a way that weakened the system of checks and balances and cemented its own power (Bánkuti et al., 2012). Some of the first legislative changes implemented by Viktor Orbán’s government concerned the system of media regulation, which was completely reorganized to safeguard Fidesz’s control. Already in 2010, new regulatory bodies were established—such as the National Media and Telecommunications Authority, headed by the Media Council—to monitor and enforce new media laws (Bajomi-Lázár, 2013; Brouillette et al., 2016). With the appointment process firmly in Fidesz’s hands, the Media Council became a key instrument for attaining the party’s media policy objectives, including the facilitation of market changes that played into the hands of pro-government outlets, while weakening oppositional ones (Polyák, 2019). The public service broadcaster MTV was effectively turned into a channel of government propaganda, displaying a strong pro-government bias (OSCE, 2018; Bátorfy et al., 2022) and amplifying illiberal narratives, particularly those targeting immigrants (Kondor et al., 2022; Ruzicka, 2019) and LGBTQ+ communities (Mihelj et al., 2023; Tamássy, 2019).

These changes went hand in hand with the gradual departure of foreign investors, prompted by the worsening of economic conditions for legacy news media, but also by shifts in the regulatory environment and intensifying political pressures (Štětka, 2012). These ownership changes, in turn, gave a further boost to the illiberal public sphere; by the end of the 2010s, the Hungarian media market was almost completely controlled by domestic owners, most of whom were affiliated with Fidesz (Dragomir, 2019). The ultimate step in this process was the establishment of the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) in 2018. Repeatedly criticized for its close links with Viktor Orbán and dubbed ‘media monster’ by the International Press Institute (IPI, 2018), this entity has amassed over 470 outlets—television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and news websites—which were all ‘gifted’ to the Foundation by their previous owners.

By the end of the 2010s, when we started collecting the data presented in this book, Fidesz had colonized the vast majority of the traditional media market. Aside from public service media—now effectively transformed into state media in all but name—Fidesz now dominates most commercial media as well, which ‘are also controlled by pro-government actors, whether through ownership, state advertising, or other forms of public funding’ (Bognár, 2022, p. 84). The online media sector is relatively more pluralistic and partly free from government’s influence, but most of the independent digital media are struggling for economic resources and fighting off government’s pressures, including smear campaigns against journalists (IPI, 2023). In light of these developments, we can claim that the illiberal public sphere has reached a hegemonic stage in Hungary. While the liberal public sphere persists and is sustained by a variety of channels—including news websites 444.hu, Telex.hu and 24.hu, and the talk and news radio Klubrádió (forced to move online only in 2021, after the Fidesz-controlled Media Council refused to renew its licence)—their combined reach and political impact are very limited, especially compared with outlets that operate under the control and in the interests of the government and its allies.

2.4.2 Poland: Following in Orbán’s Footsteps

The evolution of the illiberal public sphere in Poland in many ways resembles the Hungarian scenario, with some notable differences. One of them is the fact that the transition to the ascendant phase started about five years later than in Hungary—namely, in October 2015, following the victory of the right-wing populist Law and Justice party in the parliamentary elections that were preceded by the victory of the Law and Justice candidate, Andrzej Duda, in the May 2015 presidential election. This double victory allowed the party led by the ultra-conservative politician Jarosław Kaczyński to be in government for the second time (after the 2005–2007 coalition tenure), opening the doors for the acceleration of the illiberal turn and the ascendance of the illiberal public sphere.

From this point onwards, Poland followed the Hungarian ‘roadmap’ to establish full dominance over the media landscape with remarkable precision. First came the regulatory capture, carried out via the establishment of the new National Media Council, which was allocated regulatory powers over public service media, previously held by the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT). At the same time, KRRiT itself became gradually politicized, and accused of acting in the interests of the government (Klimkiewicz, 2022; Połońska, 2019). Almost simultaneously, the public service broadcasters (TVP and Polish Radio) fell under government control, with party loyalists appointed as top managers and disloyal staff dismissed (Dragomir, 2019). The mission of TVP was also redefined to align it with the illiberal political goals of Law and Justice (Surowiec et al., 2020), de facto turning it into a state broadcaster.

The Law and Justice government’s tactics and strategies targeting oppositional media have also largely emulated Fidesz’s approach. State advertising was used to indirectly subsidize pro-government media outlets, while depriving independent and oppositional media of a significant part of advertising revenues (Chapman, 2017; Zgut, 2021). Like the Fidesz’s government in Hungary, Law and Justice also sought to push out foreign investors, seen as a major source of resistance against the government’s political control of the media market. This is true especially of the US-based Discovery Channel, which owns the biggest Polish commercial TV station, TVN, and the Swiss-German Ringier Axel Springer, publisher of the tabloid Fakt, one of the best-selling Polish newspapers along with several other magazines. However, in contrast to the Hungarian scenario, Polish attempts to shift independent media outlets from foreign into domestic ownership, framed as ‘re-polonization’ by Law and Justice politicians, have had limited success. The repeated legislative attempts to cap foreign investments—most recently in 2022, targeting TVN—have been unsuccessful, although the government did manage to facilitate a takeover of the German-owned monopoly publisher of regional daily press Polska Presse, which passed into the hands of the state-owned fuel company Orlen Group in late 2020 (Konarska, 2022) with personnel and editorial changes following suit (Klimkiewicz, 2022). Despite these changes, Poland’s illiberal leadership has not established a hegemonic position in the media market. Rather, the market remained divided with a significant presence of independent, liberal-minded outlets, including the above-mentioned TV channel TVN and tabloid Fakt, alongside daily newspapers Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita, and the commercial TV channel Polsat (see Chap. 3 for further details). The same is true for the digital media sector, which at the time of conducting this research featured both pro-government and oppositional outlets among those with the biggest reach (Makarenko, 2022). This layout of the Polish media landscape, which has been in place throughout the period of research presented in this book, is consistent with the ascendant stage of the illiberal public sphere.

2.4.3 The Czech Republic: Resisting Illiberal Capture?

In contrast to Hungary and Poland, the illiberal public sphere in the Czech Republic has followed a somewhat different path of development and with slower progression. While it started rising to prominence roughly around the same time as Poland, from the mid-2010s onwards, and has moved well beyond the incipient stage, it has arguably not reached the fully fledged ascendant stage by the time of conducting this research. There are several explanations for this. First, the Czech experience with illiberalism has been more limited in scope and intensity. Drawing on Buštíková and Guasti (2017), we could argue that the country has so far experienced only an illiberal ‘swerve’ (p.166), rather than a more decisive illiberal ‘turn’. The country has, in fact, undergone only a single electoral cycle under a government pursuing illiberal policies. The antecedents of this swerve can be traced back to the electoral success of the first Czech populist party (Public Affairs) in 2010, and especially to the 2013 parliamentary elections, which brought into government the movement Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO, 2011), founded by the billionaire Andrej Babiš. ANO’s electoral success was in part facilitated by the strengthening of the illiberal public sphere, evident in Babiš’s acquisition of Mafra, one of the biggest media houses in the country. This move also provided a key stepping stone on the route to ANO’s sweeping victory in the 2017 parliamentary elections, which marked the beginning of the first—and, so far, the only—illiberal swerve in the country. The latest parliamentary elections in 2021 saw Babiš and ANO defeated by the centre-right ‘democratic coalition’ of five parties—a move that has put the brakes on the advancement of illiberalism in the country. In contrast, Hungary and Poland have both experienced two electoral cycles under illiberal governments—with Poland facing its first illiberal ‘swerve’ already between 2005 and 2007 under the first Law and Justice government. These repeated cycles have allowed illiberal elites to consolidate their hold on independent institutions, including the media, and thereby establish a more far-reaching and potentially more long-lasting illiberal turn.

Apart from the Czech experience with illiberalism being more limited in scope and depth, it has also not been as closely associated with right-wing ideologies as its Polish and Hungarian counterparts. The ANO 2011 movement is typically discussed as a representative of ‘technocratic’ or ‘managerial’ populism (Buštíková & Guasti, 2019; Císař, 2017; Hanley & Vachudova, 2018; Havlík, 2019) and distinguished from right-wing conservative populism by its relative lack of emphasis on exclusionist nativism and conservative values, as well as by its commitment to a ‘business-like’, pragmatic approach to politics and governance. Nevertheless, Babiš’s (2017) fixation on efficiency, centralization of power, majoritarianism, and on weakening the checks and balances in order to ‘get things done’, evidenced by his vision of the Czech society, strongly resonates with the sentiments towards democracy displayed by illiberal leaders (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018). ANO’s affinity towards illiberalism became even more apparent in the run-up to its sweeping victory in the 2017 parliamentary elections which was aided by strong anti-immigration rhetoric, as well as in the formation of a minority government with the support of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM).

The period of Andrej Babiš’s government (2017–2021) was characterized by a clear move from the incipient towards the ascendant phase of the illiberal public sphere. This was demonstrated by the increasingly frequent attacks on independent media and public service broadcasters, but also by his repeated attempts to capture media regulatory bodies, especially the Czech Television Council. Both attacks on journalists and attempts at regulatory capture were largely aimed at exerting pressure on Czech public broadcasting, and especially on Czech Television, perceived as one of the strongholds of independent journalism. These attempts have ultimately failed thanks to vocal support by the civil society and international organizations (Štětka, 2021). Nonetheless, together with the unprecedented collusion of political and media power in the hands of Andrej Babiš, these attempts have contributed to the downgrading of the Czech Republic in the World Press Freedom Index, from the thirteenth to the fortieth position between 2015 and 2021 (RSF, 2022).

The 2021 parliamentary elections, however, appear to have slowed the advance of the illiberal public sphere—a development reflected in the Czech Republic climbing back to ranking twentieth in the 2022 edition of the World Press Freedom Index (RSF, 2022). Nonetheless, the illiberal public sphere remains alive and vibrant, with several channels spreading illiberal narratives and giving platforms to illiberal actors. Apart from some of the mainstream media channels, including those controlled by Andrej Babiš (especially the dailies MF DNES and Lidové noviny), an advanced alternative media ecosystem has been established over the course of the 2010s, centred around a network of websites that are known to be disseminating disinformation, conspiracy theories and pro-Russian propaganda (Štětka et al., 2021). In addition, chain emails targeting mostly the elderly population have become a popular instrument for spreading disinformation as well as smear campaigns during electoral campaigns (Syrovátka, 2021). This means that the Czech Republic sits somewhere between the incipient and ascendant stages of the illiberal public sphere, at the opposite end of the spectrum from Hungary and Serbia.

2.4.4 Serbia: The Renewed Dominance of the Illiberal Public Sphere

If the Czech Republic only ever experienced an illiberal ‘swerve’, rather than a more fully fledged illiberal ‘turn’, Serbia’s experience has been the exact opposite. Its political trajectory since the end of communist rule features only liberal ‘swerves’, rather than a more long-lasting turn towards liberal democracy. The second and most successful of these liberal ‘swerves’ occurred after the electoral defeat of Milošević in 2000, when the country’s first fully democratic government committed to liberal values set the country on an accelerated path towards democratization and EU accession. This was reflected in several major legislative and regulatory changes designed to increase media independence and stimulate greater competition in the sector (Castaldo & Pinna, 2018, pp. 270–272), as well as in improvements to the quality of media discourse by providing oppositional actors with better access to the media (Vladisavljević, 2020).

Despite these changes, the grip of the illiberal public sphere proved difficult to loosen. Political interference in the media sector and other structural problems persisted throughout the 2000s, gaining in strength and influence from the 2010s onwards (Castaldo & Pinna, 2018, pp. 270–272). The planned transformation of government media into independent public service media stalled as well. The country’s public service broadcaster, Radio Television of Serbia, was yet again subjected to political colonization and government instrumentalization (Marko, 2017). From 2008, these internal structural problems were compounded by the financial crisis, which reduced advertising revenues and thereby made the financial sustainability of independent media outlets even more challenging, while also leading to the drying up of foreign investments (Orenstein & Bugarič, 2022, p. 180). Media outlets that played a key role in the downfall of Milošević gradually declined as they lost independent financial support and were therefore either closed or transferred into the hands of domestic owners susceptible to political pressure (Steele, 2023). Along with existing economic weaknesses, these shifts made Serbian media even more vulnerable to political influence. The renewed strengthening of the illiberal public sphere was also reflected in the deterioration of the quality of media coverage from 2010 onwards, driven by a substantial decline in media access for opposition parties compared with for political authorities, and by a downturn in both accountability and competition (Vladisavljević, 2020).

From the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections onwards, the illiberal public sphere intensified even further, as some of the key players of the Milošević’s era returned to power. This included Aleksandar Vučić, the former Minister of Information under Milošević and now leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, who went on to become Prime Minister following the 2014 parliamentary elections. Despite the adoption of several new media laws in 2014, all nominally aimed at increasing media independence, media freedom effectively decreased owing to poor implementation, compounded by continued state control over a large portion (25–40%) of the advertising market, increasing pressures on independent journalists, and open censorship of critical news shows and politically motivated dismissals (Castaldo & Pinna, 2018, pp. 75–277; Kmezić, 2020).

All these developments echo trends seen in Hungary in the same period. Similar techniques of suppressing independent media were adopted by governments in both countries (Milutinović, 2022), ultimately leading to the full hegemony of the illiberal public sphere. Apart from public service media channels, the illiberal public sphere in Serbia now comprises the vast majority of mainstream outlets, including most of the major commercial TV channels, such as TV B92, TV Pink, and Happy, as well as an array of tabloid newspapers, such as Informer, Alo, Srpski telegraf, and Kurir, which all play an important role in promoting the distinctive image of Vučić as a strongman and a victim of attacks from domestic and foreign enemies, including the EU and United States (Jovanović, 2019). Several media monitoring studies also showed the prevalence of biased electoral coverage, clearly slanted in favour of Vučić and his allies, in most major media outlets (FNF, 2022; Gruhonjić, 2017). However, unlike in Poland and Hungary, where public service media are the central pillar of the illiberal public sphere, major public service channels in Serbia tend to adopt a more moderate tone and provide less biased electoral coverage than some of the commercial outlets in which bias is more blatant, and which also regularly feature attacks on independent outlets and journalistic associations as ‘conspirators’ in the war against Vučić (FNF, 2022, p. 6). Consistent with the hegemonic stage, the liberal public sphere in Serbia is confined to a handful of outlets, including the daily newspaper Danas and two cable television channels, N1 and Nova S, all of which are owned by the Luxembourg-registered United Group that operates both mass media and telecommunications platforms across South-eastern Europe.

2.5 Conclusions

In this chapter, we sought to overcome the conceptual confusion surrounding illiberalism and its relationship with media and communication. Through critical engagement with existing literature, we have clarified our understanding of illiberalism and explained how illiberalism differs from related phenomena such as populism. We have provided a definition of the illiberal public sphere and identified three key stages of its evolution—incipient, ascendant, and hegemonic—and have examined this evolutionary process in the four countries that are at the forefront of our analysis in this book. Furthermore, we have outlined some of the key differences between countries where the illiberal public sphere is by now in a hegemonic position, as is the case in Serbia and Hungary, and those where its liberal counterpart is still holding ground, as seen in Poland, or resisting the tide of illiberalism, as documented in the Czech Republic.

However, the overview presented here has focused primarily on tracing the institutional, systemic or macro-level dimensions of the illiberal public sphere and its evolution, without providing much insight into how these interact with more diffuse changes in the symbolic and cultural domain, which are often visible only at the micro-level—for instance, changes in media discourses and communicative strategies, in news consumption practices and preferences, in epistemic and normative assumptions that underpin media trust and public attitudes. This is because, as argued elsewhere (Štětka & Mihelj, 2023), existing research on the four examined countries—and indeed on media and illiberalism more generally—pays only scant attention to symbolic and cultural dimensions. And yet, without investigating these dimensions and tracing their development alongside systemic and institutional features, we cannot know how and to what extent the rise of the illiberal public sphere contributes to the rise of illiberalism more generally by, for instance, moulding the way citizens interact with the public domain, facilitating their access to some news channels over others, or shaping their understanding of societal issues (such as immigration and LGBTQ+ rights) and their attitudes to democracy. Research that examines the symbolic, cultural, and micro dimensions of the illiberal public sphere alongside its material, institutional, and macro-systemic aspects, is also essential to developing an understanding of the ‘supply side’ of illiberalism, allowing to unpack the interaction between top-down initiatives of illiberal elites and bottom-up initiatives by grassroots organizations and ordinary citizens attracted by illiberal ideas.

This is the gap we seek to fill in the remainder of this book, by drawing on an original dataset of population surveys, qualitative interviews, and media diaries conducted in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Serbia, alongside a range of secondary sources. By comparing these four countries that are positioned at different points on the continuum between the incipient and hegemonic stages of the illiberal public sphere, we seek to chart the complex process through which audience practices and attitudes change as the illiberal public sphere gains in strength. In the next chapter, we begin by looking at how the increasingly illiberal communication environment, marked by the increasing polarization of media outlets along the liberal vs. illiberal axis, relates to the extent of selective news exposure and to the assumptions and values that guide citizens’ news preferences for and choices of news outlets.