Social Media: Vectors of Illiberalism or Sources of Resistance?

Abstract

This chapter addresses the role of social media in both facilitating the proliferation of illiberal attitudes from the margins to the mainstream, as well as their potential to act as channels of liberal resistance. In the first part, the chapter outlines a brief history of social media adoption by political actors in Eastern Europe, demonstrating how digital platforms aided the rise of right-wing populist parties in the region. Following from that, we explore the socio-demographic characteristics of those who use social media for news, and then consider how social media use relates to illiberal attitudes. The data suggests that in countries where the illiberal public sphere is more advanced, the relative importance of social media as sources of information is greater, and it is more often associated with holding liberal attitudes and support for democracy. Finally, the chapter determines that people who use social media to express their opinions and engage with political content online are more likely to be pro-democratic and liberal-oriented, suggesting thereby that digital platforms might turn out to be an be an important channel for mobilizing liberal opposition once the illiberal public sphere starts dominating over the liberal one.

In this chapter we temporarily step aside from the holistic examination of news consumption across all news media types and focus instead on social media, considering both social networking sites and messaging applications. Across the world, digital platforms have been increasingly criticized for facilitating the rise of populist as well as illiberal actors, aiding the growth of political extremism, societal polarization, and illiberal attitudes. Moreover, digital platforms have been denounced for spreading misinformation and harmful content. The tone of both academic and public discourse on the matter has changed considerably in recent years, shifting away from the optimistic perspective that hailed the potential of social media to enhance democracy (Tucker et al., 2017) to ever-louder calls for stricter regulation of digital platforms (Tambini & Moore, 2021). However, studies have largely focused on developments in established Western democracies where the illiberal public sphere is either negligible or in an incipient phase. Little consideration has been given to the role that digital platforms might play in societies with comparatively shorter histories of democratic governance where the illiberal public sphere plays a more prominent role in shaping citizens’ participation in public life.

This chapter addresses this notable knowledge gap by investigating the role social media and messaging services play within the wider information ecosystem in Eastern Europe, drawing on a combination of survey data and secondary sources. Following a brief overview of Internet and social media penetration in the region, and their adoption by key political actors (with a particular focus on illiberal actors), the chapter maps out the key patterns of social media use across the four examined countries. We present the socio-demographic characteristics of social media users who employ these platforms as news sources, and then consider how social media use relates to illiberal attitudes. We consider whether people who rely on social media as information sources are markedly different from the rest of the population in age, education or domicile size, or with respect to their opinions about democracy and politically contentious, polarizing issues. Finally, we examine the prevalence of social media use for online political participation, and ask how being politically active online relates to political beliefs. Are people who are most politically engaged online more likely to be supportive of democracy and liberal values? Or are they rather using social media to oppose them? More broadly, we investigate whether social media in Eastern Europe function as instruments of the illiberal public sphere, or whether they can be thought of as channels of resistance.

6.1 Equalization Gone Wrong? The Role of Social Media in the Rise of the Illiberal Public Sphere

The pace of the digital revolution in Eastern Europe was significantly slower than in most Western democracies, largely owing to differences in economic development and technological infrastructure, especially in rural areas. Even after EU accession in 2004, the level of Internet penetration in the new member states lagged far behind its Western counterparts. In 2008, the best performing Eastern European country in terms of Internet access (Slovenia) had a lower rate of online households (57%) than the average of the fifteen EU countries (64%), while the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary were all below 50% (Eurostat, 2021). This digital gap started to close only in recent years, with differences between Eastern Europe and the rest of the EU becoming close to negligible on a national level, and especially when looking at metropolitan areas. In rural areas, however, the digital gap persists. In Hungary, only 82% of rural households were connected to the Internet in 2020, compared with 92% in cities, and the gap is even wider in Bulgaria where only 65% of rural households had an Internet connection in 2020, against a national average of 79% (Eurostat, 2021).

Social media penetration in the region followed a slightly different route, which was not determined solely by Internet penetration rates. In some countries, including the Czech Republic and Poland, social networking sites became widely used only in the mid-2010s (Macková et al., 2018; Surowiec & Kania-Lundholm, 2018). By contrast, countries such as Lithuania, Slovakia, and Hungary, which—as noted earlier—lagged behind in terms of Internet penetration, were among the early adopters of social media. In Hungary, in 2011, 51% of the population was using social media, one of the highest rates not only in Eastern Europe, but in the whole of the EU (Eurostat, 2021).

An interesting phenomenon that marked the early history of social media in Central and Eastern Europe was the success of local social networking sites, which were able to resist the appeal of global platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. In the Czech Republic, the community server Spoluzaci.cz (Classmates), founded in 1999 as a platform for communication among former classmates, still had 1.5 million users in 2009. At that point, it was the second most popular social media platform in the country, ranking below another national platform, the dating site Lide.cz, with Facebook following as a distant third (Kasík, 2018, April 4). The Polish social networking site Nasza-klasa.pl (Our Class), founded in 2006 by a group of students from Wroclaw University, quickly became one of the most visited platforms in Poland, with 7.6 million users in 2008 (Małachowski, 2009), rivalling the ascending Facebook well into the mid-2010s. In most post-Soviet countries, the Russian-language social networking sites VKontakte/VK and Odonoklassniki—both eventually owned by the Russian Internet company Mail.ru, rebranded as VK in October 2021—have remained very popular throughout the 2010s despite the challenges posed by Western platforms (Reyaz, 2020). In some of these countries, including Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, VKontakte/VK still held the leading position at the start of 2020s. Even more successful has been the instant messaging service Telegram, launched in 2013 by the creators of VKontakte, the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Today, Telegram is among the most popular messaging platforms not just within Eastern Europe but worldwide, especially following the recent mass-migration of users from Facebook and WhatsApp owing to concerns over privacy and growing power of the big tech (Nicas et al., 2021).

The growth in social media use went hand in hand with their rising influence in political communication. As is the case for most democratic countries, social media in Eastern Europe have evolved from alternative to mainstream channels of political communication. However, the patterns of their adoption have been far from uniform. In some countries, social media were initially mainly adopted by fringe and anti-system parties that took advantage of the affordances of this new communication technology to increase direct engagement with voters and make electoral mobilization both cheaper and more effective. Other countries saw established parties and leaders jumping on the social media wagon from the very beginning. In both cases, however, some of the political actors who were quickest to embrace social media would later become key actors in the rise of the illiberal public sphere in the region.

In the Czech Republic, the first party to have seriously explored the potential of social media for political communication was Public Affairs—a minor, business-driven populist party that shook up the Czech party system by making a surprising breakthrough in the 2010 parliamentary election in which they received 11% of votes (Hanley, 2012). During the next parliamentary election campaign in 2013, Facebook was likewise used more intensely by new challengers than by traditional mainstream parties, including the surprise runner-up ANO 2011 (Štětka et al., 2019). The decisive victory of ANO 2011 in the following election in 2017, when it captured 30% of the votes and received three times as many mandates as the runner-up, conservative party ODS (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018), has also been attributed to the party’s highly professionalized social media campaign, centred around the party’s leader, the billionaire Andrej Babiš (Cirhan & Kopecký, 2017).

In Hungary, the first use of social media for election purposes relates to the 2010 parliamentary election, which saw the two anti-system parties—the far-right Jobbik, which was an influential early promoter of illiberal discourse in the country, and the Hungarian Green Party (LMP)—enter the Parliament for the first time, having both relied on social media in their respective campaigns (Bene & Szabó, 2021). While many minor and opposition parties have continued to exploit digital platforms as their primary tools for campaigning and mobilization throughout the 2010s, the Leader of the Fidesz party, Viktor Orbán, secured a dominant position not just in the Hungarian political scene but also online. By the early 2010s, he claimed the largest following on Facebook, the most important social media platform in the country (Bene & Szabó, 2021), which he then successfully exploited during the 2014 and 2018 elections.

In Poland, the largest traditional parties—including those that continue to be prominent drivers of the illiberal turn in the country—initially had a more active presence and greater reach on social media, successfully exploiting this advantage during both the 2011 and 2015 parliamentary elections (Koc-Michalska et al., 2014; Štětka et al., 2019). However, some newcomers and fringe political actors have capitalized on the potential of social media for electoral mobilization as well. Among the pioneers was the far-right politician Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who first led his party Congress of the New Right (KNP) to a surprising fourth place (and four seats) in the 2014 European Parliament elections. His success was largely the result of a successful social media campaign. A year later, he launched his own party, KORWiN, and contested the 2015 parliamentary and presidential elections (Lipiński & Stępińska, 2019). Even more telling is the success story of the former rock-star-turned-populist-politician Paweł Kukiz, who finished third in the 2015 presidential election and gained the same result with his party, Kukiz’15, in the 2015 parliamentary election. In both cases, he benefited from having mobilized young voters on social media (Lipiński & Stępińska, 2019; Chmielewska-Szlajfer, 2018). Nevertheless, neither of these parties—nor anyone else—managed to seriously challenge the position of the two dominant parties, Law and Justice (PiS) and Civic Platform (PO) in subsequent years.

The penetration of social media within the political system in Serbia resembles the pattern seen in the Czech Republic. As in the case of ANO 2011, the dramatic shake-up of the political landscape in the early 2010s was spearheaded by a party that was among the first ones to have adopted a systematic, professionalized approach to social media, the right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) that continues to be at the forefront of Serbia’s illiberal turn to this day. SNS won the 2012 parliamentary election and its leader, Tomislav Nikolić, was elected President of Serbia in the same year (Atlagić & Vučićević, 2019). Before the 2014 snap election, SNS was already a dominant party on Facebook, having the largest following and the biggest reach with its posts (Krunic, 2015). After winning the election by a landslide and becoming Prime Minister, the new party leader Aleksandar Vučić (since 2017 President of Serbia) has continued to pursue aggressive social media campaigns, often relying on negative campaigning and the use of fake profiles and bots (Spasojević, 2020), as he steered the party further towards populism and illiberalism in the second half of the decade.

Notwithstanding the differences among the countries, it is clear that social media played an important role in strengthening the illiberal public sphere during the first half of the 2010s. In all the examined countries, digital platforms facilitated the rise of parties that challenged the status quo by mobilizing a mostly right-wing, ethno-nationalist and anti-elitist agenda. While these developments lend some support to the ‘equalization hypothesis’ (Margolis & Resnick, 2000; cf. Gibson & McAllister, 2015), which predicted that new media would primarily help political outsiders and level up the playing field in the contest against resource-rich and incumbent parties, it is clear that this process did not have an equal effect across the political spectrum. In contrast to countries such as Spain (Podemos), Germany (Green Party), and Greece (Syriza), alternative left-wing, progressive and liberal parties, although occasionally also benefiting from the early adoption of social media, have not really been able to match the success of their right-wing populist competitors. A rare exception is the Czech Pirate Party, arguably the closest to what Gerbaudo (2018) has called a ‘digital party’, which finished close third in the 2017 parliamentary election. Yet, as we shall see later on, the success of right-wing populist actors in exploiting the affordances of social media platforms does not mean that these channels are completely dominated by illiberal actors and agendas.

6.2 Citizens as Users of Social Media for Political News

While the adoption of social media among political actors in Eastern Europe has attracted significant scholarly attention, little is known about social media use for political communication among the general population and about how such use relates to political attitudes, behaviours and political participation. Does the fact that social networking sites have aided the rise of right-wing populist actors to power, or helped them turn their countries towards illiberalism, mean that digital platform users mostly share illiberal attitudes? Should social media be considered as instruments of illiberalism, or is there any indication that they may be utilized to counter illiberal trends and support democracy?

Before we start looking for answers to these questions, we first need to map out the basic determinants and patterns of political usage of social media in the four countries we examine. The data from our population survey, carried out between December 2019 and January 2020 (see Methodological Appendix for further details), indicate that the share of people who use social media as a source of political news varies across the sample, from 57% in Poland and 50% in Serbia, to 45% in Hungary and 40% in the Czech Republic. Likewise, the share of those who can be classified as heavy users of social media for news—namely, those using them at least once a day—is also highest in Poland, closely followed by Serbia, while heavy users in Hungary and the Czech Republic are considerably less prominent. These figures are complemented by the perceived importance of social media as political news sources. The highest percentage of users for whom social media are important sources of news is by far observed in Serbia (55%), followed by Poland (36%), Hungary (29%), and the Czech Republic (24%).

In general, the socio-demographic profile of those who use social media as news sources is, unsurprisingly, tilted towards those who are younger and better educated, which is in line with recent data about social media demographics in countries such as the United States (Greenwood et al., 2016; Wojcik & Hughes, 2019) or the UK (Mellon & Prosser, 2017). However, there are notable differences among the examined countries in relation to both variables (see Fig. 6.1). In the Czech Republic and Poland, the younger generations use social media for news more frequently than their counterparts in Hungary and Serbia where around one-third of people under the age of 35 does not consume news from social media more than once in a week. Among those who get their news from social media most frequently (i.e. at least once a day), middle-aged and older people account for 69% in Hungary and for 60% in Serbia, while their proportion in Poland and the Czech Republic is 51% and 45%, respectively. In other words, even though the probability of looking for news on social media is higher for younger users (under 35) across all four countries, in Hungary and Serbia the majority of those who make social media part of their daily news diet tend to be above that age (with one-third of them being over 56 years old in Hungary).

Fig. 6.1

Socio-demographic profiles of social media news users

As for education, a moderate positive correlation with social media use for news is apparent in Serbia (ρ = 0.4, p < 0.01), but only a weak one can be observed in Hungary and Poland, and there appears to be no correlation in the Czech Republic where only 54% of people with a university degree consume news from social media on a regular basis, compared with 85% in Poland (Fig. 6.1). Nevertheless, in all four countries the majority of people who consume news from social media at least once a week have either the highest or second-highest level of education.

Domicile size is also moderately positively correlated with social media use in Serbia (ρ = 0.4, p < 0.01), but only weakly so in Poland and not at all in Hungary and the Czech Republic where the rural/urban divide is not particularly visible. In Serbia, there are prominent gaps in this respect, as 73% of Serbians living in villages with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants do not use social media for news at all (compared with only 24% of those living in cities with over 50,000 inhabitants). Conversely, over a half (53%) of those Serbians who daily read news on social media live in cities with over 50,000 inhabitants. In Hungary and Poland, the same figure is 40.5%, and only 29% in the Czech Republic, which somehow disputes the common stereotype about the political use of social media being associated with the lifestyle of the ‘metropolitan elite’. Overall, these figures demonstrate that the extent to which the use of digital platforms for news is driven by socio-demographic factors varies considerably across the four countries, indicating important differences in the role of social media in these countries’ political information ecosystems.

To complete the mapping of the patterns of political usage of digital platforms, we also need to look at the role and relative importance of individual social media brands for political news consumption. As Fig. 6.2 shows, Facebook is still the most widely used social media brand for political news in all four countries. The share of its users is highest in Poland (67% of those who use the Internet), followed by Hungary (50%), Serbia (44.8%), and the Czech Republic (43%). YouTube is the second most popular platform, closely followed by Facebook Messenger in all countries but Serbia as the third most popular platform, with nearly half of the Polish Internet users using it for political news. A sizeable minority of the online population in Poland and Serbia uses Instagram to access political news (30.4% and 22.4%, respectively), thereby adding to the evidence about the growing attractiveness of this platform for political communication already noted elsewhere in Europe (Larsson, 2023). Among alternatives to Facebook products, Viber is the most popular in Serbia (20.1% of online users), but very marginal in the Czech Republic (4.5%, similar to Telegram). Overall, while the new platforms are clearly contributing to the diversification of platform-based news sources, the dominance of the ‘digital duopoly’—i.e. Facebook and Google (represented by YouTube)—is not challenged in any of the four countries. Importantly, Twitter, which is widely considered as one of the most important platforms for political communication in Western scholarship, is lagging behind most other social media, ranking 6^th in all four countries.

Fig. 6.2

Use of social media for political news

In sum, we have established that while social media—particularly Facebook, YouTube, and Facebook Messenger—play a significant role in the political information ecosystem of all four countries, there are also notable differences in both the overall intensity of use and the perceived importance of social media as news sources, as well as in the socio-demographic profiles of their users. In terms of usage and importance, the Czech Republic is at the bottom of the list, a finding possibly explained by the relatively higher level of plurality and media freedom compared with the other three countries, which means that people might be less compelled to seek alternative sources of political news outside of the realm of professional journalism (whether online or offline). This interpretation is corroborated by the age profile of social media news seekers, as those in the Czech Republic tend to be younger than their Hungarian and Serbian counterparts. In other words, it is plausible to argue that in countries with more constrained choices of free and quality media, getting political information from social media is not necessarily prevalent only among so-called digital natives, but is rather commonplace among all citizens interested in politics. This is confirmed by our data. Of those who say that they are ‘very interested’ in politics, 68% consume social media as news sources at least once a day in Poland. The percentage drops to 60% in Serbia and 55% in Hungary, and only to 40% in the Czech Republic. Going back to our discussion about the illiberal public sphere, as presented in Chap. 2, this could indicate that in countries where the illiberal public sphere is more advanced and incorporates a larger proportion of mainstream news media, the relative importance of social media as sources of information is greater. Furthermore, in such a context, socio-demographic factors also play a more significant role, with a higher proportion of citizens who are relatively older, more educated and living in larger cities using social media to access political news. In the next section, we shall explore whether and how these differences across social media use relate to differences in political attitudes.

6.3 Support for Democracy and (Il)liberal Attitudes Among Social Media Users

What is the relationship between social media use and people’s political orientation? Existing data from Western countries are limited and fragmented, but they suggest that social media users tend to be more liberal and left-wing. According to a survey by Pew Research Centre (Wojcik & Hughes, 2019), 36% of US adult Twitter users identify as Democrats (6 percentage points above all US adults), while 21% identify as Republicans. Comparing political affiliations across different platforms, another survey from 2021 found out that more Democrats are using social media platforms than Republicans (77% vs. 68%), and that this gap is the largest for Instagram (+19% difference), followed by Twitter (+15%), and WhatsApp (+14%), and is much smaller in the case of YouTube (+6%), finally disappearing in the case of Facebook (Vogels et al., 2021). A UK survey from 2015 found that Twitter and Facebook over-represent Labour Party voters and both Twitter and Facebook users self-identified as more liberal than non-users, with Facebook users also more likely to self-identify as left-wing (Mellon & Prosser, 2017).

As for the relationship between social media use and people’s attitudes towards democracy, existing research does not paint a clear picture. Scholarship in this area is rather fragmented and studies empirically addressing the question of the potential of social media to nurture the attitudinal base for democracy are rare. A rare exception is Salzman’s (2019) survey, based on the 2012 Americas Barometer data set, which found a strong and positive relationship between social media use and democratic attitudes in Latin America. Focusing specifically on Central and Eastern Europe, Placek (2017) found that the use of social networking sites is associated with higher personal support for democratic norms and a democratic regime.

Other studies have been assessing the potential of social media for democratization more indirectly. In their review study, Zhuravskaya et al. (2020) argued that:

[I]n places where the main public grievances are related to corruption, subversion of power, and control of traditional media by autocrats, free Internet and social media do improve accountability by informing the public and facilitating the organization of protests. This is exactly why autocrats increasingly resort to censoring the Internet, banning those social media that they cannot monitor and flooding with misinformation the social media networks that they cannot ban. (p. 433)

Adopting a more nuanced approach and systematizing evidence from a broader range of countries and political systems, Guy Schleffer and Benjamin Miller (2021) argue that social media can have different types of impact depending on the type, as well as strength of the political system. Their typology outlines four types of political systems, as a combination of weak vs. strong and democratic vs. authoritarian regimes. In weak authoritarian regimes, social media can have a destabilizing effect, by mobilizing opposition, connecting citizens, and organizing protest actions. Their effects can even lead to the toppling of the regime, as observed in Tunisia (2010) and Egypt (2011) during the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions. In weak democratic regimes, such as those found in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America, social media can be exploited by populist actors to spread polarizing narratives and help erode democratic pillars, thereby exerting what Schleffer and Miller call a ‘radicalizing effect’ that can potentially ‘turn a liberal democratic regime into an illiberal regime, or even an autocratic one’ (p. 90). The authors provide the example of Brazil, where the campaign of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election relied significantly on social media. In countries where authoritarianism is already firmly rooted, such as China or Russia, social media might help governments intensify their power by becoming part of their domestic ‘surveillance machine’, while simultaneously being utilized for propaganda and the spreading of disinformation abroad. Finally, in what the authors call strong liberal democratic regimes, social media may be used to weaken democratic institutions and undermine people’s trust in democracy by means of orchestrated disinformation campaigns—either domestic or foreign—such as those that the United States experienced during the 2016 presidential election.

While this typology subsumes Eastern Europe rather simplistically under the ‘weak democratic regime’ type (citing Hungary under Viktor Orbán as an example), it is possible to draw inspiration from it even when applying a more nuanced approach towards the state and quality of democracies in Eastern Europe, including the four countries in our sample. The typology provides a useful reminder that political effects of social media are far from uniform and stable, and depend on a number of systemic factors. In democratic regimes, these factors include the extent of polarization, as well as the balance of powers between the opposition and the government. In other words, social media might indeed provide a valuable service for authoritarian populists and illiberal political actors on their way to power (i.e. the incipient stage of the illiberal public sphere). However, once they are in power, the very tools that facilitated their success might, in turn, be used to overthrow them, presumably as long as the regime is not (yet) a fully authoritarian one and does not have these channels under its control.

However, one of the limitations of Schleffer and Miller’s typology is that it treats all social media as a homogeneous entity, assuming an equal impact on political regimes regardless of the specific affordances of individual platforms in an ever more complex social media environment. Growing evidence from the field of disinformation studies suggests a need for a more differentiated approach when it comes to assessing the potential impact of platforms on democracy, especially given the widening gap between major social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) and messaging platforms (e.g. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) in the extent of moderation practices that limit the spreading of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Namely, as open, unencrypted platforms are adopting stricter content moderation policies, messaging platforms are increasingly turning into key channels of misinformation (Tandoc, 2021; Theocharis et al., 2023). Moreover, by taking a bird’s-eye view, Schleffer and Miller’s theory also fails to provide much insight into the role of social media in the formation of citizens’ political attitudes and the changing modes of their engagement with politics. Yet, both attitudes and modes of engagement arguably have important implications for the stability and prospects of the political regime, especially in the context of what Schleffer and Miller define as weak democratic regimes, i.e. those on the cusp of transformation from a democratic into an illiberal regime.

The rest of this chapter seeks to tackle these important gaps in Schleffer and Miller’s typology. To investigate the links between social media consumption and political attitudes, including support for democracy, we use the same three dependent variables as those introduced already in Chap. 3: the cultural liberalism index (based on the mean of eleven questions, measuring respondents’ attitudes towards various minorities, including immigrants, same-sex couples, Muslims, Roma, Jewish and Black people); the constitutional liberalism index (measuring the importance that respondents assign to the key institutions and components of liberal democracy) and support for democracy. The latter variable was measured by using a question in which respondents had to choose whether they agreed that (1) democracy is preferable to any other form of political system, or (2) under some circumstances, an authoritarian government may be preferable to a democratic one, or (3) for them, it did not matter whether a government was democratic or authoritarian.

Alongside these three dependent variables, two sets of independent variables were used in the OLS regression analysis. The first two variables measured the average frequency of using social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube) and messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Viber) ‘for accessing news’ on a 0–4 scale, ranging from never to at least once a day. The other two variable measured diversity of social networking sites and messaging apps, respectively, counting the number of platforms each respondent used at least once a week.

Contrary to expectations that dominate scholarly and popular writing on social media, regression analysis reveals few significant correlations with illiberalism. There are no significant correlations between the frequency of social networking sites use and cultural liberalism (Table 6.1), and the only correlation with higher scores for constitutional liberalism is observed in Serbia. It is worth noting that with regards to constitutional liberalism, the direction of the relationship with social media is positive also in the Czech Republic and Poland, but the coefficients are beyond the 0.05 significance threshold.

Table 6.1 Impact of social media use on cultural and constitutional liberalism, and support for democracy

Testing the attitudes to democracy, we see that there is no significant relationship between social media use and support for democracy in the three EU member states either. However, Serbia is again an outlier, showing a significant positive correlation, meaning that more frequent use of social media for news is associated with higher support for democracy.

The analysis of the impact of the diversity of peoples’ use of social networking sites use on attitudes is similarly surprising. When it comes to liberalism, the only significant link is between diversity of social media use and constitutional liberalism in Hungary. However, the relationship is actually a negative one: for Hungarian social networking sites users, increasing the diversity of platforms leads to lower support for democracy as a system of governance. At the same time, there is a positive link between diversity of social networking sites and support for democracy in Serbia.

Moving to a messaging apps, we can observe some interesting patterns which confirm significant differences not only between the types of social media platforms, but also across countries. In two of the four countries in the sample—the Czech Republic and Hungary—heavy users of messaging apps display significantly more illiberal attitudes. In the case of Czech users, this is related to cultural liberalism, while in Hungary this concerns constitutional liberalism. A very similar pattern is found with regard to the diversity of messaging apps. More diversity (i.e. a higher number of apps used for accessing news) is associated with lower support for constitutional liberalism in both the Czech Republic and Hungary, and with lower identification with cultural liberalism in the Czech Republic. In Serbia, there is a strong positive impact of using social networking sites on constitutional liberalism, as opposed to messaging apps, which show no correlation. Both social networking sites and messaging apps are positively associated with support for democracy in terms of frequency, and in case of social networking sites also with diversity of their use.

Even with a relatively limited amount of statistically significant correlations, our data allow us to draw some tentative conclusions about the relationship of social media platforms with the attitudinal base for illiberalism, which point to the impact of both the type and nature of digital platforms and the character of political systems. The analysis clearly underscores the need to question general claims about the impact of ‘social media use’, and instead acknowledge considerable differences in the impact of social networking sites as opposed to messaging apps. At the same time, our data also suggest that the precise nature of the distinction between the two types of platforms will differ depending on the political system. This is clearest with regard to the impact of messaging apps, which are associated with illiberal attitudes in the Czech Republic and Hungary (and to some extent in Serbia, though the correlations are below the threshold for significance), suggesting that the closed, ‘private’ platforms are indeed more likely to serve as channels for illiberal narratives. These results are congruent with previous research from (mostly) Western countries that examined the role of messaging apps in disseminating disinformation. This pattern is exacerbated by the amount of messaging apps an individual uses for news: the greater the diversity of apps, the more illiberal attitudes are displayed by the users.

The position of Serbia deserves further elaboration, given that the country stands out as a demonstrable outlier. In Serbia, in fact, the consumption of news via social networking sites is demonstrably related to pro-liberal and pro-democracy attitudes. We have already established that Serbian participants perceive social media as far more important sources of news than participants from the other three countries, and are using them more intensely for this purpose (apart from Polish participants). Given the poor state of democracy and media freedom in the country, it is possible to assume that social networking sites are being used as alternative news sources more often by those who are dissatisfied with the current (illiberal) political regime, than those supporting it.

Going back to the theoretical arguments examined at the start of this section, we can conclude that our data provide some support for Schleffer and Miller’s thesis about the ‘radicalizing effect’ of social media in weak democratic countries. Findings about the attitudes of Czech users of messaging apps’ stand out as particularly revealing in this context. At the same time, our data also indicate that opposite tendencies might be at work in countries where democracy is under more strain or has been replaced by a hybrid (though not fully authoritarian) regime, as is the case in Serbia. However, to explore this further, we need to move beyond looking at social media as mere sources of political information and examine more broadly how people use them to engage with politics.

6.4 Online Political Participation and Political Attitudes

While existing scholarship about the links between social media use and attitudes towards democracy or towards polarizing societal issues has not led to any unanimous outcome, there is widespread consensus when it comes to assessing social media’s impact on civic engagement and political participation (Boulianne, 2019). Here, meta-analyses suggest that the relationship is not only positive but increasing in strength in recent years (Boulianne, 2020). This trend is arguably driven by new forms of online participation that the affordances of social networking sites enable and encourage, namely engaging with political content via ‘social buttons’ (liking, sharing, retweeting, etc.). Although often classified as a ‘low-effort’ or ‘thin’ form of participation (Knoll et al., 2020; Tufekci, 2014) or even dismissed by some as ‘slacktivism’ (Morozov, 2009), this type of online engagement is increasingly considered as a legitimate form of political action (Halupka, 2014). Research also demonstrates that it is positively linked to offline forms of participation, such as voting, taking part in demonstrations, signing petitions, etc. (e.g. Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2014; Štětka & Mazák, 2014). The popularity of political expression through social media received a further boost in recent years, thanks to social justice movements such as #MeToo or Black Lives Matter that have successfully utilized social media for raising awareness, mobilization, and the organization of direct actions. The global spread of climate change protests, such as Greta Thunberg’s #FridaysForFuture movement is also unthinkable without the engagement of millions of supporters on social media.

In Eastern Europe, social media platforms are likewise increasingly used as crucial tools of mobilization for various civic protests and digitally networked political action (cf. Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). Most of these protests and movements have an openly anti-government focus and are centred on issues of corruption. Examples include the Bulgarian movement ‘Dance with Me’ (#ДАНСwithme), which spanned across two years (2013–2014) and led to the resignation of Plamen Orecharski‘s government (Dimova, 2019), and the ‘Rezist’ protest movement in Romania in 2017 (#rezist). This movement was started by Romanian expats on social media and sparked anti-government demonstrations in over 100 cities around the world (Mercea, 2022). Corruption was also a focal point of anti-government demonstrations that took place in Slovakia in March 2018, the largest demonstrations in the country since 1989. These protests were prompted by the murder of the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and people mobilized on social media by using the hashtag #AllForJan (Školkay, 2019). In Poland, the women’s rights movement ‘All-Poland Women’s Strike’ (Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet, OSK), launched in 2016 in response to the proposed tightening of the abortion law, likewise widely used social media for communication and networking (Korolczuk, 2016). The popular hashtag #StrajkKobiet was utilized again in 2020 and 2021, during protests prompted by the Constitutional Court ruling that banned almost all forms of abortion.

These are just some of the most prominent examples of recent civic protests in Eastern Europe that have been significantly aided by digital platforms, and it is safe to assume that they have all been driven by a strong support for democracy and liberal causes. Does this mean that online political participation in the region is intrinsically linked with pro-democracy and liberal attitudes?

Before we try to answer this question, let us first look at the prevalence of the main types of political expression on social media platforms in the four countries in our sample. We asked respondents whether they had engaged in the following activities over the past month, namely whether they (a) ‘liked’ a message with political content on social media; (b) shared or retweeted a message with political content on social media; (c) commented on a message with political content on social media; (d) posted political statuses or tweeted messages with political content on their social media timeline; (e) became a ‘fan’ or ‘friend’ of a candidate or a political party. As we can see from Fig. 6.3, ‘liking’ a message on social media is by far the most common form of online political expression across all four countries, consistent with previous research (Štětka & Mazák, 2014). In all countries except Poland, commenting is the second most common activity; in Poland, it is sharing or retweeting a post.

Fig. 6.3

Prevalence of different types of political expression on social media

Overall, the differences among the countries are not too pronounced and the resulting index of online political expression, composed of all five aforementioned items, also shows similarities rather than differences. Hungary displays the highest mean score (2.63), followed by Poland (2.52), Serbia (2.47), and the Czech Republic (2.33). This suggests that—just as with the use social media for political news—Czech social media users are less engaged in online political expression compared with their counterparts in the other three countries.

Table 6.2 clearly shows the positive impact of online political expression on pro-democracy and liberal attitudes. These links are strongest in Serbia and Hungary. In both countries, people who are more politically active on social media tend to be more pro-democracy oriented and display more liberal attitudes. However, there is a difference in the type of liberalism that people adhere to. In Hungary, cultural liberalism that shows a significant effect, while in Serbia online political expression is associated with support for constitutional liberalism (for cultural liberalism, the correlation is only significant for liking, not for the entire index, even if the direction of correlations for the other types of expression is the same). In the Czech Republic, we observe similar patterns to Hungary and Serbia, only slightly weaker. However, they are present on both dimensions of liberalism (constitutional and cultural). The only country where social media expression does not seem to have a significant impact is Poland.

Table 6.2 Impact of political expression via social media on political attitudes

Although we need to be mindful of drawing any strong conclusions based on such a small number of cases, these results further support our argument about the importance of considering the impact of political systems when ascertaining the effects of social media on illiberalism and democratic support. Particularly when it comes to social media as an avenue of political expression, our data suggest that digital platforms provide and important avenue for the liberal-minded, pro-democratic opposition, particularly so in countries with a hegemonic illiberal public sphere where mainstream communication channels have been monopolized by illiberal elites, as is especially the case in Hungary in Serbia.

6.5 Conclusions

This chapter has focused on the relationship between social media use, political participation, and selected attitudes related to democracy and its liberal foundations in the context of a region that has been grappling with rising illiberalism and authoritarian tendencies. We have explored to what extent social media are associated with democratic support and liberal attitudes, focusing on users who regularly employ them for accessing news, as well as those who utilize them for online political expression.

The outcomes from the quantitative part of the study allow for several preliminary interpretations. First of all, and contrary to assumptions common among much of public debate and scholarly writing on the topic, we have not been able to confirm the existence of a consistent link between social media and either pro- or anti-democratic and liberal attitudes across our sample. Instead, we have observed some differences between users in Serbia and those in the other three countries, which (unlike Serbia) have all been members of the European Union and have generally ranked higher in democracy and media freedom surveys. It is therefore possible to argue that social media occupy a different place and serve a different function in the Serbian information ecosystem, given that their use is associated with displaying liberal views and support for democracy—a correlation we have not found in any of the other countries. In light of the state of democracy and media in Serbia, it seems plausible to infer that social media in Serbia serve as independent information channels, used by the more liberal-minded part of the population whose information needs are poorly served by the predominantly government-affiliated and/or oligarchy-controlled mainstream news channels.

Our results also point to the need to distinguish more carefully between social networking sites and messaging apps. We have clearly confirmed that messaging apps are linked with more illiberal attitudes in at least two countries from our sample—the Czech Republic and Hungary—suggesting that these types of platforms might indeed be used for political information by people with more authoritarian preferences. The results are even more significant given how skewed the distribution of answers regarding constitutional liberalism is. In other words, only a minority of people lacks enthusiasm for the basic principles of constitutional liberalism (i.e. free and fair elections, freedom of speech, equal rights for women, etc.) but this minority seems to be relying disproportionately on news from messaging apps.

Findings concerning online political participation are more unanimous, pointing in a similar direction for all the countries involved. These results demonstrate that people who use social media to express their opinions and engage with political content online tend to be rather decisively pro-democracy and liberally oriented. This relationship seems to be particularly strong in Hungary and Serbia, suggesting that in these two countries (with the Czech Republic following not far behind) online political participation is indeed more likely the domain of those who are opposing illiberal tendencies, rather than those who are supporting them. This does not mean that the pro-democracy and pro-liberal impact of political expression on social media necessarily outweighs the opposing effect of messaging apps that our data indicates in some of the countries. Neither does it outweigh the influence of concentrated, professionalized social media campaigns of illiberal political parties and leaders, especially during the election periods. Nevertheless, it does call for a more nuanced view on the role of social media in Eastern European democracies, a view that challenges Schleffer’s and Miller’s (2021) thesis about the ‘radicalizing effect’ of social media in the region. While we agree that digital platforms played a key role during the incipient stage of the illiberal public sphere, our data suggest that once illiberalism takes hold, social media might turn out to be an important channel for mobilizing opposition, both within the political system and among the civil society more widely.

While focused on Eastern Europe, these findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of social media in advancing the illiberal turn at a global scale. Even though the small number of countries investigated here means that our propositions will need further empirical testing, the data we presented nonetheless lead to the conclusion that the impact of social media on the quality of our democracies cannot be assessed without a close consideration of a number of factors, including the nature of the political system within which they operate, the relative influence of illiberal actors, and the overall advancement of the illiberal public sphere.