Keywords

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unforeseen levels of disruption, derailing established political, economic, and everyday life routines for millions of citizens around the globe. Established practices of news production and consumption were no exception. The imposition of social distancing measures forced media professionals to find new ways of producing content remotely, while facing an upsurge in audience demand amidst an uncertain and fast-changing environment, a deluge of conflicting and often misleading information, and dwindling advertising revenue (Olsen et al., 2020). Conventional patterns of journalistic storytelling were also upended. Routine news schedules gave way to live government briefings and the news agenda was suddenly overwhelmed by an almost exclusive focus on the new virus, a trend mirrored by the equally sudden rise in online searches for information on COVID-19 (Bento et al., 2020). Media use and news consumption routines also changed. Research revealed a sharp rise in the volume and frequency of news consumption, a notable reliance on digital sources and worrying levels of exposure to misinformation, but also a ‘return’ of legacy media and especially television as a key source of information (Casero-Ripollés, 2020; Nielsen et al., 2020; Van Aelst et al., 2021).

This disruption came at a point when several societies around the globe—including parts of Eastern Europe examined in this book—were already in turmoil owing to the growing prominence of illiberalism and deepening political polarization in several countries, aided by structural changes in the communication environment. In several countries, most notably in the United States and Brazil, the pandemic quickly evolved into a vehicle of political polarization, with populist leaders such as Bolsonaro and Trump mobilizing distrust of expertise and hostility to government regulation to argue against preventative measures suggested by medical experts and health authorities (Mihelj et al., 2024, p. 6–8). Existing research on media and COVID-19 highlights the detrimental impact of political polarization, which is seen as an important obstacle to successful implementation of preventative measures in public health crises, particularly if combined with a polarized news diet (Van Bavel et al., 2020, p. 464). Studies based on US data lend support to such concerns, showing that both online and offline debate on COVID-19 was polarized along partisan lines. People consuming right-leaning TV channels, such as Fox News, were shown to be more likely to endorse misinformation and believe that health authorities exaggerated risks, while also being less likely to comply with home confinement (Jiang et al., 2020; Motta et al., 2020; Simonov et al., 2020). In the long run, the politicization of the pandemic and the resulting polarization had a detrimental effect on public compliance with preventative measures and arguably contributed to Trump’s electoral defeat.

Not all populist leaders, however, adopted the same approach to the pandemic (Meyer, 2020). In the four countries examined in this book, governments initially took the public health threat seriously and were quick to impose national lockdowns, thereby preventing the spread of the virus during the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020. Indeed, countries across Eastern Europe, including those governed by populist leaders, attracted praise for their effective management of the pandemic at the time (Löblová et al., 2021). The situation changed dramatically during the second wave in autumn, when several countries from the region experienced a sharp rise in infections and parallel decline in public support for preventative measures (Sirotnikova et al., 2020, October 15). Yet, as we show in this chapter, trouble was brewing already during the first wave. At that point, several East European countries under populist leadership used the crisis as an opportunity to advance an illiberal agenda, pushing through controversial pieces of legislation at a time when pandemic restrictions limited opportunities for protest.

In this chapter, we use qualitative interview and media diaries data to explore how the combined effects of disruption caused by the pandemic and attempts to abuse the crisis for political gain affected citizens’ engagement with COVID-19 news, responses to government communication, trust in experts, and vulnerability to misinformation. Contrary to the superficial impression of success during the first wave, we argue that countries where the illiberal public sphere was more entrenched at the time were at a distinct disadvantage when dealing with the crisis, particularly if governing elites abused the situation to further expand their control over public life. Even though leaders in all four examined countries initially avoided politicizing the crisis in the manner that Trump and Bolsonaro did in the United States and Brazil, the more advanced state of the illiberal public sphere in two of the countries—Hungary and Serbia—arguably contributed to turning the public health emergency into a divisive event, sowing distrust in the government and its messages, as well as in experts, while simultaneously making citizens more vulnerable to misinformation.

8.1 The COVID-19 Pandemic as an Accelerator of the Illiberal Turn?

In the winter of 2020, as news of the appearance of a new virus in the Chinese province of Hunan suddenly exploded onto the global stage, several commentators speculated that the epidemic might spell the demise of communist rule in China and, thereby, potentially diminish the appeal of authoritarianism and illiberalism globally. In early February 2020, the death of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor from Wuhan who was officially reprimanded for ‘making false comments’ after warning his compatriots about the virus (Tebarge, 2020, February 08) sparked outrage both among domestic audiences in China and commentators abroad. Several Chinese professors and lawyers demanded a public apology and denounced China’s attempt to hide the extent of the epidemic from the public, also calling on the government to review its freedom of speech legislation (Yang, 2020, February 14). Yet, in the months that followed, China quickly sought to position itself as ‘the global leader in the pandemic response’, prompting numerous Western commentators to voice concerns about the country’s attempt to use the pandemic to its geopolitical advantage (Campbell & Doshi, 2020, March 18). In several parts of the world—including parts of Europe, Latin America, and Africa—China’s offers of help with personal protection equipment, ventilators, and vaccines fell on fertile grounds. Soon, the other foremost global exporter of illiberal governance—Russia—launched a similar geopolitical effort, using its COVID-19 vaccine to demonstrate the capacity of an authoritarian power to tackle a global health crisis.

In three of the four East European countries examined here, these global efforts to promote the appeal of authoritarian powers have been paralleled by local efforts to use the pandemic as a pretext for illiberal legislative changes targeting LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and freedom of expression. In March 2020, the Hungarian parliament passed a new Coronavirus Law, giving Prime Minister Orbán the power to rule by decree and imposing further limitations on media freedom in the country (Walker & Rankin, 2020, March 30). The following day, the Hungarian government banned gender change in the country and announced that disseminating ‘fake news’ about the pandemic was punishable by up to five years in prison (Beauchamp, 2020, April 15). In Poland, the right-wing government caused significant controversy with its handling of presidential elections, originally scheduled for May 10, 2020, then moved to the end of June owing to the pandemic. In early April 2020, the Polish government pushed through a controversial bill allowing for elections to take place fully by postal voting, prompting accusations of narrow political self-interest from the opposition (Vashchanka, 2020, p. 7). While elections were eventually postponed to late June the same year, President Andrzej Duda used anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric as an ideological driver in his campaign, further deepening divisions over LGBTQ+ rights in the country (Walker, 2020, June 12). In October 2020, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal ruled that abortions in cases of foetal defects are unconstitutional, effectively introducing an almost total ban on abortions in a country where abortion laws were already very strict (Krajewska, 2020). Finally, in February 2021, the Polish government proposed a new law that would introduce a levy on advertising revenues. The proposal sparked an outcry among the country’s news media organizations that argued that the new bill would disproportionally affect smaller news providers and further diminish their capacity to compete against large digital platforms (Kość, 2021, February 10).

In Serbia, measures implemented during the first wave of the pandemic were particularly drastic and were also policed more heavily than in the other countries examined here. Following the introduction of the State of Emergency in mid-March 2020, the army was dispatched to guard national borders and important buildings, and several hundreds of people were arrested for flouting the new rules. A controversial police curfew was introduced later in March, followed by weekend-long curfews until early May. Although parliamentary elections, originally planned for April 2020, were postponed until June, the government nonetheless attracted criticism for abusing the pandemic for political gain, with opposition parties calling for civil disobedience in face of harsh curfew measures. Media freedom was curtailed as well, with a journalist arrested for publishing a story about the lack of protective equipment for medical staff but later released (Stojanović, 2020, April 02). In Serbia and Hungary, the erosion of liberal democratic freedoms also went hand in hand with pronounced elite sympathies for China. In April 2020, after China sent medical supplies to Serbia, giant billboards thanking ‘Brother Xi’ (referring to the Chinese president Xi Jinping) and professing ‘eternal brotherhood’ of Serb and Chinese populations appeared across the Serbian capital of Belgrade, some sponsored by pro-government newspapers and others by local authorities (Chapple, 2020, May 27). Later in the pandemic, both Serbia and Hungary accepted Chinese as well as Russian vaccines and used them to gain a competitive advantage in vaccination over EU member states (Lau, 2020).

In contrast to Hungary, Poland, and Serbia, the Czech Republic weathered the first wave of the pandemic without seeking to push the illiberal agenda. The Czech government initially attempted to limit access to press briefings for some oppositional journalists and President Zeman caused a stir with his promotion of aid received from the Chinese government in March (Stojanović, 2020, April 02). However, by and large, Czech authorities steered clear of using the crisis to push through controversial legislation. As we show later on in this chapter, these cross-country differences in handling the pandemic, combined with structural differences in media systems and the relative prominence of the illiberal public sphere, arguably resulted in marked differences in citizens’ engagement with government communication, perceptions of experts guiding the pandemic response, as well as exposure to misinformation. We should also note that the material presented here relates to March and April 2020. This time preceded the controversies surrounding elections in Poland and also the implementation of controversial legal changes associated with LGBTQ+ and abortion rights, which—in addition to differences in the stage of the illiberal public sphere—helps explain the key contrast we observed between audience reactions in Serbia and Hungary, on the one hand, and in Poland and Czech Republic, on the other hand.

8.2 News Consumption and Crisis Communication During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Because of its profound impact on people’s everyday lives, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered significant changes in news consumption routines. Faced with a fast-changing situation, people in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia—much as citizens elsewhere in the world (Casero-Ripollés, 2020; Nielsen et al., 2020; Van Aelst et al., 2021)—turned to the media to find up-to-date information about the virus and about preventative measures, leading to a rise in news consumption. At the same time, the introduction of lockdown measures forced people to spend considerably more time at home, an important factor that played a contributing role in the sharp spike in the amount of time spent following news (Mihelj et al., 2022a). The following excerpt, taken from an interview with a participant from the Czech Republic, is illustrative of this wider trend that was apparent in all four examined countries:

If I had gone to work, I certainly would not have followed the news so much because I wouldn’t have had enough time for it. But as I was at home more or less over the whole pandemic period, I had a lot of time. However, I didn’t have enough time to read anything because the children were home and I had to take care of them, so I listened to news a lot. (Cze-12, male, 44)

The enforced confinement to the domestic space mentioned by the respondent constitutes one of the explanations for the reliance on domestic media technologies, and especially for the remarkable increase in TV viewing evident in our data, which mirrors trends noticed in other parts of the world (Casero-Ripollés, 2020; Nielsen et al., 2020; Van Aelst et al., 2021).

Although levels of online news consumption surged as well, legacy media and especially television were in the lead as the most important sources of information on COVID-19. Several of our participants specifically mentioned consuming more television, or even having their television on most of the time and checking news coverage across several television channels. For instance, one of our Serbian participants reported following the pro-government public service broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) more often than she used to, while also comparing its coverage with that provided by the oppositional cable news channel N1, and even occasionally checking the commercial pro-government channel Pink:

I started watching RTS more than I used to. I was comparing the information I heard on RTS with those I heard on N1. Sometimes I would also watch Pink in the morning just to see what nonsense they decided to talk about that day. (Srb-19, female, 62)

Given the widespread reliance on television it is not a surprise that this medium also acted as the most widely used means of accessing government crisis communication. Across all four countries, most of our interview participants—around two-thirds on average—mentioned keeping up to date with government communication through live briefings or press conferences. Many also stated that these live events were the most effective means of reaching the public during the crisis. As one of our Polish participants argued, these live broadcasts were of central importance not only in and of themselves, but also because they were mentioned across a range of other news forms and platforms:

Press conferences. All broadcasters showed them, then there were highlights in the news bulletins. They were writing about them on the Internet as well. That was the most successful way to reach people. Willingly or not, any media user had to come across some mention of it somewhere. (Pol-09, male)

Along with lockdown measures, government’s reliance on live briefings and press conferences as a means of engaging with citizens constituted another key reason for reliance on television.

Our participants often made clear that a key reason for watching television, and especially for following public service broadcasting, was that these channels provided a convenient means of accessing live updates from the government and public health authorities. The following example, taken from an interview with one of our Hungarian participants who watched both the pro-government public service broadcaster M1 and the right-leaning, pro-government commercial channel Hír TV, offers a good illustration of this. She usually avoided these TV channels, but was attracted to them during the pandemic because they provided a means of accessing government updates:

I would consume everything. I watched TV—which is something that I usually do much less—and I watched M1 and HírTV, two channels that I usually never watched … Because that’s where the governmental information was broadcasted. They started those broadcasts [i.e. live government briefings] at that time, and I was curious about that. (Hun-27, female, 46)

These live events played a central role in turning the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic into a ‘media event’ (Dayan & Katz, 1992; Mihelj et al., 2022a)—an extraordinary, history-defining event, organized outside of the media but broadcast live, which interrupts the normal flow of daily life and invites collective viewing.

Across all four countries, live government briefings were a central element of news consumption in the early phase of the lockdown. These broadcasts typically interrupted the routine flow of the day and often involved collective viewing or listening with family members or, before lockdown, with colleagues at work. However, it is important to note that television was not the only means of engaging with live briefings and press conferences. A significant number of our participants—especially those in the youngest age group—preferred to follow these live events through digital media, either through a live feed streamed via a news website, or directly through government’s social media channels. The following excerpt, taken from one of our Hungarian interviewees, offers a case in point:

Of course, and at the beginning, my god… even at work, we sometimes gathered up, and everyone would say ‘My god! Viktor Orbán’s speech is coming, let’s watch the live on Facebook. What will he announce now? My god, what happened now?’… And of course, a lot of people panicked about the possibility of a complete lockdown. (Hun-08, female, 28)

This extract also suggests that such digitally enabled participation could generate a similar experience as the one typically associated with media events watched on television—namely, they were perceived as extraordinary occasion, and involved collective viewing, in this case with colleagues at work.

While live briefings were, by far, the most wide-reaching and effective channel of government communication during the crisis, our participants also mentioned a range of other channels, including dedicated government websites, public service adverts appearing on television, radio, and on social networking platforms, as well as emails and text messages sent by either national or local authorities. Of these, government or health authorities’ websites were most frequently and widely used, although not equally so across all countries. They were most often mentioned among Polish participants, where 14 out of 29 reported using them, typically as means of gaining additional information about specific preventative measures. The following extract from a participant who consulted the website to check whether she could visit a public garden is illustrative of this tendency:

I consulted this website again recently to confirm whether or not you are allowed to visit your city’s vegetable garden. Whether you can go there or not. And still, I don’t know, it’s not so clear. (Pol-04, female, 62)

8.3 Wide Reach, Low Trust?

Widespread use of government communication channels did not necessarily mean that such channels were trusted. In two of the countries—Hungary and Serbia—several participants mentioned following live briefings or government websites on a regular basis, but also emphasized that they distrusted the information provided. Replicating trends examined in Chap. 4, patterns of trust and distrust were tied to political orientations, with pro-government participants trusting the information provided and anti-government participants expressing distrust and frustration. For instance, one of our Hungarian participants described watching the government public service channel M1 to follow the live briefings organized by the Operational Task Force—a body set up by to tackle the health crisis—but started doubting the veracity of information once he heard that some of the journalists’ questions raised during the event went unanswered:

In the beginning, the reason I watched M1 was that the Operational Task Force’s information session was there, and I watched it a few times, you know? This was around 11 a.m.… or 3 p.m.? This is why I wrote it in the diary, I watched that. But… damn it […] then it was revealed that they do not answer certain journalists’ questions, and I thought ‘Damn it! Are you still only giving us biased information? So, I stopped watching that, too, I simply didn’t turn on the TV to watch it. Now… it’s the same thing. Poor RTL journalists can’t say everything, because they don’t get the answers to the questions that they asked—or at least not to all of them, maybe only one or two. (Hun-26, male, 64)

Another Hungarian participant continued to follow daily briefings, but because he was distrustful of the information provided, he felt the need to compare it to reports from other news sources:

So, I read the summary of [the briefings] and I know that this is one version of reality, I compare it to other versions, and I try to figure out the truth. But I don’t think the Operational Task Force is enough of a reliable source to only watch that. It reflects one point of view, of course there must be a lot of truth in it, but… But I try to read other things, too. (Hun-24, male, 42)

The government website provoked a similar reaction among our anti-government participants in Hungary, many of whom started questioning the numbers of cases reported on the website and suggested that official figures underestimated actual numbers of deaths:

I look at the official coronavirus website too and I check what illnesses those people had who had passed away, and um … Well, I know about one person who died who is definitely not on this list, and … they very probably died because of coronavirus…And because of this, it’s quite strange to me … how credible this is. They had all kinds of illnesses, and last week when I was a little unwell, I was thinking about what kind of illnesses they’d come up with for me, if I died … So, this is simply a lie. (Hun-12, female, 59)

One of our Hungarian participants found the behaviour of the ruling party Fidesz during the crisis so frustrating that he ended up noting the following in his diary after one of the daily briefings: ‘Zoltán Kovács’ arrogance was deeply upsetting, Fidesz’ incompetence and government communication is currently more dangerous for me than the virus, at least that’s how I feel’ (Hun-21, male 31, Media Diary, 15 March 2020). For some participants, distrust led to almost complete avoidance of government communication. One participant, for instance, reported watching only one of Prime Minister Orbán’s speeches, streamed through his Facebook channel, after he heard him being ridiculed owing to a technical glitch that meant the stream initially had no sound: ‘No. I watched the video of when they couldn’t get the sound to work, because that was funny…But either way I don’t really watch him because he never says anything… I am not used to him saying anything that is true’ (Hun-18, male, 32).

In Serbia, too, government briefings provoked similarly negative responses among anti-government participants. As in Hungary, some of our participants were irritated by the way the briefings were conducted, distrustful of the information provided, and even scared. Alternatively, they would poke fun at the government and the experts. For instance, as with one of the Hungarian participants quoted earlier, one of our Serbian interviewees was appalled by the treatment of journalists during live briefings, which led her to distrust the ability of the government to inspire public support and compliance with preventative measures:

The way journalists from certain media outlets were treated when asking questions about the opposition and elections provoked a deluge of negative reactions. The president answered that he would not be wasting his time on this and then nonetheless spent the next fifteen minutes talking negatively about them [journalists]. Most people took the virus seriously, but with the head of state putting on such a charade it will be difficult to establish public compliance. (Srb-7, female, Media Diary, 23 March 2020)

As in Hungary, some of our anti-government participants in Serbia also resorted to comparing the information provided in government briefings with the commentary offered by opposition leaders. Yet, as evident from the diary extract below, which contrasts the Prime Minister with one of the most prominent opposition leaders (Dragan Đilas), such comparisons did not imply that opposition leaders were necessarily more trusted, as they too could be perceived as abusing the crisis for political gain:

Vučić’s press conference about Corona, then Đilas on 360 Degrees [weekly political talk show on N1), criticising the government because of Corona. The former seemed amateurish and boorish to me […] while the latter was opportunistic, as Đilas was trying to score political points. (Srb-30, male, 26, Media Diary, 14 March 2020)

By contrast, all pro-government participants were entirely satisfied with government communication, and clearly trusted all the guidance and information provided. The two extracts below, taken from our Serbian sample, illustrate the contrast well. While the pro-government participant Srb-23 ‘completely trusted’ the information provided during live briefings (Extract 1), the anti-government participant Srb-09 felt that these events were used to ‘brainwash’ people and made him feel scared (Extract 2).

Extract 1

I found those conferences at 3 p.m. extremely significant. I would listen to what the doctors were saying while checking online what had happened in the last 24 hours. I completely trusted what they were saying on those conferences, even though people were saying different things about them, but I found them completely acceptable. (Srb-23, female, 60+)

Extract 2

I think that the government was using those conferences to brainwash us.

Interviewer: Do you think that the government was using the conferences to manipulate the people?]

Yes, I do.

Interviewer: Did the presence of those doctors make you feel safer?

No, they made me feel scared, especially when they were talking about the number of the deceased. And especially about the number of the deceased in the gerontological centres and in the rest of the world. I was really scared to be honest.

(Srb-09, male, 48)

In Poland and especially in the Czech Republic, participants were far less divided in their responses to government communication, and trusted the information provided. Even though some participants were occasionally critical of some of the measures introduced or resented the constant presence of government officials in the media, they turned to official briefings, the government website, or to the public service broadcaster to find trustworthy information about the pandemic or keep up to date on latest measures. The absence of distrust was particularly remarkable in Poland, where one may expect that the combination of a starkly polarized media landscape and government control over the public broadcaster would have provided ripe grounds for doubting government’s crisis messaging. And yet, several of our anti-government participants reported consuming more public service media than prior to the pandemic, despite avoiding them prior to the pandemic because they found them politically biased. They also made it clear that the main reason for greater reliance on public service media during the pandemic was access to government communication, and that they found the information provided in the briefings trustworthy. At the same time, they also drew a clear line between the trustworthiness of crisis communication, and the trustworthiness of public service media as a source for other news, where their attitudes remained negative. The following excerpt from an anti-government participant illustrates this attitude very clearly (see Guzek et al., 2021 for further evidence):

TVP Info was the easiest to access, it’s one of the main channels and that’s why I started watching it. At some point, it was all beginning to look the same to me. But I turned to TVP Info to get coronavirus information. When it comes to political news, I turned mainly to the Internet and online discussion boards. (Pol-09 male, 30)

The contrasting public responses to government communication in the four countries—with notable distrust among anti-government participants in two of the countries where the illiberal public sphere has reached the hegemonic stage—highlights one of the challenges faced by illiberal governments during a crisis. In a context where the illiberal public sphere has advanced to such a degree that independent media and balanced coverage have virtually disappeared from the mainstream, government communication may be effective in reaching the public, but not necessarily in inspiring trust. Accustomed to both elite behaviour hostile to an open debate and to politically biased coverage, citizens operating in such an environment are likely to respond to crisis communication in a polarized manner, aligned with their political preferences. As a result, a significant part of the public is likely to distrust the information provided through government communication channels. As the following section shows, these patterns of trust and distrust in the government also shaped public trust in experts and science.

8.4 Trust in Experts in the Illiberal Public Sphere

Public trust in experts and science, and the availability of trustworthy information based on expert knowledge, are essential prerequisites for the efficacy of public health measures, especially during a public health crisis. Yet, we still know relatively little about how public trust in experts is established. Existing research suggests that perceptions of competence, adherence to scientific standards, and good intentions play a key role (Besley et al., 2021; Hendricks et al., 2015). Studies have also shown that trust can be affected by the presence or absence of expert consensus on the topic and by experts’ choice of language and channel of communication (e.g. Gustafson & Rice, 2019; König & Jucks, 2019). However, scholarly understanding of how these factors interact remains limited, and the lack of cross-country comparisons makes it difficult to establish how perceptions of trustworthiness may be moderated by the political and media environment. For instance, how are experts perceived in countries marked by low standards of democracy, lack of independent media, or the presence of prominent populist or illiberal leaders and parties? More specifically, how is trust in experts established in an environment in which an illiberal public sphere provides the dominant realm for public communication?

A key trait of populism is anti-elitism, which typically extends to hostility to intellectual elites and hence hostility to expert knowledge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, several prominent populist leaders around the world have fuelled this pre-existing hostility by downplaying, or outright dismissing, scientific findings about COVID-19, and by challenging advice provided by public health authorities (Gonsalves & Yamey, 2020). In the United States, Trump infamously refused to wear a mask, hosted several meetings where few participants obeyed social distancing guidance, and downplayed the seriousness of the virus in several of his tweets. In Brazil, Bolsonaro dismissed his health minister after he recommended following social distancing measures, and repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as a ‘little flu’. In India, Modi ignored scientific evidence that suggested social distancing as a key preventative measure and attacked the media for being too negative about the development of the pandemic.

Yet, this hostile treatment of scientific knowledge and advice was not shared by all populist leaders worldwide. In all four examined countries, a different approach prevailed, with populist leaders quickly turning to experts for guidance and using them to legitimize their preventative measures. Nonetheless, this approach did not necessarily succeed in establishing public trust in experts. In two of the countries where illiberalism is most advanced—Hungary and Serbia—most of our participants expressed distrust of experts appointed to serve on national crisis bodies and doubted the advice they provided. Why did this happen? It is possible to argue that the involvement of scientists in shaping pandemic response, combined with the wide availability of scientific knowledge in the media, has helped to create a fertile ground for populist attitudes to flourish, and hence inadvertently stimulated hostility towards experts, regardless of the stance adopted by populist leaders (Brubaker, 2020).

There are two key reasons for this. First, abstract epidemiological models provided by scientists and public health officials may have appeared far removed from people’s personal experiences with the virus. Especially in the early phase of the pandemic, when cases were low, very few people experienced the complications associated with COVID-19 themselves or personally knew anyone who had died after contracting the virus. Given the populist tendency to valorise personal experience over abstract knowledge, this situation arguably helped fuel suspicion. Second, the contemporary, high-choice information environment helped make scientific knowledge much more widely present and accessible, creating a myriad of possibilities for people to assess and challenge scientific results or even conclude that scientists do not agree on anything and hence cannot be trusted. Digital and social media played a crucial role in this, enabling people to compare and contrast expert knowledge from a variety of sources, as well as gain direct access to scientists who often sought to directly address the public through social media, or even participate in the debate as ‘pseudo-experts’.

These explanations do resonate with some of our own analysis. For instance, some of our participants explained that they distrusted expert advice owing to a perceived lack of expert consensus, an impression developed based on the wide variety of expert opinion available in the public domain. This led them to be confused over who to believe, and thus distrustful—a finding aligned with existing research on the impact of scientific consensus on trust (Oreskes & Conway, 2011; Gustafson & Rice, 2019). For example, one of our Czech participants explained that he followed the opinions of medical experts at the beginning of the pandemic, but quickly lost faith owing to their contradictory views, and specifically owing to the perceived conflict between proponents of lockdown measures and proponents of the so-called herd immunity strategy:

I was surprised that there are many experts with different opinions and, frankly speaking, I am tired of it. I think that people without education must be very puzzled by it… And now we have here this pandemic and half of epidemiologists say ‘let’s keep the lockdown’, while the other half is for letting the virus spread across the population. So, what should the common man think? Maybe, it’s better to pray… [I followed them] from the beginning, but then I found out that there were many contradictory opinions. Thousands of doctors and experts, and it’s the same with lawyers… The crisis showed that we cannot believe them—such a disagreement in opinions … (Cze-11, male, 34)

While compelling, the influence of controversies nonetheless fails to explain the marked difference between attitudes to experts in Hungary and Serbia, on the one hand, and those registered in Poland and the Czech Republic, on the other hand. The reasons for this difference become apparent once we consider the way in which our participants justified their trust (or distrust) of experts. In Hungary and Serbia, the key reason for distrust was the perceived influence of political elites on experts. In both countries, several participants explained that they distrusted experts on the government-appointed national crisis teams, primarily because they were perceived as lacking in independence, which then shaped the perception of their ability to exercise professional judgement. Members of the Operational Task Force were described as soldiers not medical experts (Hun-27, female, 46), as not credible (Hun-30, meal 38), or not actually experts (Hun-05, female, 64; Hun-12, female, 59; Hun-18, male, 32), lacking in independence (Hun-05, female, 64), only saying what they are allowed to say (Hun-10, male, 75; Hun-22, female, 36), fulfilling a political order (Hun-06, male, 66), not telling the truth (Hun-07, male, 52; Hun-12, female, 59), and changing their opinion depending on context (Hun-11, female, 61). The following excerpt elaborated these reservations in relation to a prominent member of the Task Force, Cecília Müller, a physician who also serves as the country’s Chief Medical Officer.

The problem here is that the experts are politically inclined, and they form their expert opinion to align with politics. Then we should ask where can we find an independent expert whose opinion is acceptable? And whose opinion is right and the one I should follow? Tell me, which expert is the real expert? … Cecília Müller is an expert, because she is a doctor, but she is not politically independent. (Hun-26, male, 64)

For one Hungarian participant, reservations about the Task Force and its close ties with the Government were so strong that he felt compelled to trust an expert simply because their opinions were openly rejected by the Task Force:

As I said, Cecília Müller, the Chief Medical Officer, said that only those who are sick have to wear a mask. And now … János Szlávik, the chief doctor of the Szent László hospital said that everyone should wear a mask. He is the most important doctor working in epidemiology in Hungary and he said that we should wear it… And I believe Professor Szlávik more than Cecília Müller, because Professor Szlávik was there at the first meeting of the Operational Task Force, at the first interview, and they never invited him again, he disappeared… I wonder why. (Hun-07, male, 52)

Several Serbian participants expressed similar distrust for members of their Crisis Headquarters. As participant Srb-26 (female, 37) explained: ‘I realized that certain doctors didn’t have their own opinions, and that they were waiting for those in power to give them the green light when someone would ask them a question’. Other reasons mentioned by Serbian participants included: the experts are not really experts, or at least were not chosen for their expertise (Srb-06, female, 31); the doctors are ‘told what to say’ (Srb-07, female, 22); they ‘always spin the same stories’ (Srb-21, female, 21); and they seem to be ‘keeping something from us’, ‘not telling us the whole truth’ (Srb-28, male, 60+). While the reasons were, to an extent, driven by generalized distrust of elites, the perceived influence of politicians on experts was a compounding cause for many (cf. Mihelj et al., 2022b for further evidence).

8.5 Trust in Experts, Media Use, and Vulnerability to Misinformation

These patterns of trust and distrust of experts coincided with differences in patterns of media use and exposure to misinformation. Once again, Hungary and Serbia stand out in the findings. Driven by distrust in officially appointed experts who featured in government communication and mainstream news media, several of our participants in these two countries turned to social media for alternative sources of expert opinion. However, the types of experts found online varied. On the one hand, several participants turned to social media to look for foreign experts. These participants tended to be anti-government and university-educated and looked for experts they perceived as trustworthy because of their expertise, assessed through their professional positions and institutional affiliations. For instance, one of our participants reported generally checking YouTube for information about COVID-19, seeking out experts in research positions based at trusted foreign organizations. He claimed that he would watch ‘whatever was shown by the YouTube algorithm. Once it was a leading doctor from the University of Chicago and I believed him. I look at the WHO [World Health Organization website] or whatever YouTube brings up’. (Hun-21, male, 31)

In a similar vein, Serbian participant Srb-21 (female, 21) also distrusted national experts, and this led her to compare the answers of Serbian experts to those of foreign experts, which she accessed through YouTube. Participant Hun-22 was likewise distrustful of Hungarian experts and sought foreign information on COVID-19 through Facebook, usually in the form of English language articles from trusted UK news sources.

… if I see that there is an article about, I don’t know, the UK or someone living in the UK, [I trust it more] because I think the media is much freer there and that doctors are able to say what they think and what they truly experience, because I think… [here] they are intimidated. (Hun-22, female, 36)

This excerpt also reveals that the participant used the perceived independence of the media as a means of assessing expert trustworthiness. UK media are implicitly contrasted with Hungarian media, which are perceived as lacking in independence, and this increases the perceived trustworthiness of experts in UK media.

Not all participants who distrusted national crisis teams turned to foreign experts. Several searched for domestic experts who did not appear in mainstream news, either because they were not among the experts chosen by the government (Hun-18, male, 32; Cze-25, male, 68), or because they were banned by the government (Pol-25, female, 79; Srb-06, female, 31). For example, Polish participant Pol-25 explained that she was attracted to a Polish expert because he was purportedly banned from sharing his opinions as he was critical of government’s actions:

For example, yesterday there was one with Professor Simon from Wrocław, who, I believe, is a national consultant. Other national consultants, I guess 89 of them, were also banned from saying their opinion on coronavirus. And Professor Simon said, ‘All right, I am banned from stating my opinion, so now I am going to present my view as a regular doctor.’ Now he is invited to participate in various TV programmes and airs his views on how things look. (Pol-25, female, 79)

Serbian participant Srb-06 likewise stated trusting those experts who are not prominent in mainstream news media, indicating that the lack of prominence in government-controlled media was a marker of expert independence and hence trustworthiness. She claimed: ‘I also watched certain TV shows that I found on YouTube and dealt with what certain virologists and epidemiologists who weren’t prominent in the media had to say about coronavirus. I trusted them more than the doctors from the Crisis Headquarters’ (Srb-06, female, 31).

However, some participants who were driven to social media as a result of distrusting government-appointed experts were less able to identify trustworthy sources of expert opinion. Some fell prey to ‘pseudo’ experts—typically people with some background in natural sciences but not specifically virology or epidemiology, who shared misinformation. For example, two Hungarian participants mentioned Doktor Gődény, a Hungarian pharmacist and fitness personality who was adamantly against wearing masks and lockdown measures. He often posted his opinions questioning preventative measures against COVID-19, organized public demonstrations against restrictive measures, and was instrumental in establishing a nation-wide anti-vax movement centred on COVID-sceptic claims, fuelled by conspiracy theories about ‘Big Pharma’ (Turza, 2023, pp. 226–227). In September 2020 he was charged by Hungarian authorities for spreading disinformation, but he eventually had his prison sentence suspended and continued to speak out regularly against wearing masks and questioned the need for vaccination.

What also emerges from our analysis is the widespread reliance on YouTube as a source of expert opinion. Our participants’ answers indicate that the attraction of the video-sharing platform lied in the combination of audio-visual communication and absence of editorial control, which resulted in a perception of greater authenticity and directness. Some participants appeared to turn to YouTube and other social media to look specifically for expert information that reinforced pre-existing opinions. For example, a Hungarian participant (Hun-15, male, 38) believed that the measures imposed by the government were excessive and instead followed Doktor Gődény on YouTube. He explained his choice in these terms: ‘Yes, because I think it would be enough to isolate the vulnerable older groups and those with chronic illness and the others should be allowed to continue producing the GDP. It will be much worse if the economy crashes than if the virus spreads’.

These examples offer a good illustration of the double-edged nature of social media that arguably becomes particularly pronounced in contexts where the illiberal public sphere is more advanced, and in relation to contested topics prone to misinformation. In a context where experts’ trustworthiness is compromised owing to perceived political influence, social media can enable access to trustworthy expert information, but they can also offer access to misinformation, and further polarize and politicize the discussion, thereby contributing to distrust.

8.6 Conclusions

As shown throughout this chapter, the initial success with the management of the pandemic in Eastern Europe was to some extent misleading and masked deep-seated problems with maintaining public trust and support for government measures. The two countries where the illiberal public sphere is most advanced—Hungary and Serbia—were also the ones marked by divisions in responses to government communication, notable distrust of expert advice provided by crisis response bodies, greater reliance on social media for expert information, and greater vulnerability to misinformation. This suggests that countries where the illiberal public sphere is stronger, and where governments exert greater control over the media landscape and the distribution of public information, may be at a disadvantage when tackling a public health crisis. Even if government control may limit the visibility of both dissenting opinion and harmful misinformation, the lack of independent media can encourage distrust of government crisis communication. Moreover, the perceived politicization of medical experts and health authorities can have a detrimental impact on citizens’ trust and eventually also on compliance with preventative measures, including vaccine acceptance.

This argument is most clearly demonstrated by developments in Serbia, which initially made great strides in the vaccination drive, largely thanks to its reliance on Russian and Chinese vaccines, but soon hit the stumbling block of vaccine hesitancy. By early April 2021, it was clear that vaccine supply was starting to outstrip demand, as a large proportion of the population was reluctant to accept vaccines, often owing to fears fuelled by conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating through social media (Gadzo, 2021; Mihelj et al., 2024). In a bid to tackle vaccine hesitancy, the Serbian government even started offering payments to citizens willing to get vaccinated, amounting to 5% of the country’s average monthly salary. This move provoked concerns about ethical implications and worries that the payment scheme may backfire (Holt, 2021, May 15). Even in Poland, where citizens initially responded to government crisis communication with a reasonably high level of trust, things deteriorated during the vaccination phase, when the far-right Konfederácia party started peddling conspiracy theories and supporting anti-vaccine protests. Concerned about losing votes to their far-right competitor, prominent Law and Justice politicians refrained from unambiguous promoting the vaccination drive, a factor that arguably contributed to Polish vaccination rates lagging behind those of many other European countries (Rachwol, 2023).

Similar trends have been observed beyond Eastern Europe, and although vaccine hesitancy is a global problem, emerging evidence suggests that it may in part be driven by political polarization. A comparative study conducted in Western Europe suggested a highly significant positive association between support for populist parties and the belief that vaccines are not important and effective (Kennedy, 2019), while a recent survey conducted in France showed a correlation between voting for far-right or far-left candidates and reluctance to accept the COVID-19 vaccine (Ward et al., 2020). In the United States, multiple recent polls confirmed that vaccine hesitancy is more widespread among Republican voters, thus confirming that attitudes to vaccines have become entangled in longstanding political divisions in the country. While further analysis is needed to establish comparative trends, these developments raise serious doubts about the ability of countries worse affected by polarization and illiberalism to respond to public health crises. Our analysis suggests that the illiberal public sphere plays an important role in shaping these trends, by generating a communicative environment prone to sowing distrust and division, and hence preventing the establishment of societal consensus necessary for effective health crisis management.