News Consumption and the Illiberal Public Sphere During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This chapter focuses on information consumption and the illiberal public sphere during the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, we ask whether countries where polarization is more advanced, and where the illiberal public sphere is more firmly established, responded to the health crisis differently than those where illiberal tendencies are less evident. Drawing on a unique set of qualitative interviews and diaries collected during the first wave of the pandemic, we investigate 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. Our analysis suggests that countries where the illiberal public sphere was more entrenched were at a distinct disadvantage, particularly if governing elites abused the situation to further expand their control over public life. Even though leaders in all four countries initially avoided politicizing the crisis, 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, sawing distrust in the government as well as in experts, while making citizens potentially more vulnerable to misinformation.