Hedging Bets with Disinformation
28 December 2020
During the spring, five mainly harmful and conspiratorial COVID-19 narratives were present across the Visegrad countries, with an additional one prevalent only in Hungary. While in Czechia and Slovakia, it was mainly fringe, far-right actors as well as fake news and disinformation platforms that spread the stories, ruling parties in Hungary and Poland and their supporters in the mainstream media also played a key – and sometimes even major – role.
Whether on more reliable or disinformation mediums, the coronavirus issue was underrepresented in the public discourse of the Visegrad countries until March 2020 when all four countries introduced similar lockdown measures and declared a state of emergency. Czechia and Slovakia were the first ones to do so, while Hungary followed suit only two weeks later.