Many factors contributed to the Hungarian government's defeat in the election, including unsuccessful social media campaigns, while public trust continued to wane. However, Russian-style disinformation remains a persistent threat.

By Christoph Abel Tarnay

The crushing defeat of Viktor Orbán’s government in the April elections clearly showed that its near-total dominance of Hungary’s media landscape was not enough to secure victory this time. Since then, new data has shown how ineffective the election campaign of the Fidesz party, the former Hungarian prime minister, its Christian nationalist ally KDNP, and the structures that operated in their support really was.

According to Vilnius-based Lithuanian narrative intelligence company Repsense, which combined three complementary analyses over the four months leading up to Hungary's general election, some of the government's efforts – including a "false flag" operation, where a real flag was used to discredit the opposition Tisza party – backfired and failed miserably.

According to the consolidated, non-public executive report provided by BIRN, Repsense analyzed a total of 816,863 articles and posts on Hungarian news sites, as well as on Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Telegram platforms, during the period from December 2025 to April 2026. These materials contained about 12,25 million unique sentences. (The company does not aim to monitor every account, but focuses its data collection on influential accounts and content that reaches a wide audience across the political spectrum.)

The report shows that, although content that matched Fidesz's campaign themes was approximately four times more numerous than that reflecting opposition themes, in some cases the opposing reactions spread faster and reached a larger audience than the initial operations themselves.

This is not to say that the former government’s propaganda did not reach a large number of Hungarian citizens. After 16 years in power, Fidesz directly or indirectly controlled around 80 percent of Hungary’s media landscape, including public and private broadcasters, national newspapers, regional press, and online media. The government’s messages were also reinforced by massive billboard campaigns placed across the country. However, this time convincing citizens proved to be a different challenge.

The exposés became more viral.

A significant case was when some young people unfurled a giant Ukrainian flag during the Tisza party's rally for the national holiday of March 15. Photos of this action were published and quickly shared by media outlets and accounts close to Fidesz, presenting the incident as evidence that the opposition party supported Ukraine.

However, independent media outlet 444.hu quickly reported that the action was coordinated by key staff members of a digital campaign agency affiliated with Fidesz. It also identified the two minors who had unfurled the flag; one of them later that day posted an Instagram Story showing himself in the company of the chairman of the Budapest branch of Fidelitas, Fidesz’s youth forum.

Repsense analyzed several indicators from the database, including viral intensity, which measures how quickly and widely a narrative spreads. This indicator is based primarily on the speed of publication (the number of sentences published per hour), the rate of acceleration of the spread, and the size the narrative reaches during the first six hours compared to its final spread.

In the case of the flag, the initial posts received 28 points in Facebook's in-depth analysis of viral intensity, while the posts exposing the operation achieved 44 points, achieving half of their total reach in less than an hour – the fastest spread recorded in the company's Facebook database.

“What the data shows is that Hungarian citizens used the same platforms not as passive consumers of propaganda, but as an active force against disinformation. This dynamic recalls the initial promise of social networks as a tool of civic resistance and brings to mind the Arab Spring,” said Mykolas Katkus, co-founder and CEO of Repsense.

"The information environment had developed a kind of immune response – each new provocation only accelerated its discovery and unmasking."

The fact that the truth behind the flag unfurling was revealed by an independent media outlet underscores the importance of a free press.

“I believe that the report is not fully comprehensive, in the sense that this change of government would not have been possible without the work of independent journalists,” emphasizes Kata Horvath, a media researcher at the Department of Media and Communication at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

Horvath believes that the remaining free media in Hungary have done an extraordinary job under very difficult circumstances, exposing numerous cases of corruption, the truth behind the flag incident, and the pedophilia scandal. The latter is linked to the resignation, in 2024, of President Katalin Novak, after it was revealed that she had pardoned the former deputy director of a children's home, who had helped cover up child sexual abuse by his superior.

Bulcsu Hunyadi, head of programs at the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital, says that active communication by credible and influential experts also played an important role, helping the public understand what was really happening.

Repsense data also shows similar patterns regarding the differences between polls by independent institutions, which showed the opposition's lead, and institutes close to Fidesz, which predicted another victory for the ruling party. This issue itself became a separate narrative: according to the report, a poll by the Nezopont institute, close to Fidesz, received 15 points on the viral intensity index, while opposing reactions reached 35 points.

An artificial intelligence-generated video showing the execution of a Hungarian father, part of Fidesz's efforts to portray the vote as a choice between staying out of the war in Ukraine or getting involved, received 28 points, while opposing narratives reached 35 points.

Repsense found that this was one of the campaign’s most negatively received pieces of material. While the negative reactions may have been directed at Ukraine or simply a human reaction to the content, the discussions that accompanied the video – more than the sentiment analysis itself – suggest that the negative reaction was largely against the video. According to the report, the narratives that received the most negative reviews were those related to physical attacks on activists.

However, this pattern was not repeated in every case. In the highly controversial issue of the seizure of a large amount of cash, which was widely used for propaganda by pro-government media, Repsense found that the original narrative and the counter-narrative achieved the same level of viral intensity.

Popular narratives
Analyzing 12,25 million sentences collected from news sites and social media platforms, Repsense found that 2,81 million sentences matched Fidesz campaign narratives, or almost 23 percent of all content examined. Three main messages – the claim that the opposition Tisza party wanted to drag Hungary into war, that it would destroy the economy, and that it was funded by Ukraine and other foreign powers – accounted for almost 20 percent of all monitored discourse.

According to investigative platform Vsquare.org, Moscow sent social media manipulation specialists to Budapest to interfere in the election in favor of Viktor Orban’s Fidesz. As Repsense data shows, the very dissemination of this investigation became a significant narrative, spreading rapidly and organically from authentic opposition groups on Facebook, rather than from automated accounts (bots).

Repsense's analysis confirms that typical Kremlin narratives – Orbán as a guarantor of peace, the European Union and Ukraine as a threat of war, Peter Magyar as a "puppet" of Brussels, and Ukraine as an intervenor in the Hungarian elections – were clearly present, but emphasizes that they were mainly reinforced through official Fidesz accounts and government-affiliated media.

The Kremlin’s propaganda strategy was particularly measurable on TikTok, where it accounted for about 17 percent of posts grouped by narrative, with Fidesz-affiliated accounts among the main distributors of these messages. However, the Repsense report notes that “attribution of this activity to Russian coordination cannot be proven based on content data alone.”

It is difficult to determine to what extent Fidesz created these narratives itself, however, Repsense observed that a network of automated accounts linked to Russia distributed, starting in February, manipulated videos falsely claiming that an assassination attempt had been staged on Viktor Orbán.

Katkus says the situation on TikTok differs significantly from that on Facebook.

“An average user who just registers on TikTok in Budapest will be faced with clearly biased content,” he points out.

In a separate analysis of TikTok, Repsense examined 15,791 unique posts, published by 183 accounts. The monthly number of posts increased from 488 in December 2025 to 7,843 in March 2026 – a nearly 16-fold increase. Daily activity from these accounts peaked on April 11, the day before the election, with 360 posts.

The researchers also recorded a significant increase in activity on March 3-4, coinciding with a phone call between Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin, as well as a meeting between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Putin in the Kremlin. Another peak was observed on April 8, after the publication of a leaked audio recording in the media involving Szijjártó.

The report notes that this timing indicates correlation, but not necessarily coordination, although it is “consistent with the documented chronology of the campaign.”

Katkus notes that “Russians are exporting their way of thinking,” which is why similar tactics are appearing in different countries, even though they “often don’t prove effective.”

One of these tactics is to present the election as a geopolitical showdown, instead of focusing the debate on issues of everyday life and the economy – a method that, according to him, was originally used in Russian domestic politics.

“They try to export a black-and-white worldview,” he says, adding that the enemy is not necessarily Ukraine; it could also be NATO or a neighboring state, often using almost identical wording.

According to Katkus, other tactics include discrediting the entire election process and attacking candidates who hold anti-Russian stances.

What changed in Hungary?
After returning to power in 2010, Viktor Orban declared that Fidesz had won the election on the internet and on Facebook. However, since then, the party has begun to portray social media as a new and hostile terrain, dominated by leftist and liberal voices.

One of the largest projects of the pro-Fidesz camp on social media was the “Megafon” Center, created in 2020 on the eve of the 2022 parliamentary elections. It trained pro-government content creators to produce short videos and intensively promoted their materials through paid advertising. By the end of 2025, Megafon had spent more than 2,7 billion forints (about 7,5 million euros) on Facebook ads alone.

Although the ban on political advertising by Meta and Google in the fall of 2025 made it more difficult to fill social networks with propaganda, Fidesz and its structures did not stop trying. Most recently, the former government created the “Fight Club” group (Harcosok Klubja), focused on winning online “battles”, as well as the “Digital Civic Circles” (Digitális Polgári Körök), with the aim of building supportive communities.

“I think it can be said without hesitation that this was a huge failure,” says Kata Horvath of Eötvös Loránd University.

She explains that social networks are inherently based on the spontaneous participation of users and that ideas cannot simply be imposed from the top down.

Meanwhile, Hungarian fact-checking platform Lakmusz and the Political Capital institute have repeatedly documented networks of fake Facebook profiles and other forms of coordinated social media manipulation by Fidesz. Horvath points out that, while these networks invested a lot of effort in these methods, they did not work well, in part “because they were not authentic.”

Not only did these social media campaigns fail, but so did Fidesz’s broader propaganda apparatus, which used the same discrediting tactics against Peter Magyar that it had used against previous opponents. This time, however, the accusations did not convince the public because, according to Horvath, Hungary already had a credible and competitive opposition party.

She adds that Fidesz's campaign was starting to look worn out, especially after its image as a "pro-family" party was severely damaged by the paedophilia scandal. According to her, this scandal, combined with the political rise of Peter Magyar, meant that Fidesz was no longer able to silence its critics.

Bulcsu Hunyadi, head of programs at Political Capital, also links the decline in public trust to that period, but also mentions other factors.

“The economic situation and the deterioration of public services also set the stage. Many people had the impression that their economic and social situation, as well as that of the country as a whole, was deteriorating,” he says.

Hunyadi points out that popular support for Fidesz was built on the promise that, if citizens would overlook the party's ideology, its undemocratic measures, and corruption, they could benefit from it.

Other scandals have also damaged Fidesz’s credibility in important areas. He cites concerns about the health and environmental impact of a battery factory near the town of Göd, Viktor Orban’s support for George Simion – a far-right candidate in Romania known for his provocations against ethnic Hungarians – and the misuse of funds transferred to foundations of the Central Bank of Hungary.

In conclusion, Hunyadi says that the Repsense study shows that Fidesz's propaganda and disinformation campaigns failed in these elections due to the party's decline in popularity and the emergence of an opponent who offered an alternative vision for the country and who was increasingly seen as a potential winner.

“It was not primarily the failure of disinformation that caused the regime’s downfall, and disinformation was not even the only reason why it functioned for 16 years,” Hunyadi told BIRN.

Laughter is dangerous.

After Fidesz and its ally KDNP secured consecutive electoral victories with constitutional majorities, it seemed as if no one would be able to remove them from power through the vote. However, with the rapid rise of Peter Magyar, this perception changed, triggering what Bulcsu Hunyadi calls a “social awakening.” Hungarians began to talk about politics more often and participate more actively in protests.

This change in atmosphere became even more visible at the end of the campaign, when several current and former state officials, as well as public servants, came out openly denouncing the government's abuse of power and ineffective management of public services.

According to Repsense, the national holiday of March 15, with 19,728 posts on Facebook, generated more public debate than the previous three weeks combined. The discussions also included descriptions of the “historic” mobilization of the Tisza party for its protest in Budapest.

“From this moment on, public discourse began to treat Tisza's victory as a possible working assumption,” the report says.

The main challenge for Viktor Orban was that, by the end of the campaign, Hunyadi says, his messages no longer evoked anger, but laughter.

Being ridiculed was a threat Orban’s campaign team took seriously. In a closed group, ruling politicians reportedly asked party members to like their public posts to mitigate opposition “attacks” — a reference to the large number of laughing emoji reactions on Facebook.

A large number of satirical pages and groups were also created on this platform, mocking Fidesz's initiative to create Digital Civic Circles.

Mykolas Katkus of Repsense says that while debunking disinformation works in some places, like Moldova, on social media it can give a topic “more attention.” For this reason, he says, sometimes mocking propaganda can be more effective than refuting it.

Hunyadi points out that the gap between the parallel reality created by government propaganda and the everyday experience of Hungarian citizens “widened significantly.”

According to Fidesz's narrative, citizens should be afraid of transgender children, immigrants, and the war in Ukraine, although all of these had limited and direct impact on the daily lives of most Hungarians.

“Disinformation and propaganda worked for many years because, in most cases, they were not made up of outright lies; they were very one-sided narratives, built on some distorted facts. When the Orban regime lost social support, people became more critical of these messages,” Hunyadi said.

To fight fire with fire

While Fidesz used social media in what Kata Horvath describes as a typical baby boomer way, countries like Germany and Portugal have young populists, like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Chega, who find it easier to mobilize voters around issues like housing prices or youth emigration – something that Fidesz, after 16 years in power, has not been able to do with the same success.

However, copying Viktor Orbán’s propaganda machine will not be easy. Bulcsu Hunyadi, of Political Capital, argues that its long-term operation was only possible thanks to the very system set up by the regime, including the capture of state institutions and the deformation of the media environment. According to him, an independent media authority and a pluralistic and competitive media market would punish the spread of such disinformation.

He adds that the financing of this system was also "based on corruption."

A significant indicator is the fact that the large pro-Orban media conglomerate, Mediaworks, began to reduce activity almost immediately after the election victory of Peter Magyar, who had made it clear that his government would cut all state advertising for this media group.

Even Megafon, the pro-Fidesz influencer network, previously funded with significant sums and which has consistently denied receiving public funds, laid off its remaining staff and closed its offices in June.

“I think it took Hungarian society a decade and a half of experience under the Orban regime to come to this solution,” says Hunyadi.

While Horvath doesn't want other countries to have to go through 16 years of "Orbanism" to gain the same awareness, she warns that the way news is consumed today - through social media, artificial intelligence-generated content and the non-stop 24-hour news cycle - doesn't help the situation.

Instead of reading information, analyzing it, and processing it, we are increasingly relying on our emotions, she says.

“Currently, social networks, especially TikTok, are extremely biased against the current order,” Mykolas Katkus points out.

“Russian disinformation narratives dominate political content on TikTok in Germany and Hungary, and we have seen similar patterns in the United Kingdom.”

As a result, the narratives that circulate most frequently on TikTok often differ from average public opinions. Also, news consumption through social networks in Germany is associated with a higher tendency to vote for populist parties, such as the far-right AfD in some generations, or the radical left Die Linke in younger age groups.

Katkus proposes to “fight fire with fire,” arguing that Democratic politicians should prioritize short videos and not rely solely on press statements or controlled campaign activities.

“Be like Peter Magyar. He went viral and was extremely skilled at communicating directly with citizens.”

Even Hunyadi emphasizes that the Magyar's intensive campaign on the ground contributed significantly to the overthrow of the perception that the government was invincible.

He adds that pre-bunking and proactive communication were also very important and, overall, constitute effective tools against Russian disinformation and influence.

The executive director of Repsense praises Italy's recent steps to include foreign manipulation and interference in information within the framework of national security, calling for other countries to adopt more intelligent regulations.

He emphasizes that, rather than banning individual platforms, posts or profiles, attention should be focused on uncovering coordinated manipulation campaigns.

Horvath calls for legal regulation against hostile propaganda and political content created with artificial intelligence.

She emphasizes that fact-checking could also be better institutionalized, citing Portugal, where television fact-checking columns are closely integrated with coverage of political debates.

According to her, restrictions on campaign spending, closing loopholes in the European Media Freedom Act, and educating citizens on the importance of democratic participation would also help.

However, propaganda cannot be completely eliminated.

“You can’t beat propaganda,” says Horvath, explaining that it relies on hatred, fear and a “tribal way of thinking.”

She concludes that, although propaganda must be combated with critical thinking, it exploits instincts that have accompanied humans since ancient times.