Alena Pospíšil Macková, Lucie Čejková, Martina Novotná, Krisztina Burai, Paweł Baranowski, Michal Garaj (2025). When Populism Targets Europe: Anti-EU Rhetoric and User Engagement in the Visegrád Countries. Media and Communication, 13. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10613
Background and Context
In Central and Eastern Europe, criticism of the European Union (EU) has become a defining feature of political debate. In the Visegrád countries—Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—anti-EU messaging is frequently used to question institutions and rally disillusioned voters. Such rhetoric often reflects populist styles of communication, which frame politics as a struggle between “ordinary people” and distant, corrupt elites.
Social media, especially Facebook, provides fertile ground for this type of messaging. Its affordances allow politicians to combine negative language, emotionally charged narratives, and symbolic visuals to reach broad audiences. Prior studies suggested that negative or emotional content is particularly effective at generating user engagement, making the European Parliament (EP) elections—a traditionally low-salience contest—a strategic stage for populist actors.
Importantly, attacks on the EU are not limited to critical language alone. Populist and Eurosceptic actors often reinforce their messages with visual and emotional strategies. Two key approaches are common: the use of patriotic imagery, highlighting national pride and identity, and fear-based language, which portrays the EU as a threat. Both strategies aim to heighten emotional resonance and strengthen the persuasive force of anti-EU appeals.
Hypotheses
Building on this background, the authors examined the following hypotheses:
- H1a: Posts on Facebook that employ negative campaigning against the EU are more likely to include populist communication styles.
- H1b: Populist parties and candidates use negative campaigns against the EU on Facebook more than non-populist parties and candidates.
- H2: Negative campaigning against the EU on Facebook will likely include patriotic symbols.
- H3: Negative campaigning against the EU on Facebook is associated with a higher prevalence of fear speech.
- H4: Posts with negative messages about the EU on Facebook generate higher user engagement than those without.
Additionally, the study posed two research questions:
- RQ1: How does the occurrence of negative campaigning against the EU on Facebook differ across V4?
- RQ2: How do including populist rhetoric, fear appeals, and patriotic symbols in anti‐EU posts interact to influence user engagement on Facebook in the Visegrád region?
Method
The analysis covered more than 6,000 Facebook posts from parties and politicians in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia during the 2024 EP elections. The dataset included only actors who gained at least 5% of the vote nationally.
As part of the CamforS research network, the team conducted a manual content analysis. Posts were coded according to a common codebook for anti-EU negativity, populist rhetoric, fear-based appeals, and patriotic visuals. To ensure consistency, coders across countries underwent training and intercoder reliability testing.
User engagement was measured through Facebook reactions, comments, and shares, analyzed with generalized linear mixed-effects models to control for country and actor differences.
Results
- Country-level differences in negativity against the EU (RQ1): Compared to Slovakia, Hungarian actors were far more likely to post critically about the EU. For Czechia and Poland, no significant difference was found.
- Anti‐EU rhetoric & populist communication style (H1): Posts by populist actors were strongly associated with EU criticism. The most powerful predictor of EU negativity was anti-elitist framing, with additional—but weaker—effects from people-centric appeals and portrayals of political opponents as “dangerous.”
- Rhetorical strategies (H2, H3): The use of fear speech and patriotic symbols both significantly increased the likelihood that posts contained anti-EU rhetoric.
- User engagement (RQ2, H4): Results indicate that that posts including fear speech induce more reactions, however, combining fear speech with negativity toward the EU reduces the amount of reactions, user comments and shares.
Conclusion
The study shows that anti-EU rhetoric in Visegrád region’s campaigns is less nationally distinct than expected. While Hungary stood out as more negative towards the EU, common patterns emerged across the region. Anti-elitist framing proved to be the most consistent driver of anti-EU content, often accompanied by people-centric language and political danger narratives, while references to ethnic or cultural threats were rare.
Contrary to widespread assumptions, emotional and negative messaging did not reliably translate into higher engagement. Fear speech, in particular, reduced interaction when combined with EU criticism.
These results suggest that the dynamics are closely tied to the context of EP elections—campaigns that are generally less salient and emotionally charged. In such settings, even strongly worded or fear-based messages may lose their mobilizing potential.