This project investigates the women’s digital grassroots activism that emerged in Hungary in the early 2010s, coinciding with the rise of an illiberal regime following the FIDESZ party’s parliamentary supermajority win in 2010. It examines the possibilities and limitations of digital activism—and of using social media for democratic purposes more broadly—under such conditions. It argues that while recent scholarship increasingly recognises social media as a driver of democratic erosion globally, such critiques often overlook the platforms’ significance in contexts where illiberal actors already dominate traditional media, as was the case in Hungary until April 2026. The project uses Hungarian women’s digital activism as a case study to show how the internet—and social media in particular, especially when owned by corporations beyond domestic control—may function as alternative public spheres, upholding democratic values and enabling political resistance under illiberal regimes.

Györgyi Horváth (PhD, London School of Economics and Political Science) is a media, literature, and gender scholar. Her current research interests lie in the fields of media & gender, gender-related online social movements, and journalism. Before she switched fields to Media Studies and embarked on an international research career in 2014, she had worked as a Literature scholar in Hungary. Her scholarly writings have been published by, among others, Purdue University Press, L’Harmattan, and Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, as well as in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Journalism Practice, and Hungarian Cultural Studies. She is the author of two Hungarian-language research monographs, Utazó elméletek (Balassi 2014) and Nőidő (Kijárat 2007), a collection of scholarly writings, and co-editor of two Hungarian literary anthologies. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Edit Erdődy Research Award, presented by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.