Discussion

If we leave aside the Cyprus crisis, which was caught on a regional level (in which a NATO member state is one of the main stakeholders), the decades-long terrorist situation in Northern Ireland, and the Balkan civil wars that sealed the breakup of Yugoslavia, we can even say that until 2022, when the Russian Federation overran an independent, sovereign European state, most of Europe enjoyed the longest period of peace in the history of the continent. This 77 years since the end of World War II is a kind of magic number, as there has never been continuous peace in Europe for so long, so when Moscow attacked Ukraine, it upended a geopolitical reality and global status quo unprecedented in modern history. The attack did not happen overnight; the Russian propaganda machine had already mobilized significant resources before, around, and especially after the 2014 annexation of Crimea in order to convince everyone in Europe (and in the world) that its actions against Ukraine were legitimate and just. The self-justification efforts have brought Moscow a series of varying successes in time and space, but especially in the more or less precisely measurable domestic political-social-economic sphere. In this context, my thesis offers a comparative analysis of the Romanian and Hungarian press after the 2022 Russian attack against Ukraine, and my PhD research hypothesis is that although Russian propaganda has become significantly embedded both in Romania and in Hungary (which are EU and NATO member states), significant differences can be identified in the two media's attitudes towards the war in Ukraine. Among other things: although the situation of the Romanian media is far from ideal and it faces many challenges, its structure is much healthier compared to the Hungarian press, where essentially only the far-right wing government's propaganda media can meaningfully influence public life and public opinion. In my research paper, I use the hybrid method, considering both qualitative and quantitative factors when comparing these two media environments, and I mainly focus on print and digital media, so-called traditional newspapers and online news portals (excluding TV and radio stations, internet blogs and social media products). In addition to presenting the topic in as multifaceted way as possible, with its geopolitical, cultural, historical, economical and sociological aspects, I also carefully review the results of previous research and the theoretical foundations, while paying attention not only to the Romanian-Hungarian press landscape in my PhD research, but also to its embeddedness in regional and international geopolitical relations.