The Media Agenda‐Setting Role of Protests in Nondemocratic Regimes: A Case Study From Hungary

ABSTRACT This study investigates how protests influence media coverage in a nondemocratic context, focusing on the 2022–2023 education‐related protest wave in Hungary. Drawing on data from the Hungarian Protest Event Database (HuPED) and a corpus of 24,029 education‐related articles across 47 online news portals, we examine how different types of media—classified by political alignment and geographic scope—respond to protest activity. Using panel regression models, we find that only independent media exhibit a substantial agenda‐setting response to protest events, and only when protest intensity is high. In contrast, pro‐government media largely suppress both issue and demand salience, and when coverage does occur, governmental actors dominate the interpretation. These findings provide empirical support for theories of informational autocracy by demonstrating how state‐controlled media is able to manipulate the information about grievances and protesters' demands in order to mitigate the risks of regime collapse. By limiting public awareness of grievances, the government can suppress dissent and maintain political stability despite widespread discontent. By combining protest event and media data, this study contributes to the literature on protest outcomes, media agenda‐setting, and media systems in nondemocratic regimes. We also suggest that our findings are relevant to democracies experiencing growing polarization and media capture.