Since October 2023, the research institute Political Capital, the fact-checking website Lakmusz, and the media watchdog Mertek Media Monitor have been collaborating to detect, analyze, and debunk sponsored disinformation during the 2024 election campaign in Hungary. The following text by Szilárd Teczár, a journalist at Lakmusz,  explains the project and its results. 

Bringing together researchers and fact-checkers from Hungary, we managed, for the first time, to put a price tag on the money social media platforms earn by running political ads that contain false or misleading information. 

Three members of the Hungarian Digital Media Observatory anti-disinformation hub – Political Capital, Lakmusz and Mérték Média Monitor – completed a project that analyzed and fact-checked disinformation in paid political advertisements on social media platforms.

The results of our research underline the huge asymmetry in political ad spending between the opposing political camps in Hungary. From the start of the year to the European and local elections in June, Fidesz, the governing party of Viktor Orbán, and its proxies spent 5.4 million euros on political ads on Meta and Google, while the combined spending of 15 opposition parties and their proxies came to 1.4 million euros.

2.5 million euros was spent on promoting ’hostile narratives’ – a broader term than disinformation that also covers exaggeration and the portrayal of socio-political actors as enemies. 98% of this amount came from Fidesz and its proxies.

Thanks to 46 fact-checked individual claims, the project could measure how much money was spent on political ads that spread disinformation (that is, they contained demonstrably false or misleading claims). We identified the fact-checked claims in 511 political ads that were promoted on the two platforms for 475 thousand euros.  

The most prominent hostile narrative before the European elections related to the Russia-Ukraine war, and claimed, in essence, that “European pro-war politicians and their Hungarian servants want to start World War III”. Fidesz and its proxies spent 1.1 million euros on this narrative alone.

Several false or misleading claims amplified this narrative. For example:

• 39 thousand euros was spent on advertising the false claim that “Manfred Weber wants to introduce compulsory military service in all EU Member States”.
• 79 thousand euros was spent on propagating the misleading claim “Emmanuel Macron is ready to send troops to Ukraine and to use nuclear weapons”.

The research also revealed that Fidesz largely outsourced its negative campaign and the expenditure on hostile narratives. Megafon, a network of government-aligned influencers spent 1.3 million euros on hostile narratives, and it also proved to be the most important spreader of sponsored disinformation.

According to a survey conducted as part of the project, the majority of Hungarian social media users do not know that the videos of Megafon are promoted as paid political ads. Only 30 percent of the respondents said they were aware of this.

An in-depth investigation produced new evidence that suggests a close link between Megafon and Fidesz. By analyzing pictures of the social media trainings offered by Megafon, we found that almost 70 participants of these trainings became candidates in the local elections, most of them in the fold of the governing party.

You can read the Summary Report of the project here: Fidesz & Co. flooded social media with anti-Western hostile disinformation in Hungary’s election campaign, reaching EU spending records. Policy Recommendations developed based on its takeaways can be read here. 

The project “The marketplace of (false) ideas: Uncovering, analyzing, debunking and researching sponsored disinfo” was funded by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF).

Szilárd Teczár, Lakmusz and HDMO

Photo: Réka Szulágyi