Loughborough University's IAS Holds Research Seminar on Media and Illiberal Democracy in CEE

Loughborough University’s Institute of Advanced Studies has recently organized a one-day seminar about the current state of media freedom and the rise of illiberal democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. Speakers of the event included CMDs director Marius Dragomir who attended the first panel “CEE democracy in uncharted waters: searching for a new conceptual framework” as a panelist along with Miklós Sükösd and Aleks Szczerbiak and discussed “Illiberal Democracy and Media Capture” and served as chair of the afternoon panel entitled “Lessons from South-Eastern Europe”, where his co-panelists included Maja Šimunjak, Daniel Smilov and Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova.

The second session of the seminar focused on democratic backsliding in the Visegrad region, chaired by Václav Štětka from Loughborough University. The panelists included Seán Hanley, Nikola Belakova, Pawel Surowiec and Péter Bajomi-Lázár who presented "Between Liberalism and Authoritarianism: Paradigm Shifts in Media & Politics in Hungary".

The seminar ended by a discussion about illiberal democracies beyond the EU with special focus on Russia and Turkey. Chaired by John Downey, director of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture Loughborough, the panel included co-panelists Sally Broughton-Micova, Galina Miazhevich and Burce Celik.