Orban challenged?
Since 2010, Hungary has been run by a supermajority government led by a right-wing coalition of Victor Orbán’s Fidesz, and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP). In order to maintain their level of power over this period of time, Orbán and his allies have used the most modern tool of self-promotion, social media, to maintain their ruling position. However, an opposition party run by former Fidesz insider Péter Magyar, Tisza, has recently had great success in June’s European elections. While Fidesz won 44.6 percent of votes, Tisza was able to score 29.7 percent of votes. This was the worst result for Fidesz in two decades and signals to many the establishment of a “real challenger” to Fidesz.
With such an increase in competition, Hungarian elections offer many insights into the advertising strategies used by ruling and opposition parties. To learn more about the current situation surrounding political campaigns in Hungary, we spoke with Dániel Döbrentey, the Head of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union’s (HCLU) Political Freedoms Program. The HCLU is working with Liberties on the Electoral Integrity and Political Microtargeting project.
The project focuses on six member states and investigates how social media platforms are being used to circumvent campaign rules, as well as the failure of social media platforms to protect user’s private data. Experienced in fighting the undue interference or misuse of power by all levels of authority in Hungary, Daniel was able to explain some of their early findings from the data collected during the project using a web extension developed by our partner, Who Targets Me.
Facebook dominated the EP campaign
According to Dániel, the Who Targets Me extension, voluntarily downloaded by members of the public, obtained a wealth of data through its analysis of the Facebook ads seen by users in Hungary. Although more work needs to be done to sort remaining data, Dániel shared that they have identified about 3,400 unique advertisers consisting of both Fidesz-KDNP allies and opposition parties as well as independent campaigners and other actors. Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform used in Hungary, and Dániel made clear that the predominance of Facebook cannot be understated. “All the other [platforms] are present, but almost all of the political activities are concentrated on Facebook. Even on the local level, local party organisations, mayors and representatives have their own Facebook pages and opposition parties do as well, sometimes even in minor towns”, he explained.
This has resulted in an explosion of political advertising on Facebook during election seasons, made easier by Hungarian law which places no campaign spending limits placed on European election or municipal (local) election campaigns. Daniel thought that such a policy is likely to have impacted the strategies used by political advertisers, especially their use of microtargeting. Microtargeting, or the intentional use of an individual’s online data to identify vulnerabilities to create tailored advertising messages targeting these individuals, was widespread throughout Hungarian elections. According to Daniel, ”all political parties are using targeting to some extent, there is an interesting category of prominent figures we call [the] government [that are] in disguise… Furthermore, we saw that opposition parties and politicians and independent campaigners were also using this, so it is not only Fidesz related.”
Unlimited spendings, microtargeting & "carpet bombing"
Dániel expected the lack of spending limits in European and local (municipal) elections to result in less microtargeting from larger, pro-government groups, whose financial backing allows them to “basically carpet bomb” Facebook with advertisements. Surprisingly, this was not the case: even the prime minister’s Facebook page used custom or lookalike audiences and other tools of targeting. Dániel told us that the HCLU observed microtargeting from important campaigners, especially in Budapest where they used microtargeting to sort individuals by residence. Dániel was also shocked by the proliferance of targeting among opposition groups and independent campaigners, because he didn’t think the opposition had the necessary financial resources to do so. In actuality, it constituted one of their main strategies because of the shrinking spaces. Also, although oppositional groups used paid advertisements in social media, the scale of spending cannot be compared with the amount spent by pro-government politicians, influencers and other similar actors.
One of the biggest challenges to the HCLU’s work was the overwhelming number of advertisers in Hungary and their questionable independence, suggesting a strategy used by political actors to boost their campaign while evading election advertising rules. Dániel explained the difficulty in determining whether or not these advertisers, who post advertisements without any overt political affiliation but with content that mirrors the messaging of a particular party, are truly independent. At the time of our interview, Dániel still had roughly 2,000 political advertisers left to analyse. But given the results so far, it can be said that microtargeting is prolific regardless of advertisers’ political or financial position.
Privacy concerns? The Hungarian DPA couldn't care less
Going forward, advocacy is not the main concern for Dániel and the HCLU with this topic. According to Dániel, “In the Hungarian context, advocacy towards the government or the parliament in politically sensitive topics is absolutely ineffective, [and] civil society organisations are completely ignored in most cases.” Dániel expressed frustration with Hungary’s Data Protection Authority, which, according to their website, is “responsible for monitoring and promoting the enforcement of two fundamental rights: the right to the protection of personal data and the right to freedom of information”. Yet when serious issues were reported regarding data protection (such as the Pegasus-case), no meaningful action was taken. “[Concerning] the governing parties, the Data Protection Authority is quite reluctant to launch any investigation. Even in the case of launching an investigation, their findings are superficial”, Dániel explained.
While advocacy is a fool’s errand in the current context, Dániel is still hopeful that once they are finished sorting through the remaining data, they will be in a position to provide legal assistance to those affected by microtargeting. “To summarise, it’s more important to put data in a context where presenting it and creating a higher level of transparency might be beneficial,” he told us.
Dániel also shared the HCLU’s plans to use the majority of the data collected for an election report, which its plans to release in late autumn. Come what may, Dániel and the HCLU will continue to monitor and analyse the ways in which Hungarian authorities exploit civil society as part the the HCLU’s overarching mission to defend human rights. You can follow their work here.
More resources
In Conversation with Political Accountability Foundation | Election Monitoring Talks
In Conversation with XNet, Spain | Election Monitoring Talks
Google's Ad Library Threatens European Election Integrity: Open Letter
EU elections unveiled: Who tries to influence your vote on Facebook?
