Women’s digital grassroots in Hungary: new possibilities and limitations under illiberal rule

This article examines Hungary’s digital grassroots feminist media landscape, which emerged in the early 2010s and has since sustained public platforms for women, amplifying their voices against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile illiberal government. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted in early 2025 with content creators purposefully sampled from feminist online platforms, the article maps this emerging digital ecosystem, focusing on how these spaces are used by women, and on their impacts (or the lack thereof) on the Hungarian illiberal government (2010-2026). The findings indicate that content creators primarily use these platforms for activities that are not overtly political, such as education, the public articulation of women’s lived experiences, and the accumulation and dissemination of expert knowledge, while only occasionally engaging in conventional political action, consistent with prior research on civil society in repressive political contexts. Interviewees justified this orientation toward ostensibly non-political practices by citing structural constraints on effective feminist action under the illiberal regime. Nevertheless, these practices can be interpreted as constituting a foundational cultural phase that diffuses new values and gradually reshapes public perceptions, thereby contributing to the broader cultural groundwork necessary for subsequent forms of formal political action.