Democratic erosion and media in Central Europe

The bachelor thesis analyses the declining media freedom in relation to the transformation of the ownership structure in Hungary and Poland. In the theoretical part, it introduces the reader to key concepts and definitions of democratic backsliding, which places in the context of the basic historical development of media freedom in the two selected countries. In the analytical part, the thesis focuses on three variables: state advertising, ownership structure and delegitimization of journalists, according to which it compares the situation in Hungary and Poland on the basis of a paired comparison. The aim is to find out what effect the changing ownership structure has on media freedom and how this is reflected in the quality of democracy of political regimes