Event: Sites of Hostility and Resistance: Navigating the Digital LGBTQ+ Public Sphere in Hungary

Sites of Hostility and Resistance: Navigating the Digital LGBTQ+ Public Sphere in Hungary

Date: 5th May 2026
Time: 5pm-7.30pm (UK time)
Registration: This event is FREE to attend, but registration is essential.
To book your place, please email: a.zsubori@lboro.ac.uk

About the event:

You are warmly invited to join us for an upcoming webinar featuring Mariann Filó (activist, psychologist & Budapest Pride organiser), Ádám András Kanicsár (activist, journalist & social media expert), and Joci Márton (Roma LGBTQ+ activist) on Hungarian LGBTQ+ citizens’ use of social media. This event is chaired by Dr Anna Zsubori and draws on research conducted during her British Academy-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Loughborough University.

Various digital media platforms in illiberal contexts function as a complex double-edged sword. In Hungary, they often act as additional channels for illiberal attitudes, amplifying state-sponsored negative sentiments. Yet, these same spaces remain vital for the expression of liberal views and resistance. This session explores this tension, focusing on how social media spaces have become sites of both systemic hostility and profound resistance for LGBTQ+ communities in Hungary.

We will be joined by Hungarian guest speakers who will discuss the lived reality of navigating this digital environment. The discussion will cover the online and offline consequences of the regime’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, as well as the state-encouraged harassment. Beyond victimisation, our speakers will highlight the diverse strategies of resistance, exploring how marginalised groups utilise digital media to build counter-narratives, maintain community safety, and challenge the illiberal status quo.

The session features a panel of individuals at the forefront of this struggle, including activists, journalists, and individuals with direct lived experience of digital victimisation. By bringing together those who document these harms and those who experience them, this webinar aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how political communication in an illiberal regime translates into real-world harm, and how resistance persists in the face of structural exclusion.

This webinar will be of interest to academics across communication, digital media, gender and LGBTQ+ studies, human rights, and political science, as well as non-academic audiences interested in the lived realities of LGBTQ+ minorities and their digital experiences.

The event is supported by the British Academy and Loughborough University.