Populáris Geopolitika és Média Kutatócsoport

Popular Geopolitics and Media Research Group

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Established in 2026, the Popular Geopolitics and Media Research Group fills a gap in Hungarian social science. Until now, little attention has been paid in Hungary to the role popular culture (films, series, music, memes and other media content) plays in shaping geopolitical thinking and public perceptions of international relations. International research increasingly recognises that geopolitical imaginaries appear not only in policy analyses and official discourse but are also reproduced as part of everyday cultural consumption. With this approach, the research group aims to contribute to the methodological and thematic renewal of various disciplines (communication and media studies, political science, international relations, geography, etc.), and offers a new perspective for interpreting geopolitical issues on a critical, cultural and media studies basis. In doing so, we also wish to encourage the student and research community to approach contemporary political phenomena in an interdisciplinary way.

The aim of the Popular Geopolitics and Media Research Group is to establish and run an internationally recognised research centre at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Pécs, within the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the Institute of Social and Media Studies. The centre will take an interdisciplinary approach to examining how geopolitical imaginaries and narratives appear in popular culture, as well as their social, political and identity-shaping effects, primarily in Hungary and the surrounding region.

The research covers the following topics:

• Geopolitical narratives in films and series (representations of nations, the construction of enemy images, war discourses in Hollywood and the international film industry);
• Memes and social media in geopolitical discourse (the role of visuality in interpreting international events);
• The geopolitics of sporting events (national identity, soft power, e.g. the Olympics and world championships);
• The geopolitics of music (global conflicts, migration and cultural resistance);
• The geopolitics of maps (map representations in popular media and their impact on spatial and political orientation);
• Popular geopolitical analysis of global crises and international conflicts;
• Political propaganda in the 21st century (the role of influencers, social media and visual culture);
• Popular geopolitics and identity politics in Central and Eastern Europe (regional characteristics, national narratives, self-images);
• Geopolitical analysis of the symbolic use of space, sites of memory and national identity;
• The geopolitics of comics (superheroes, geographical and cultural boundaries, war narratives, enemy images);
• The geopolitics of fashion (identity, national belonging, cultural representation);
• The geopolitics of gastronomy.

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https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/author/10054042

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Fülöp Botond Máté 
PhD-hallgató, PTE TTK, Földrajzi és Földtudományi Intézet,

Politikai Földrajzi, Fejlődési és Regionális Tanulmányok Tanszéke

kutatási téma: sport geopolitikája – futball és identitás Spanyolországban
botondmatef@gmail.com

 

Moró Dávid Róbert 

PhD-hallgató, PTE TTK, Földrajzi és Földtudományi Intézet, Politikai Földrajzi, Fejlődési és Regionális Tanulmányok Tanszéke

kutatási téma: magyar identitás a Vajdaságban,

morodavid98@gmail.com

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