Václav Štětka and Sabina Mihelj received the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association (Information Technology & Politics Section) for their joint monograph on the Illiberal Public Sphere: Media in Polarized Societies, published open access by Palgrave in 2024.
The book provides the first systematic analysis of the role of the media in the rise of illiberalism, based on an original theoretical framework and extensive empirical research in Eastern Europe – a region that serves as a key battleground in the global advance of illiberalism. Although the growing influence of illiberal politics and cultural values attracted significant scholarly attention, the factors that contribute to it remain poorly understood, and the communication perspective on illiberalism is particularly underdeveloped. In their book, Václav and Sabina address this gap by introducing the concept of the illiberal public sphere, identifying the key stages in its development, and explaining what makes illiberalism distinct from related phenomena such as populism. Their analysis reveals how and why the changing communication environment facilitates selective exposure to ideologically and politically homogeneous sources, fosters changes in normative assumptions that guide media trust, increases vulnerability to disinformation, and goes hand in hand with growing hostility to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. The findings challenge widespread assumptions about digital platforms as key channels of illiberalism and suggest that their role shifts as the illiberal sphere progresses. The prize, awarded by a leading international association of political scientists, marks the recognition of the relevance of Václav and Sabina’s work to contemporary developments in political communication globally. Sabina and Vaclav’s current work, conducted partly in the framework of the AHRC (Mis)Translating Deceit Project and partly under the auspices of the ESRC Polarities Network, seeks to bring their work on the illiberal public sphere into conversation with ongoing debates on disinformation, drawing on qualitative and quantitative audience research in Poland, Romania, Serbia, and the UK.