The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
Antiamericanism in V4 Countries
In the V4 countries, anti-Americanism has common historical roots in the communist period, when state propaganda systematically framed the United States and the West as ideological enemies, but it also has country-specific forms shaped by national identities, cultural narratives and different senses of belonging either to “the West” or to “the East”, Slavic unity and Russia. Today, anti-American attitudes and anti-Western narratives are still visible in public discourse, disinformation ecosystems and party politics across the V4. However, they differ significantly between countries in terms of their sources, intensity and framing. These narratives are influenced by changes of governments and party competition, yet there is little systematic comparative research on which political currents mobilize anti-Americanism, how they embed it in broader disinformation narratives, and what impact this has on public opinion and foreign policy decision-making in the V4 region.
To address this issue, there is a need for systematic, comparative analysis of how anti‑American and broader anti‑Western narratives are constructed, reused and adapted in V4 countries, which actors promote them and how they are embedded in disinformation and political discourse. The project responds by bringing together a V4 research consortium that qualitatively maps historical legacies, political and media narratives and their links to existing data on public opinion and foreign policy debates. It focuses on theoretical and qualitative research and on comparative interpretation of already available survey and polling results, rather than producing new quantitative datasets. Senior researchers will contribute to a joint V4 volume and peer‑reviewed articles, while students will prepare supervised case studies and present them at a V4 summer school functioning as a student research conference. Through online publications, media outputs and public events, the project will make these findings accessible to wider audiences and help strengthen critical reflection and media literacy regarding anti‑Western narratives in the V4 region. In addition to academic analyses, the project explicitly works on building media and information literacy among students and younger researchers. By engaging them in supervised research on disinformation narratives, training them in qualitative analysis of media and social media content and involving them in public‑facing outputs, the project strengthens their ability to critically assess and counter biased reporting, disinformation and propaganda.
The project brings together an independent expert NGO and academic partners from all four V4 countries to analyse anti‑American and broader anti‑Western narratives within a single comparative framework. It combines joint research with structured training for students and young researchers and with public‑facing outputs in national languages, which is still rare in this field. The involvement of a security‑oriented NGO ensures that the findings are not only academically relevant, but can also be translated into policy and security practice through policy papers, commentaries and cooperation with expert communities. By linking scholarly publications, a V4 summer school, student proceedings and a final conference, the project creates a long‑term V4 platform that connects research, teaching and practical responses to disinformation and hostile narratives.
By bringing together researchers and students from Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Czechia, the project will create a V4 platform for joint research, teaching and discussion on anti-Western narratives, disinformation and their impact on public opinion and foreign policy. The joint scholarly volume, V4 summer school and international conference in Košice will all be designed to highlight regional similarities and differences, strengthen V4 networks of experts and young researchers, and produce outputs that are relevant and accessible across the whole region, not only in a single national context. Understanding how anti-American and anti-Western narratives work in each V4 country is also closely linked to questions of identity and societal resilience. By comparing these narratives and their historical and cultural roots across the region, the project helps V4 societies better understand their own identities and the ways in which they are targeted by disinformation and hybrid threats. This comparative perspective is essential for strengthening critical reflection and resilience in the V4 region; it cannot be achieved by looking at only one national case in isolation.
Partners
Expected events and outputs
- Expert roundtable on research design and common analytical framework (Event—Private), Prague, CZ
- V4 Summer School on Disinformation, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (Event—), Košice, SK
- Final International Conference (Event—), Košice, SK
- V4 student proceedings
- Scientific articles on anti‑American narratives in the V4 countries
- Joint V4 Scholarly Volume “Antiamericanism in V4 Countries”
- Promotion of project results (online and media outreach)