The world of work in Hungarian television:

The portrayal of occupations in Hungarian fiction series

Abstract

The main role of the media is to be an information source – such as a window on the world – which forms people’s knowledge, values and attitudes. Several studies have shown that the impact of television during socialisation is unquestionable, and it continues to shape people’s perceptions later on too. If the portrayal of the labour force on television is distorted, it can not only distort in the audience’s image of the world but also alter their perceptions of their own lives and make them dissatisfied with their own social status. A great amount of foreign research has been conducted on this topic, but no such research has yet been done in Hungary. The current study examines how Hungarian fiction series portray the world of work by quantitative content analysis of all series of which the premiere was broadcast between 2015 and 2019 in the prime-time slot and gave sufficient opportunity for discovering portrayals of occupational roles. The results show that the world presented on television is more masculine and glamorous, with certain occupations significantly overrepresented, while some other occupations are neglected compared to the real world. The portrayal of characters also shows a distorted picture of society in the television world.