Staff profile

Dr Fanni Toth is a Career Development Fellow in Comparative Politics at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. Fanni's research lies in the fields of comparative and European politics, political communication, and public administration. Her primary interests include studying democratic backsliding and autocratization, populist authoritarianism, and political attitudes, with a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe.

Fanni received a PhD in International Relations from the University of Nottingham in 2018. Her thesis examined the transformative power of the European Union on political attitudes in post-communist Europe, considering the impact on support for democracy and the EU. The thesis was awarded the British Political Studies Association’s Lord Bryce Prize for best dissertation in comparative politics.

Fanni has since worked on several major international projects, including the Illiberal Turn, POPBACK, and PANCOPOP. Currently, she contributes to the Cost Action Project CoREx, a pan-European network of researchers studying the relationships of executive politicians, top civil servants, and ministerial advisers (‘the executive triangle’) from an internationally comparative perspective.

Journal Article

• Çelik, B., Radl, M., Ribac, M., Toth, F., & Turnšek, T. (online). The Structural and Temporal Curb of Populism: A Cross-Country Analysis of Authoritarian Populist Influences on Journalism. Journalism Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2024.2407948
• Štětka, V., Brandao, F., Mihelj, S., Tóth, F., Hallin, D., Rothberg, D., Ferracioli, P., & Klimkiewicz, B. (online). Have people ‘had enough of experts’? The impact of populism and pandemic misinformation on institutional trust in comparative perspective. Information, Communication and Society, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2024.2413121
• Schnyder, G., Radl, M., Toth, F., Kucukuzun, M., Turnšek, T., Çelik, B., & Pajnik, M. (2024). Theorizing and mapping media ownership networks in authoritarian-populist contexts: a comparative analysis of Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Turkey. Media, Culture and Society, 46(1), 38-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231179366
• Mihelj, S., Kondor, K., Štětka, V., & Tóth, F. (2023). The ambivalences of visibility: News consumption and public attitudes to same-sex relationships in the context of illiberalism. European Journal of Communication, 38(6), 571-590. https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231221150347
• Toth, F., Mihelj, S., Štětka, V., & Kondor, K. (2023). A Media Repertoires Approach to Selective Exposure: News Consumption and Political Polarization in Eastern Europe. International Journal of Press/Politics, 28(4), 884-908. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211072552
• Kondor, K., Mihelj, S., Štětka, V., & Tóth, F. (2022). News consumption and immigration attitudes: a mixed methods approach. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(17), 4129-4148. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2022.2054786
• Van Aelst, P., Toth, F., Castro, L., Štětka, V., Vreese, C. D., Aalberg, T., Cardenal, A. S., Corbu, N., Esser, F., Hopmann, D. N., Koc-Michalska, K., Matthes, J., Schemer, C., Sheafer, T., Splendore, S., Stanyer, J., Stępińska, A., Strömbäck, J., & Theocharis, Y. (2021). Does a Crisis Change News Habits? A Comparative Study of the Effects of COVID-19 on News Media Use in 17 European Countries. Digital Journalism, 9(9), 1208-1238. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1943481
• Štětka, V., Mihelj, S., & Tóth, F. (2021). The Impact of News Consumption on Anti-immigration Attitudes and Populist Party Support in a Changing Media Ecology. Political Communication, 38(5), 539-560. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1820647
• Meyer-Sahling, J.-H., & Toth, F. (2020). Governing Illiberal Democracies: Democratic Backsliding and the Political Appointment of Top Officials in Hungary. The NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy, 13(2), 93-113. https://doi.org/10.2478/nispa-2020-0016
• Nanou, K., Zapryanova, G., & Toth, F. (2017). An ever-closer union? Measuring the expansion and ideological content of European Union policy-making through an expert survey. European Union Politics, 18(4), 678-693. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116517721657