Political crisis vs. media crisis: specifics of the genesis of the Hungarian press of the Habsburg period in the 18th century

The early period of the Hungarian press - from the appearance of the first Hungarian newspaper “Mercurius Hungaricus” in 1703, associated with the anti-Habsburg liberation war led by Ferenc Rakosi II, to the beginning of the first Hungarian-language newspaper in 1780, - is studied. The peculiarity of this period is that the periodicals were published in Latin and German. The relevance of the study lies in analysing the historical experience of the genesis of the media in the political system of a multinational state, considering the specifics of the formation of the national press, which had its own political viewpoint, in the conditions of Hungary's subordinate position in the Habsburg monarchy, which initially laid down the crisis aspects of its independent development. The situation in European periodicals and the historical and political contexts of the Habsburg monarchy in the 18th century, in the face of which the Hungarian press was born in Latin and later in German, is considered. In the current realities of the global world and the digital society, it seems appropriate to refer also to the historical experience of counterpropaganda, which can be observed in the opposition of the Hungarian newspaper “Mercurius Veridicus ex Hungaria” to the publication of the monarch's court - the Viennese “Wienerisches Diarium”, and to analyse the information warfare in the Habsburg monarchy.