Other Menus

Research, projects

The departmental research hubs reflect the three main foci of research at the Department:

  • Visual Culture Research Hub (led by Andrea Kárpáti);
  • Digitalization & Media Communication Research Hub (led by Tamás Bokor);
  • Metaphor in Communication and Society Research Lab (MetCommS) (led by Réka Benczes).

The objectives of these research hubs are twofold. On the one hand, they pull together research projects at both the departmental and the doctoral level to enhance research potential; on the other hand, they contribute to making departmental research more visible to both the academia and the general public. Research projects can belong to more than one research hub (and some fall necessarily outside of the hubs).

Visual Culture Research Hub

The Visual Culture Research Hub focuses on the development and assessment of visual language use for professional and personal communication. Current research areas include:

  • visual language use of children, adolescents and young adults through process-portfolio documentation and analysis of signs, symbols, narratives, and multimedia pieces (e.g., development of media iconographies on Instagram).
  • new media and the visual communication of culture: the potentials of social media and AR/VR technologies in exhibition communication; Museum 3.0: transforming the museum experience into a more inclusive, fair, and enjoyable edutainment space.
  • fashion communication: self-expression through dressing, accessorizing and make-up of adolescents and adults: cultural (historical) analysis and current case studies of iconic “style tribes” (dress codes of generations); integration of arts and social issues in fashion branding.

Benefits of research activities: all three areas perform both fundamental and applied research. The description of “new child / adolescent art” has been changing educational concepts of how young generations enter the emerging Age of the Image. Our skills development studies influenced curricula and textbooks in public education. Exposition communication is an important area of media and marketing practice, and our results support more effective transmission of cultural messages through current (and relevant for younger audiences) technology. As fashion strives to integrate “high art” and thematise social problems, our results may be used to improve education in and practice of fashion communication.

Collaboration with research hubs at the Department of Media and Communication: our expertise and interests overlap with the Digitalisation and Media Communication hub through the study of social media, and the Communication and Cognition research hub through the interpretation of the synergies of verbal and visual communication.

Digitalisation and Media Communication Research Hub

One significant research area of the Department of Communication and Media Science can be summarised as digitalisation and media communication. This research area rests on three main pillars. The research capacity and expertise of the colleagues cover the following:

  • Digital (media) competencies, their enhancement potential and trans-generational observation in relation to disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality and deepfake.
  • Digital learning in terms of education, arts, and rhetoric, seeking for answers to effective learning, enhancement of argumentative capacity, or participation and understanding of arts.
  • Media representations and their impact on the ways of thinking, studying how media frames, taboos and conceptualisations work and how they influence the attitudes and mental frameworks of media consumers.

These pillars provide a stable framework in communication and media science both on the level of fundamental and applied research. Such studies in digitalisation and media communication can bear fruits –among others – in digital journalism, in the education of children and adults, in the communication of technological innovations, museum pedagogy, healthcare-related social communication, marketing communication of different sectors, in the creation of policy strategies, and in the research of applied behavioural psychology.

Digital Innovations for Alternative Dispute Resolution in V4 Countries and Ukraine  (DIGARD V4U)

In September 2024, SET University in partnership with 4 Visegrad countries have been awarded a grant from International Visegrad Fund to implement a project titled “Digital Innovations for Alternative Dispute Resolution in V4 Countries and Ukraine (DIGARD V4U)”, planned for 2024–2026. The project aims to develop a ready-to-apply awareness on digital innovations of the V4 and Ukrainian actors of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) via analysis of the existing practices, benchmarking necessary competencies and designing and pilot-testing of the online course in English and Ukrainian. It will support Ukraine in its judicial transformations, will share and enrich V4 experience via developing a set of research-based educational tools and materials and their wide promotion. It is a cross-sectoral effort of ADR, digital innovations and educational professionals towards the unique and up-to-date topic relevant for each partner country. The lack of understanding of best practices and availability of suitable technology impacts the scope of collaboration between ADR and IT sectors.

The implementing consortium consists of the following parties:

  1. Ukraine: Project coordinator: Science Entrepreneurship Technology University (SET) Science Entrepreneurship Technology University – Erasmus projects (teacheracademy.eu)
  2. Slovakia: European Information Society Institute, o. z. (EISI) EISI (eisionline.org)
  3. Poland: European Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ECADR) European Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution | An International Coalition to Facilitate a Fair and Bright Future for Ukraine (ecadr.com)
  4. Czech Republic: Center for Higher Education Studies (CHES) Home – Centre for Higher Education Studies (ches.vic.edu.au)
  5. Hungary: Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB)

Hungarian participants:

Tamás Bokor Ph.D., associate professor, Institute of Marketing and Communication Sciences

Zsanett Adámi-Rózsa, doctoral student, Doctoral School of Sociology and Communication

Project context:

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), as mediation, arbitration, and negotiation, has significantly progressed in V4 with technological advancements. ICT, big data, or AI brings opportunities, while the conditions in each country and sector on adoption, diffusion and advancement of digital innovation significantly vary. The ADR professionals need advancement of digital capabilities, e.g. skilled operation and exploitation of the digitized knowledge to ease/support their entrepreneurship, networking, and services for clients. Innovative formats of communication between the arbitration institution and the parties, cybersecurity, speeding up and simplification of procedural rules, use of online platforms do not come into use easily. Professionals face digital literacy, privacy concerns, and the digital divide.

Visegrad Fund

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.

Metaphor in Communication and Society Research Lab (MetCommS)

Metaphors shape the way we see the world – and the way we communicate about it. The Metaphor in Communication and Society Research Lab (MetCommS) explores how metaphor use reflects, reinforces, and challenges social perceptions across diverse contexts. Our applied research focuses on real-world issues, including health communication, media narratives and political discourse. We aim to contribute to more inclusive, effective, and socially aware communication practices by uncovering the subtle ways language and imagery influence public understanding.

The Corvinus Metaphor Workshop, now part of the MetCommS Research Lab, is a student-run research incubator dedicated to applied metaphor research. As a student-to-student platform, it allows students to explore, develop, and refine their research ideas with real-world relevance. Through initiatives like the thesis pitch competition, we promote the study of metaphor in communication and society, encouraging students to engage with the field in creative and impactful ways.

MetCommS Team

Réka Benczes received her PhD in English Linguistics from Eötvös Loránd University in 2005, under the supervision of Zoltán Kövecses. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at Corvinus University of Budapest and Affiliate Research Fellow at Monash University, Melbourne. Her main research interests include cognitive semantics, lexical creativity and applied metaphor research. Her most recent edited volume (with Zoltán Kövecses and Veronika Szelid) is Metaphors of anger across Languages: Universality and Variation (2025, De Gruyter Mouton). More information at ORCID, Google Scholar and Research Gate. 

Lilla Petronella Szabó received her PhD in Communication Science from Corvinus University of Budapest, under the supervision of Réka Benczes. She is currently Assistant Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her work explores the intersection of cognitive linguistics and political communication, focusing on metaphor and metonymy and their influence on shaping public discourse. She has also investigated political personalization in political rhetoric. Her findings have been featured in Metaphor and Symbol, Journal of Language and Politics, and Text & Talk. Further details on her work can be found at ResearchGate, ORCID, Google Scholar, and BlueSky. 

Alexandra Nagy-Béni received her PhD in Communication Science from Corvinus University of Budapest in 2024, under the supervision of Réka Benczes. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Media Science at Corvinus University. Her main research area is the visual representation of violence in online news, primarily from the perspective of visual metonymic framing. In a broader sense, she deals with media representations, visual communication and the use of cognitive linguistic tools in media research. More information at ORCID, Google Scholar and Research Gate. 

Utku Bozdağ is a PhD Candidate in the Communication Science Doctoral Program at Corvinus University of Budapest. His research interest includes data-driven political communication, computational social sciences, especially focusing on populist political communication styles and political metaphors. Multiple scholarly publications have featured his work, among them the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Communication Reports and the East European Journal of Society and Politics. More information at ORCID and Google Scholar. 

Petra Bialkó-Marol is a PhD Student in the Communication Science Doctoral Program at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her research focuses on improving doctor-patient communication in sensitive areas of healthcare. She examines the role of metaphors in shaping health discourse, with a particular emphasis on infertility, to explore how they can facilitate more effective and empathetic communication. More information at ORCID and ResearchGate. 

Kundyz Mukhangali is a PhD Student in the Communication Science Doctoral Program at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her main field of study is political communication, with a particular interest in Central Asian media. Her current research focuses on the metaphorical language of online media in international relations, specifically in the context of Kazakhstan-Russia relations. More information can be found at Research Gate and ORCID.   

Dóra Eszter Varga is a PhD Student in the Communication Science Doctoral Program at the Corvinus University of Budapest. Her research interests encompass the gender-based visual self-representation of politicians and the strategic utilization of metaphors in political marketing communication. In a broader context, her current work investigates how visual and linguistic persuasive tools can influence public perception within the political sphere. Additional information is available on Research Gate and ORCID. 

MetCommS Publications 

Benczes, R., Benczes, I., Ságvári, B., & Szabó, L. P. (2024). When life is no longer a journey: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the metaphorical conceptualization of life among Hungarian adults–a representative survey. Cognitive Linguistics, 35(1), 143-165. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2023-0050  

Benczes, R. & Béni, A. (2023). Támasz vagy tündérmese? A magyarországi idősgondozó intézmények elnevezési és logóhasználati gyakorlatai. In Kovács, L. (Szerk.) Márkanevek: marketing és nyelvészet határán (pp.111-125). Budapest: Tinta Kiadó.  

Benczes, R., & Kovács, G. (2022). Palatal is for happiness, plosive is for sadness: evidence for stochastic relationships between phoneme classes and sentiment polarity in Hungarian. Language and Cognition, 14(4), 672-691. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2022.23  

Benczes, R., & Ságvári, B. (2022). Migrants are not welcome: Metaphorical framing of fled people in Hungarian online media, 2015–2018. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(3), 413-434. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20042.ben  

Bozdağ, U. (2024). Framing displaced persons: An analysis of Turkish media’s use of migration metaphors on Twitter. Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 10(1). 117-136. https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v10i1.1189  

Bozdağ, U., Tóth, T., & Demeter, M. (2024). When articulating populist dichotomies is paramount: Exploring the effects of explicit and implicit populist styles on user engagement in Turkish election tweets. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 102(1) 214-246. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990241284579  

Kövecses, Z., Benczes, R., Rommel, A., & Szelid, V. (2024). Universality versus variation in the conceptualization of anger. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 28(1), 55-79. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-34834  

Kövecses, Z., Benczes, R., & Szelid, V. (Eds.). (2025). Metaphors of anger across Languages: Universality and Variation. De Gruyter Mouton. 

Nagy-Béni, A. (2024). Still the Distant, Exotic Other? The Cultural Conceptualization of Africa in Hungarian Online News. In Cultural Linguistics and the Social World (pp. 57-71). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-6192-0_4  

Szabó, G., Szilágyi, S., & Szabó, L. P. (2024). Morality Combinations: Moral Language in the News Media Coverage of the Ukrainian War at the Time of the 2022 Hungarian Parliamentary Election Campaign. In Managing Moral Emotions in Divided Politics: Lessons from Hungary’s 2022 General Election Campaigns (pp. 171-196). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67023-7_8  

Szabó, L. P. (2024). Is This Us? The Cultural Conceptualization of Individualization in American Political Speeches. In Cultural Linguistics and the Social World (pp. 93-111). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-6192-0_6  

Szabó, L. P., Benczes, R., Burridge, K., Allan, K., & Lindgren, M. (2025). “Don’t worry, be a senior?” The metaphorical labelling of late-life depression in Australian news media. Text & Talk, (0).  https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0200  

Szabó, L. P., & Szabó, G. (2022). Attack of the critics: Metaphorical delegitimisation in Viktor Orbán’s discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(2), 255-276. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21068.sza  

Tóth, T., Demeter, M., Háló, G., Bozdag, U., & Bartóki-Gönczy, B. (2025). Time Matters: What Factors Affect Submission-To-Acceptance Time in the Journal of Communication? Communication Reports, 38(1), 13-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/08934215.2024.2424544  

Tóth, T., Demeter, M., Szabó, L. P., & Török, B. (2024). Populist Cues in Media Framing: Exploring How Populism by the Media Emerges in Western News Coverage of Protests. KOME: An International Journal Of Pure Communication Inquiry, 12(1). 141-162. https://doi.org/10.17646/kome.of.13  

Copied to clipboard
×