Sharing political nostalgia in Hungary is yearning for the past successful on social media?

Retrospective rhetoric is considered to be one of the most influential political master frames used in response to the multiple crises in Europe. However, there are significant knowledge gaps in this area. First, there is no comprehensive analytical tool for studying the display of nostalgia in politics. Second, there is limited knowledge regarding the role of social media in disseminating nostalgic narratives. Third, there is a lack of data on citizens' responses to nostalgia during election campaigns. This article addresses these gaps by identifying the patterns of political nostalgia in the Facebook communications of the Hungarian political forces running for seats in the 2019 European parliamentary election. In addition to a qualitative content analysis of the nostalgic posts, the paper investigates their reception by the social media users who reacted to the messages. The data was gathered during the seven-week official campaign period until the election on May 26. The study confirms that right-wing, nationalist politicians expressed nostalgia more often than left-leaning leaders, and the analysis also shows that nostalgic messages are not very efficient in terms of user engagement and the numbers of emoji responses. Our results therefore mitigate the concerns about the influence of political nostalgia in Hungary.