The Debate on Same Sex Marriages in the Romanian Media. Analyzing the Role of Investigative Journalism as an Agent of Change
The Debate on Same Sex Marriages in the Romanian Media. Analyzing the Role of Investigative Journalism as an Agent of Change

Summary/Abstract: The paper intends to study and understand the role of the Romanian print media investigations regarding the marriages between people of the same- sex. For more than two years, this subject has polarized the Romanian society, from a social, political, cultural, and identity point of view. This is a society that recently has been freed from communism, but which still remains deeply patriarchal, traditional, and conservative, in spite of all efforts directed towards a gender resemantization. The present study seeks to scrutinize, through a content analysis of the texts published in two of the longest running daily newspapers of general-interest, România liberă and Adevărul. In particular, the analysis presents the extent to which the topic of same-sex marriages generates mostly opinion articles, that provide a limited perspective on this subject of debate and which, in turn, attract personal, under-researched, and biased comments. Moreover, the study also takes into account the extent to which the present topic represents the subject of mass-media investigations. Journalistic investigations, unlike their opinion counterparts, can better contribute to the role of agent of social change that the media must assume, in light not only of their journalistic genre based on thorough research, but also of the multidimensional approaches that can be employed on the subject.

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