DECODING IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIAN MASS MEDIA: A CASE STUDY
DECODING IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIAN MASS MEDIA: A CASE STUDY

Summary/Abstract: The case study presented in this paper refers to the first attempt of the former king of Romania, Mihai I, to visit the country, in December 1990. This can be considered a significant moment in the post-communist period of Romania, as it gave the direction of the official relations between the political leaders of the country and the royal institution for several years. The main research question was how the facts were presented by media, as compared to the historical perspective acquired over the years on the same facts. The research method (critical discourse analysis) is appropriate for small dimension data sets and was successfully used in media studies research to make the qualitative analysis of mediated discourse. In the present case study, several media articles related to this event were selected for textual, contextual and time dimension analysis, according to the research methodology. The representations and framing of news, as decoded by the critical discourse analysis, offer significant information about the ideological influences behind the media discourse. The case study is presented within the background offered by scientific literature on Romanian post-communist media landscape. This paper is a first step in the attempt to make a sociological investigation regarding the role played by Romanian mass media in the post-communist period.

• Details
• Contents