Framing the largest recent Romanian protests: a content analysis of European online newspapers
Framing the largest recent Romanian protests: a content analysis of European online newspapers

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of 2017 massive protests took place on the streets of the biggest cities in Romania, unprecedented in the postcommunist history of the country. They were caused by a decree passed by the government, which was meant to decriminalize certain offences, including politicians’ abuse of office. The political situation and the protests came to the attention of the international press, who covered the story extensively. In this study, we analyze the way in which news media framed the largest Romanian protests since the fall of communism, to see how these events were depicted especially in other European countries, EU member states, in an attempt to understand the emergence and development of public attitudes towards Romanian politics. Our analysis included the twenty most read European online newspapers and the five most read Romanian newspapers, during the period of the protests, January 18th – March 5th 2017. We investigated the existence of five general news frames identified in specialized literature on media framing and framing effects (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000): attribution of responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences, and morality. Findings show that the Western European press framed the events predominantly from a human interest perspective, while the Romanian press depicted them in a more conflictual way. The use of news frames also varied significantly by type of outlet, with tabloid newspapers focusing more on the human interest frame, while the attribution of responsibility and the conflict frames were more present in quality newspapers.

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