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Framing European Issues in Romanian Media
Nicoleta Corbu
nicoleta.corbu@comunicare.ro
Mădălina Boţan
madalina.botan@comunicare.ro
Bârgăoanu, Alina
alina.bargaoanu@comunicare.ro
Elena Negrea
elena.negrea@comunicare.ro
Center for Research in Communication, National School of Political Studies and Public
Administration
Address: 6 Povernei St., District 1, 010641, Bucharest, Romania
Telephone: +40.745.790.684
Fax: +40.213.122.535
Biographical statements:
Dr. Nicoleta Corbu is the Executive Director of the Center for Research in
Communication, senior lecturer at the College of Communication and Public Relations
(NSPAS), Bucharest, Romania. She teaches two courses, at undergraduate and master
levels: History of Communication Studies and Mass Media and Society. Dr. Corbu is the
author of three books (Telepresidents. A Radiography of a Presidential Campaign (coauthor), History of Communication Studies (co-author) and Global Brands. A CrossCultural Perspective), and of many academic studies and articles. Her academic interests
are related to mass communication theories (with a focus on agenda-setting theory).
Dr. Mădălina Boţan is Assistant professor at the College of Communication and Public
Relations (NSPSPA) and researcher in the Center for Research in Communication,
Bucharest, Romania. She teaches courses of communication theories and media studies.
She is co-author of one book, Telepresidents. A Radiography of a Presidential
Campaign, and author of many scientific studies and articles. Her research interests are
political communication and media studies.
Dr. Alina Bârgăoanu is professor at the College of Communication and Public Relations
(NSPSPA) and researcher in the Center for Research in Communication, Bucharest,
Romania. She teaches courses on EU’s regional and cohesion policy, Mass media and
society, and on EU communication policy. She is also a member of the Centre for
Research in Communication. Her main research interests include management of EU-
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funded projects, media framing of EU-related issues, and Europeanisation of national
public spheres.
Dr. Elena Negrea is an Assistant Professor at the College of Communication and Public
Relations, National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
(Romania), where she delivers seminars on EU’s regional and cohesion policy and on EU
communication. She has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Bucharest, with a
thesis on the pragmatics of irony. As a member of the Centre for Research in
Communication, her research work focuses mainly on qualitative analysis of media
discourse on Europeanisation, and on figurative language in political communication
(with a particular interest in metaphor and irony).
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Abstract: EU-related issues in news have long been studied during the last decades. A lot
of research has been done on framing European affairs. However, little is still known
about EU representations in media news of EU recent member states, such as Romania.
The present study focuses on European issues framing in TV and online newscasts in
Romania; we content analyzed the main TV and online newscasts immediately after the
German and French interior Ministers notified the EU Justice and Home Affairs
Commissioner about their proposal to postpone Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the
Schengen area. Our aim was to identify how media present an important event, such as
the adhesion to the Schengen area of a newly integrated country. At the same time, we
corroborated frames with the presence of EU-level versus domestic political actors.
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Framing European Issues in Romanian Media
Introduction
Political, social, and mostly economic changes in the last few years have changed
the way national media presents EU related news stories. In the general context of the
economic downturn, internal problems of the European Union have generated a constant
decrease of trust and enthusiasm towards the European project, especially in the new
member states.
There is no much doubt nowadays about major inequities and differences among
member states within the European Union concerning life standards, economic and social
backgrounds, as well as media practices in general. Over the last two decades, a lot of
academic research has focused on how media in various European countries
reflects/constructs European news, from different points of view. A lot of research has
been dedicated to the visibility and prominence of European topics in the media, their
cognitive effects (framing) and impact on the citizens’ agenda (de Vreese, 2003; de
Vreese, Banducci, Semetko & Boomgaarden, 2006). Other important topics of research
have been the creation of a monolithic European public sphere (Koopmans & Statham,
2010), the communicative and democratic deficit of the EU (Fossum & Schlesinger,
2007) and the lack of a common policy strategy for the member states (Trenz, 2004).
Nevertheless little is still known about European topics in media in the newly integrated
countries, such as Romania.
The way media present European local events somewhat less prominent than
European elections has never been empirically investigated before in newly integrated
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countries. We focus on such an important local event, Romania’s adhesion to the
Schengen Area, in order to analyze and understand media representations of European
topics during periods of a rather important general interest in the EU context. Our
investigation aims at showing if and how the main TV channels in Romania covered what
was called “the Schengen case”, that is the media debates about Romania’s accession to
the Schengen Area of free movement, immediately after the German and French interior
Ministers notified the EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner about their proposal to
postpone Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen Area (in December 2010).
Following the same logic, we were interested in finding if and how online news flows
have portrayed the event during the same period of time, being aware that recent research
shows that Internet news are the second option for Romanians in terms of news sources
of information at national level (Bârgăoanu, 2011).
Media news practices
From a theoretical point of view, we can argue about important differences
regarding how media presents important European events in newly integrated countries
from the Eastern Europe. On the one hand, recent history has marked the social and
political life of these countries in the last decades, after the fall of communism, showing
more than once the fragility of the newly born democracies in the East Europe. On the
other hand, the rather short history of the free press and the economic logic of private
broadcast networks have had a major impact on the journalistic practices.
Rather or not related to European topics, two important dimensions are generally
discussed in regards to media news practices: the need for objectivity, and the
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newsworthiness. Both of them are nowadays questioned especially in relation to what
could be considered “quality news”. Researchers found most of the time indirect ways of
defining what quality news is; in other words definitions focus on highlighting attributes
of good news (Stone & Grusin, 1984), news of the moral life (Slattery, 1994), or proper
journalism (Grabe, Zhou & Barnett, 2001). In Romania, media news practices were
rarely investigated and empirically analyzed. From a theoretical perspective, Romanian
authors emphasize the focus of Romanian newscasts on pseudo-events (Drăgan, 2008),
media discourse in general (Beciu, 2009), the sensationalist component of TV news
(Lazăr, 2008, Zeca-Buzura, 2009), and the ambivalent relationship between journalists
and politicians in the last years (Coman, 2009).
As a general context, in Romania, the last two years have shown a drastic political
polarization of the main TV channels, especially during political campaigns (see Corbu &
Boţan, 2011), never experienced before to this extent after 1989. Media in general, and
particularly television are presently dominated by the logic of sensationalism and
conflict, especially in regards to the Romanian political life (Boţan & Corbu, 2010).
As far as European news in national media is concerned, data about Romanian
media coverage is still largely missing, with rare exceptions. We argue that Romanian
media coverage of European events differ to some extent from Western European media
coverage, giving the media news practices specific to the new Eastern democracies, as
well as the profoundly different experience of the relationship of the newly integrated
countries with the European Union and the popular perceptions about EU in general. We
support our first presuppositions on figures revealed by Eurobarometers since 2007.
Romania has experienced in the last four years (since its integration in the EU) moderate
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but constant drops of trust in the EU (according to the Eurobarometers). However, the
lowest percentage measuring Romanians’ trust in the EU (54% in fall 2010) outruns the
general European countries mean with more than 10%. There is a general decreasing
trend which shows a moderate alignment to the general public opinion in older member
states, but Romanians are still rather enthusiasts about the EU, often viewed as either a
“savior” or a “punisher”.
In this context, our analysis seeks for empirical data to support or contradict the
general perceptions about different patterns of representations of EU news in Eastern
European countries, in comparison to old member states.
News Framing
In an already classic piece of research, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw
(1972) have shown that there is a strong correlation between the most prominent issues in
media and the most important issues in voters’ minds.
Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder (1987) continued the classical studies
dedicated to agenda-setting research, focusing on the “how to think about” dimension.
They analyzed how people crystallize political opinions through television news. They
showed that by focusing on certain issues more than on others, the media set the priorities
of the viewers as well. Shanto Iyengar (1987; 1991; 1996; 1998) and his colleagues
(Iyengar & Behr, 1985; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Iyengar, Norpoth & Hahn, 2004;
Iyengar, Peters & Kinder, 1982) have long studied empirical agenda setting effects, as
well as framing and priming effects, stating that TV news significantly influence public
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opinion, especially during election campaigns. Their findings have been equally
replicated and contested by fellow researchers.
The framing effects of news have been studied in depth over the last decades. The
concept refers to a way of understanding the systematic and often predetermined
organization of news in typologies that facilitate selection, focus, and news presentation
following certain patterns.
Frames are a central idea or a storyline, which gives meaning (Gamson,
Modigliani, 1987: 143), and organize the world for journalists on the one hand and for
their readers on the other hand (Gitlin, 1980: 7). Considered by Todd Gitlin (1980) a way
of organizing the world “both for journalists who report it and, in some important degree,
for us who rely on their reports”, media frames are defined as “persistent patterns of
cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by
which symbol-handlers routinely organize, whether verbal or visual.” (Gitlin, 1980: 7).
Research dedicated to media frames relies on the premise that TV news are not neutral,
they do not only present facts, but interpretations of facts as well.
The frames theory, as proposed by Erving Goffman in 1974, has inspired the
framing effect model, which was developed as a continuation of the classical agenda
setting effect. One has to distinguish between the agenda setting effect (selective setting
of public attention) and the framing effect. A frame serves to organize experience by
stratifying reality.
Even though framing has long been considered a fertile theoretical contribution, it
still lacks a conceptual unity. Robert Entman (1993) offers one of the most consistent
definitions of frames. He considers that the frames theory is a “fractured” paradigm,
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which he tries to clarify. Discussing several studies, researches, and definitions, Entman
concludes that to frame is “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them
more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem
definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for
the item described” (Entman, 1993: 52). From Entman’s point of view the most important
aspect is related to the fact that frames usually offer a diagnostic, an evaluation, or a
prescription of a situation.
While the founding figures of the agenda-setting theory, Maxwell McCombs,
Donald Shaw and David Weaver (2007), talk about a second level agenda constructed
through prominent characteristics of media materials and the way they are interpreted by
the public, other authors (Scheufele, 2000; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007) consider that
such an interpretive theoretic framework does not incorporate the whole complexity of
framing effects. The academic literature remains fragmented regarding this matter.
Looking at the topic of European integration and, more broadly, European affairs,
previous research is very scattered. One of the most representative studies dedicated to
the media coverage of European issues (de Vreese, 2003a) was focused on generic
frames, investigating whether media coverage of EU has become more critical or is
predominantly framed in a conflict context in recent years. EU and European issues are
much more likely to hit the news when presented as a political system with conflict,
disagreement and tension (de Vreese, 2003b). This does not necessarily have a negative
impact since some researchers suggest that the audience of conflict-framed news often
reacts in a more reflexive manner to the information, and develops a fairly balanced point
of view.
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Moreover, there has been a constant interest in media coverage of important
European events, such as European elections, introduction of the euro, European summits
(Peter, Semetko, de Vreese, 2003, Peter & de Vreese, 2004, Peter, Lauf & Semetko,
2004), which make good opportunities for raising Europe’s visibility in the media. In
newly integrated countries, such as Romania, such studies are rather scarce (Corbu,
Frunzaru, Boţan & Schifirneţ, 2011), and show both similarities and differences by
comparison with old member states.
Methodology
In this context, we analyzed the media coverage of a European topic of great
national interest (the integration of Romania into the Schengen Area) at a peak of media
interest, immediately after the French and German domestic ministers notified on
December 21st, 2010, the European Commissioner for Justice and Domestic Affairs on
their proposal to postpone Romania's and Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen Area. The
postponement of the adhesion to Schengen represents a unique event on both national and
European agendas. This event was given substantial priority in the Romanian news, one
particularity of its media coverage being the domestic frame of the event, without
consistent reference to the European dimension of the issue in question.
Television and online news were analyzed for one month in the aftermath of the
postponement decision, in order to track if and how such a locally relevant European
topic was reflected in the news. The research aimed to provide an overview of the main
characteristics of TV news coverage of a European issue and to identify if and how news
differ cross-media in terms of reporting of the Schengen case.
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The method used was the content analysis. The unit of analysis was the news
story, and, secondary, the actor, for the analysis of actors’ visibility in news. The corpus
consisted of all prime time newscasts of the public channel, TVR 1, and all prime time
newscasts of the two most viewed private channels, PROTV and Antena 1, during onemonth period from December 21, 2010 to January 21, 2011. A total number of 2408 TV
news were analyzed, the equivalent of 70 hours and 28 minutes.
The corpus selection was different for the online media, the data being collected
and filtered by the general topic related to the Schengen case. The continuous flow of
information in the online environment makes it virtually impossible to exhaustively
analyze all generated news. All stories covering the Schengen topic from the most visited
news portals (hotnews.ro and ziare.com) and from the two most important online
newspapers, in terms of unique readers, (adevarul.ro, gandul.info) were selected. A total
number of 467 articles were content analyzed, summing-up 188,783 words.
The news was encoded by a number of 10 graduate students of the Faculty of
Communication and Public Relations. Two discussion groups were launched, in order to
(especially during pre-test) discuss and clarify all key issues for the analysis and the
category schemes. Intercoder reliability was calculated using the simple formula
proposed by Holsti (apud Wimmer, Dominick, 2000: 151), Intercoder reliability = 2M /
(N1 + M2), where M is the number of coding decisions on which two coders agree, while
N1, N2 represent the number of coding decisions of the first respectively the second
coder. For TV, intercoder reliability ranged between 0.72 and 0.92, while for online
between 0.62 and 0.88.
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Research questions focused on four aspects: the visibility and priority of
European news and, in their context, the prominence of the Schengen case; the depiction
of actors in the Schengen news and the investigation of the framing of Schengen in the
news.
RQ1. How visible was the Schengen case on the television and online news
agendas?
The visibility of the issue cannot be precisely calculated for online corpus because
of the different sampling patterns. Comparatively, however, we can make some
estimates.
Priority will also be discussed according to the placement of news about
Schengen topic in the TV newscasts, as well as the distinction between lead stories and
other type of stories; for online the number of hits and the number of comments for each
topic were considered to this purpose.
RQ2. How prominent is the Schengen topic in newscasts?
The third component of the content analysis addresses the visibility and the
depiction of actors in the Schengen news. The presence of EU actors is compared to the
visibility of other actors (politic, economic domains etc.). The presence of EU-level
versus domestic actors is also an important indicator of the degree of Europeanness in the
national news coverage (de Vreese, 2003: 82).
RQ3. Who are the most visible actors in the TV and online Schengen related
news?
The question has practical consequences for the identification of a European
`face`, in order to seek to what extent is EU associated with the figures or institutions
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presented in news, and if actors in the Schengen news are domestic rather than European
actors. In particular, the Schengen topic might emphasize the collective actors, such as
countries, many news discussing economic or geopolitical positions regarding the
adhesion to Schengen.
The forth element is the investigation of the framing of Schengen in the news.
The problem of classification of the news frames has been considered a promising
theoretical contribution in recent years; many authors paying increasing attention to
European generic and specific frames identification. We will review some of this
research addressing four types of frames: responsibility, conflict, economic consequences
and powerlessness (specific frame).
RQ4. What are the dominant frames in Schengen related news?
Measurements
As already concluded in previous research (de Vreese, 2003), the `key events` are
essential in shaping public opinion about European affairs because they constitute source
of the few moments where the EU is visible in the mainstream news (de Vreese, 2003).
As stated before, the content analysis followed four distinct aspects: Schengen
news visibility, prominence, depiction of actors and of main media frames. To facilitate
the presentation of data analysis, it is important to point out how we built the variables
that measure the four covered dimensions. Both TV and online news were coded using a
detailed topic list with nine main categories, plus a residual 'Other' category. The nine
categories are: non-Schengen EU news, politics without Schengen, economic, social
(accidents, crimes, trials, human drama, etc.), Education (education, research, science,
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culture, etc.), healthcare, soft news (fashion, VIPs, movies, etc.) and practical information
(entertainment, weather, traffic, etc.). To assess the relative visibility of the different
topics, the length of the TV news stories was measured. Due to the differences between
online and TV corpus, the Schengen topic visibility was measured using estimates of the
average total number of articles published in a day by the four analyzed online
publications.
Priority (or prominence) of Schengen topic in TV news was measured by
analyzing the place of the Schengen news in the first, second, or third part of the
newscasts, as well as by identifying whether or not Schengen news was lead story. For
online news, priority was estimated by quantifying the number of unique readers and the
full number of article comments.
Regarding the actors, up to 6 actors could be coded per story. Each actor was
coded according to a detailed actor list, which replicates the study of de Vresse (2003).
Recent research (de Vreese, 2003a; de Vreese, 2003b) depicts a more and more ‘faceless’
Europe in various national news. In this context we intend to see to what extent a major
European issue (as Romania's adhesion to Schengen) brings to the fore European players
or rather domestic actors, prominent political representatives, institutions, experts, or
ordinary people. The actors were coded into eight main categories, and a residual
‘Others’ category, plus a significant category initially (prior to pre-testing) not taken into
account, "Countries". The original eight categories were EU actors, domestic actors,
national institutions, European institutions, national organizations, individual actors,
actors from other EU countries, international actors (non-EU).
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The content analysis is deductive, working on pre-defined frames. To measure TV
and online frames of the Schengen topic, we built a grid containing five types of frames.
Originally, the category was composed of three general and two specific frames, which
were subsequently re-built. We applied the measures already developed by Semetko and
Valkenburg (2000) for the operationalization of the conflict and the economic
consequences frames. Another classical generic frame is the responsibility frame,
advanced for the first time by Iyengar and Kinder (1987) and then operationalized by
Iyengar (1991) and other researchers (see Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). We added to
the category list two specific frames: ‘costs versus benefits’ (of Romanian’s adhesion to
Schengen) and ‘powerlessness’. The analysis showed that the cost-benefit frame was
almost absent and did not coherently grouped in the factor analysis; therefore this frame
was removed from the analysis. A total of four frames were analyzed, in order to provide
an overview of the characteristics of media coverage of the Schengen topic.
Responsibility frame is built from the need to find who is accountable for actions
that affect in one form or another people’s lives. The conflict frame is most often
encountered in political news, especially in electoral contexts (Capella, Jamieson, 1997)
and reflects the urgent need for the media to cover events as they happen, stressing the
emotional side of the stories. The economic frame relates to the economic consequences
of events on an individual, group, institution, region, or country (Semetko, Valkenburg,
2000: 96).
The powerlessness frame (de Vreese, 2005) was built based on the idea of a lack
of balance between the key actors in the Schengen issue, as it was presented in the media:
on the one hand the European Union can give verdicts unilaterally, using the argument of
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force and economic inequalities among EU countries, and on the other hand, the
emotional and rhetorical reactions of Romanian officials.
Each frame was originally built by sets of 3 to 8 of binary questions, answered
with ‘yes’ (1) and ‘no’ (0). A total of 24 questions were coded in this way, 8 and
respectively 10 of them were rarely present in both TV and online encoding. In order to
measure the compared weight of frames for TV and online, a factor analysis was
undertaken to measure the composite variables of the dominant frames. From the factor
analysis perspective, we will present solutions for both online and TV news and analyze
how each frame was constructed. The questions not logically grouped in factor analysis
were omitted; their weight was checked in order not to affect significantly, by omission,
dominant frames assessment.
In terms of television news, frames were obtained using a principal components
factor analysis with varimax rotation. Corresponding to the four frames items were
grouped into four factors with eigenvalues higher than 1, which explained 61.52% of the
total variance of the analyzed items. Factor solution is presented in Table 1.
(Table 1 about here)
All factors loaded more then .40, limit generally considered acceptable for
keeping items in the factor. It should be noted that a binary encoding reduces the
correlations power. The factor solution shows a clear grouping, with one exception,
namely the question of incapacity, inability of Romanian officials to manage the
relationship with the EU, an item that is quite important and loaded into the responsibility
frame. The explanation relies in the causal juxtaposition in a certain sense of the
powerlessness frame with the responsibility frame regarding the inability of the
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Romanian officials to manage the relationship with the EU and thus presenting them as
mainly responsible for delaying Romania's entrance in the Schengen Area.
Internal consistency of the factors derived from the factor analysis was tested
using Crombach's alpha coefficients to obtain a scale for measuring the intensity of
frames. Alpha values obtained were 0.580 for the economic frame, 0.578 for the
responsibility frame, 0.607 and 0.473 respectively for the conflict and the powerlessness
frame. These values, obtained for binary variables, are high enough to allow the
construction of composite variables using the mean of items values in each factor. Values
were measured on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 means the absence of the frame and 1 its
presence in all measured aspects.
For online, we applied a similar logic; the resulting frames were each formed of
three items for the economic consequences and the conflict frame, respectively four items
for each of the powerlessness and responsibility frames, which explains 55.17% of items
variance. The factor solution is presented in Table 2.
(Table 2 about here)
Internal consistency of factors was tested using Crombach's alpha coefficient,
obtaining values of 0.776 for the conflict frame, 0.662 for the economic consequences
frame, 0.510 for the powerlessness frame, respectively 0.560 for the responsibility frame.
For two factors, there is one item that was grouped following a different factor than
originally considered. On the one hand, as already explained, the references to the
incapacity / inability of the Romanian officials to manage the relationship with the EU
have been enclosed into the responsibility frame, and on the other hand, the criticisms /
quarrels between officials of EU member states or EU institutions were enclosed into the
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`powerlessness` frame, reflecting, beyond the conflict connotation of the Schengen case,
an imbalance of power among countries. Since both items were very well represented and
logically coherent with both frames, we followed the logic of the statistic results in the
factor analysis.
Findings
From a total of 2408 news, only 59 have addressed the Schengen issue,
representing 2% of the total prime time news broadcast on TVR 1, PROTV and Antena 1.
Other than this, 27 news stories discuss the European Union, not related to Schengen,
which raises the total visibility to up to 3% of the total news broadcast on the three
channels, an average specific to rather neutral periods of time in terms of European
events. The most visible are the social news and the soft news (30% and 28%), EU news
occupying one of the last positions, alongside education and health (all of them having
3%). Previous research from old EU member states (Peter, Semetko, DeVreese, 2003;
Peter, DeVreese, 2004), but also from Romania (Corbu et. al., 2011) showed that the
visibility of EU news during prominent EU events peaks around 15%, while in neutral
periods scores around 3%-4%. This suggests that the low TV visibility of the Schengen
subject diminishes the symbolic relevance of this topic in the European context, bounding
it to the domestic agenda.
However there are notable differences regarding the number of online news about
the Schengen adhesion, the topic being higher placed than on the TV agenda. For all the
four news sites analyzed, the number of news that have addressed the Schengen issue is
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much higher than on TV, in absolute numbers, with a total of 467 news stories during the
selected month.
Even if for online only news about Schengen were analyzed the approximate
visibility was obtained by calculating the average number of daily online news from a
typical work day and a week end day, weighting the values obtained to get a more
accurate estimate of the subject visibility, among other topics. It is very difficult to
estimate the weight of each topic, as the estimate visibility was ascribed to the preexisting thematic sections of the newspapers, without having the themes recoded for each
story individually. However, estimates of online visibility of the Schengen news out of
the total number of news published during the same period show a similar low level of
visibility.
The news prominence refers to the way stories are imposed on the agenda of the
day. Presenting a topic in the first third of the newscast provides a high prominence, the
news being symbolically perceived as a major topic. At the same time, a symbolic
prominence is given to subjects placed among the top 3-4 news stories; the so-called
headline news is presented at the beginning of each newscast as the topics of the day.
These are what journalists call lead stories, having an empirically demonstrated potential
for imposing a topic on the public agenda. (Iyengar, Kinder, 1987).
Regarding the position of Schengen news, in 58% of cases they are placed in the
first part of the newscasts, which gives them a better prominence, compared to their very
low visibility.
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Regarding the presence of the Schengen news at the beginning of the newscasts,
16% of them appear as lead stories. This is a very accurate representation of the total
percentage of lead stories (also 16 % of the total number of news in each newscast).
In online the prominence is translated in total number of unique readers and
number of comments. While we cannot calculate a Schengen prominence compared to
other types of topics, we can have a precise overview of the number of unique readers
and comments. From this point of view, the hotnews.ro platform seems to have dedicated
the highest attention to the Schengen topic, followed by gandul.info then ziare.com and
adevarul.ro. At the same time, the Schengen adhesion seems to have been a matter in
dispute if we consider the average number of comments per article (M=24, SD=35). Also
the readers of the two news portals seem to show a larger interest in the subject than the
online newspapers readers.
(Table 3 about here)
A limit of this research in terms of prominence is the lack of independent
estimates of other topics prominence during the reporting period as a basis of
comparison.
The actors of European news have an important role in the process of public
perception building towards the EU and its representatives. Regarding the Schengen news
actors were coded both for online and television news. The coding (up to six actors per
story) allowed us to analyze separately the online and TV news, the coding unit being the
actors. A number of 246 actors from TV news and 1085 actors from the online news were
coded.
(Figure 1 about here)
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The very nature of the Schengen subject, one with important geopolitical stakes,
brought to the fore of the journalistic discourse a collective actor that we did not include
initially in the list of categories – countries themselves. Countries as collective actors
occupy the first position in the actors’ hierarchy, both for TV and online.
By grouping the actors representing the European Union and those representing
the internal affairs, we get a distribution on four main categories: domestic actors, EU
actors, international actors and countries, plus the residual "Other" category:
(Figure 2 about here)
One can easily notice the predominance of domestic actors compared to the EU
representatives, but the differences are not very consistent. Countries clearly remain well
represented as stand-alone players, both in online and on TV (32%, 38%).
Looking at the countries involved, Romania is, of course, the most present, but
there is not a substantial difference compared for instance to France, especially in online
news. France is the country that initiated the process of postponement of the Schengen
accession, and Germany supported this decision. Ranked fourth in the hierarchy of
visibility is Bulgaria. All other countries involved represent only 11% of the actors in the
TV news (Hungary, Finland, Turkey, Holland) and 9% of the online actors (Hungary,
Croatia, Greece, Moldova, Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Great Britain, Russia).
(Figure 3 about here)
Regarding the domestic actors, the most visible by far have been President Traian
Basescu (34% for online and 35% for TV news) and Foreign Minister Theodor
Baconschi 26% for online and 18% for TV news). A surprising fact is the almost total
lack of visibility of the Interior Minister, Constantine Igaş (2% both for online and TV
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news), which should have been one of the key players of the adhesion process. Moreover,
major political actors are very modesty represented in the Schengen news (all under 2%).
As stated in the Measurements section, the scales have been separately elaborated
for TV and online news, building up four frames: responsibility frame, conflict frame,
economic consequences frame and the powerlessness frame.
TV news has particularly emphasized the conflict (TVR 1 and Antena 1), and the
powerlessness of the Romanians in general, and Romanian officials, in particular
(PROTV). Regarding the public channel, which broadcasted most of the Schengen news,
the conflict frame is predominant, followed by the powerlessness and responsibility
frames. This is emblematic for the "audience rush" logic of the Romanian broadcasters,
which leads to an emphasis of the conflict, and, in general, of the emotional impact of the
news story telling. Antena 1 and PROTV channels are almost irrelevant, due to the very
limited number of Schengen news.
(Table 4 about here)
Concerning the online news, we can identify different dominant frames,
depending on the online publication or the news portal. Ziare.com is the only news portal
for which the conflict frame ranked on first position in the frames hierarchy. In general,
however, the dominant frames are the responsibility (the first position for gândul.info and
the second for ziare.ro) and the powerlessness (the first position for adevarul.ro and
hotnews.ro).
(Table 5 about here)
23
In online, the dominant frames were, in this order, responsibility, powerlessness,
and conflict, showing a more moderate appetite for depicting scandals, dramas, or
conflicts, if compared to the TV news.
Discussion and Conclusions
Overall, Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area proved to be a rather low
profile European event in Romanian media (TV and online), even if we considered for
analysis a period of time dominated by a very controversial debate about the
postponement of the adhesion of Romania to the space of free movement. News about
EU and Schengen had a low visibility, both in TV and online news. A visibility of 3%4% is generally specific to the so-called “neutral” or “routine” periods of time, when the
EU is sporadically presented in news.
From this point of view, Romania is rather atypical, if compared with other
European countries, for which European events such as summits or introduction of the
Euro made much more visible topics in newscasts (see Peter & de Vreese, 2004; de
Vreese et al, 2006). On the other hand, recent research showed that the 2009 Elections for
the European Parliament made EU visible in news to an extent comparable with other
member states (Corbu et. al., 2011). This is explicable by the fact that elections are still
perceived as internal race between parties, candidates etc., and therefore people, and
media as a result, are more interested in the event as such, while other European events
are rather seen as distant and not immediately related to people’s main concerns. A
national survey conducted by Bârgăoanu (2011) in the same period of time showed the
Schengen subject was not an issue of high interest for Romanians at the time.
24
Analyzing the actors present in Schengen related news, we found out that the
most prominent were European countries involved in the Schengen debate over Romania
and Bulgaria’s adhesion: Romania, France, Bulgaria, Germany, and vary rarely other
countries (such as Hungary, Croatia, Finland, Nederland). This emphasizes the strategic
dimension of the ‘game’ within the EU, as well as the inequities among EU countries,
especially if correlated with the powerlessness frame present in Schengen related news.
Overall, Romanian media portrayed the ‘Schengen case’ in the general contexts of a lack
of balance between Romania and key actors of the EU regarding the “second degree of
European integration”, as the adhesion to the Schengen Area is often perceived. This
might be explicable by Romania’s status of emergent democracy, and by people’s own
perceptions of their own status as European citizens.
As far as other actors are concerned, internal actors, as well as actors from other
EU countries are much more visible than European actors, which argues for a “faceless”
Europe in Romanian media, in line with other research conducted in European countries
(see de Vreese, 2003).
Discussing how media framed European topics during this period of time,
findings showed that conflict and powerlessness frames dominated the TV news, which
argues for media practices centered on conflicts, scandals, disputes that make good
audiences, on the one hand, and for a general imbalanced public perception regarding the
EU on the other hand, as previously discussed. Online news were more balanced in terms
of prominence of frames, powerlessness, responsibility, and conflict having almost equal
weights in news. For both TV and online news, the economic consequences frame was
underrepresented, even though the Schengen topic might have offered an important
25
economic perspective to be discussed. This is a dominant of Romanian media framing
routines, as other research showed during the 2009 presidential elections (Corbu &
Boţan, 2011), in a time of severe economic downturn, when the economic consequences
frame was almost absent as well.
Overall, we argue that Romanian media has developed its specificities related to
the coverage of European topics, if compared with other European national media.
European topics are less visible than expected during periods of important European
events, and media practices are centered on conflict and powerlessness frames, which in
fact translate a range of attitudes specific to emergent democracies in the EU.
26
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30
Tables and Figures
Table 1. Factor solution for Schengen TV news frames
Rotated Component Matrixa
Economic Responsi
consequenc
bility
es Frame
Frame
Is there a reference to the economic consequences of pursuing or not
pursuing a course of action?
.791
Is there a mention of financial losses or gains now or in the future?
.697
Is there a mention of costs / degree of expenses involved?
.688
Does the story suggest that the Minster for Foreign Affairs, Theodor
Baconschi, is responsible for the issue/ problem?
.807
Does the story suggest that some levels of the Government are
responsible for the issue/ problem?
.764
Does the story suggest that the President Traian Băsescu is responsible
for the issue/ problem?
.597
Conflict
Frame
Does the news reflect disagreement between other EU member states
officials or EU institutions?
.802
Does EU member states officials or EU institutions reproach another?
.687
Does the story refer to winners and losers at the EU-level?
.674
Powerlessness
Frame
Does the story portrait Romanians as victims, discriminated, second rate
citizens etc.?
.737
Does the story refer to an inferiority status of Romania and/ or Bulgaria
inside the European Union?
.680
Does the story suggest that the Romanian officials are incapable of
managing the relationship with EU in general and/ or with some
countries in particular (position of France and Germany towards
the adhesion, other reactions etc.)?
.446
.547
[Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a.
Rotation converged in 9 iterations.]
Table 2. Factor solution for the frames of online Schengen news
Rotated Component Matrixa
Conflict
Frame
Does the news reflect disagreement between domestic political
actors?
.815
Does the news reflect disagreement between domestic actors (other
than political) and/ or groups of interest/ lobby etc.?
.808
Does the news suggest that domestic actors (other than political)
and/ or groups of interest/ lobby etc. reproach each other?
.803
Economic
consequences Powerlessness Responsibili
Frame
Frame
ty Frame
Is there a reference to the economic consequences of pursuing or
not pursuing a course of action?
.864
Is there a mention of financial losses or gains now or in the future?
.863
Is there a mention of costs / degree of expenses involved?
.581
Does the story suggest an imbalance of power/ status among EU
countries?
.860
Does the story refer to an inferiority status of Romania and/ or
Bulgaria inside the European Union?
.828
Does the story portrait Romanians as victims, discriminated,
second rate citizens etc.?
.494
Does EU member states officials or EU institutions reproach
another?
.431
31
Does the story suggest that Romanians (as people, mentality etc.)
are responsible for the adhesion postponement?
.707
Does the story suggest that the President Traian Băsescu is
responsible for the issue/ problem?
.651
Does the story suggest that some levels of the Government are
responsible for the issue/ problem?
.636
Does the story suggest that the Romanian officials are incapable of
managing the relationship with EU in general and/ or with
some countries in particular (position of France and Germany
towards the adhesion, other reactions etc.)?
.491
[Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 5 iterations.]
Table 3. The online prominence of the Schengen topic
Site
hotnews.ro
Visits
5577
Comments
40
N
Std. Deviation
75
7205
75
47
ziare.com
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
2052
139
1870
27
139
36
gandul.info
Mean
3176
19
N
Std. Deviation
79
5689
79
30
Mean
1740
13
N
Std. Deviation
103
3245
103
17
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
2863
396
4694
24
396
35
adevarul.ro
Total
Mean
Figure 1. Actors in the TV and online news
32
Figure 2. Types of actors; TV vs. online
Figure 3. Countries as collective actors in TV and online news
33
Table 4. Frames of the TV news (all TV channels)
TV Channel
TVR 1
Antena 1
PROTV
Total
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Responsibility
frame
0.11
44
0.26
0.27
5
0.28
0.13
10
0.17
0.13
59
0.25
Conflict frame
0.34
44
0.36
0.33
5
0.33
0.17
10
0.24
0.31
59
0.34
Economic
consequences frame
0.09
44
0.2
0
5
0
0.17
10
0.32
0.10
59
0.21
Powerlessness
frame
0.20
44
0.26
0.47
5
0.38
0.43
10
0.39
0.27
59
0.31
Table 5. Frames of the online news (all publications)
Online publication/ News
portal
hotnews.ro
ziare.com
gandul.info
adevarul.ro
Total
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Mean
N
Std. deviation
Responsibility
frame
0.11
75
0.18
0.21
139
0.30
0.25
79
0.20
0.12
103
0.20
0.18
396
0.24
Conflict frame
0.05
75
0.13
0.23
139
0.39
0.11
79
0.23
0.13
103
0.24
0.14
396
0.29
Economic
consequences frame
0.04
75
0.12
0.02
139
0.11
0.09
79
0.24
0.04
103
0.14
0.04
396
0.16
Powerlessness
frame
0.28
75
0.26
0.19
139
0.25
0.18
79
0.21
0.21
103
0.25
0.21
396
0.25