1

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 (co-
author), History of Communication Studies (co-author) and Global Brands. A Cross-
Cultural 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 one-

month 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

presented in news, and if actors in the Schengen news are domestic rather than European
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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,

culture, etc.), healthcare, soft news (fashion, VIPs, movies, etc.) and practical information
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(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).

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.
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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

force and economic inequalities among EU countries, and on the other hand, the

emotional and rhetorical reactions of Romanian officials.

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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

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.

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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

`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
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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

much higher than on TV, in absolute numbers, with a total of 467 news stories during the

selected month.
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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 pre-

existing 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.

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).
20

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)

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.
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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 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.

22

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)

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
23

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.

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
24

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

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
25

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 Conflict Powerlessness
es Frame Frame Frame Frame
Is there a reference to the economic consequences of pursuing or not
.791
pursuing a course of action?
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
.807
Baconschi, is responsible for the issue/ problem?
Does the story suggest that some levels of the Government are
.764
responsible for the issue/ problem?
Does the story suggest that the President Traian Băsescu is responsible
.597
for the issue/ problem?
Does the news reflect disagreement between other EU member states
.802
officials or EU institutions?
Does EU member states officials or EU institutions reproach another? .687
Does the story refer to winners and losers at the EU-level? .674
Does the story portrait Romanians as victims, discriminated, second rate
.737
citizens etc.?
Does the story refer to an inferiority status of Romania and/ or Bulgaria
.680
inside the European Union?
Does the story suggest that the Romanian officials are incapable of
managing the relationship with EU in general and/ or with some
.446 .547
countries in particular (position of France and Germany towards
the adhesion, other reactions etc.)?
[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 Economic
Conflict consequences Powerlessness Responsibili
Frame Frame Frame ty Frame
Does the news reflect disagreement between domestic political
.815
actors?
Does the news reflect disagreement between domestic actors (other
.808
than political) and/ or groups of interest/ lobby etc.?
Does the news suggest that domestic actors (other than political)
.803
and/ or groups of interest/ lobby etc. reproach each other?
Is there a reference to the economic consequences of pursuing or
.864
not pursuing a course of action?
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
.860
countries?
Does the story refer to an inferiority status of Romania and/ or
.828
Bulgaria inside the European Union?
Does the story portrait Romanians as victims, discriminated,
.494
second rate citizens etc.?
Does EU member states officials or EU institutions reproach
.431
another?
31

Rotated Component Matrixa Economic

Conflict consequences Powerlessness Responsibili
Frame Frame Frame ty Frame
Does the story suggest that Romanians (as people, mentality etc.)
.707
are responsible for the adhesion postponement?
Does the story suggest that the President Traian Băsescu is
.651
responsible for the issue/ problem?
Does the story suggest that some levels of the Government are
.636
responsible for the issue/ problem?
Does the story suggest that the Romanian officials are incapable of
managing the relationship with EU in general and/ or with
.491
some countries in particular (position of France and Germany
towards the adhesion, other reactions etc.)?
[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 Visits Comments
hotnews.ro Mean 5577 40
N 75 75
Std. Deviation 7205 47
ziare.com Mean 2052 27
N 139 139
Std. Deviation 1870 36
gandul.info Mean 3176 19
N 79 79
Std. Deviation 5689 30
adevarul.ro Mean 1740 13
N 103 103
Std. Deviation 3245 17
Total Mean 2863 24
N 396 396
Std. Deviation 4694 35

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 Responsibility Economic Powerlessness

frame Conflict frame consequences frame frame
TVR 1 Mean 0.11 0.34 0.09 0.20
N 44 44 44 44
Std. deviation 0.26 0.36 0.2 0.26
Antena 1 Mean 0.27 0.33 0 0.47
N 5 5 5 5
Std. deviation 0.28 0.33 0 0.38
PROTV Mean 0.13 0.17 0.17 0.43
N 10 10 10 10
Std. deviation 0.17 0.24 0.32 0.39
Total Mean 0.13 0.31 0.10 0.27
N 59 59 59 59
Std. deviation 0.25 0.34 0.21 0.31

Table 5. Frames of the online news (all publications)

Online publication/ News
portal Responsibility Economic Powerlessness
frame Conflict frame consequences frame frame
hotnews.ro Mean 0.11 0.05 0.04 0.28
N 75 75 75 75
Std. deviation 0.18 0.13 0.12 0.26
ziare.com Mean 0.21 0.23 0.02 0.19
N 139 139 139 139
Std. deviation 0.30 0.39 0.11 0.25
gandul.info Mean 0.25 0.11 0.09 0.18
N 79 79 79 79
Std. deviation 0.20 0.23 0.24 0.21
adevarul.ro Mean 0.12 0.13 0.04 0.21
N 103 103 103 103
Std. deviation 0.20 0.24 0.14 0.25
Total Mean 0.18 0.14 0.04 0.21
N 396 396 396 396
Std. deviation 0.24 0.29 0.16 0.25