Inquiring Public Space in Romania: A Communication Analysis of the 2012 Protests

Abstract

Communication in public space in Romania reached new dimensions in 2012, as at the beginning of the year, Romanians understood the importance and influence of the civil disobedience. Although the country faced numerous social, economic and political problems, Romanians adopted a passive attitude towards them and accepted the decisions of the political class without contesting, even though the measures were against their interests. Romania, the country of no protests, as it was known by its own people and by the international press, turns in 2012 in a country of resentment and violent protests. Our paper aims to decipher the phenomena of communication in public space in Romania using the method of communication lifecycle, as it was developed by David Michaelson and Toni L. Griffin. More precise, our study includes the analysis of the messages that regard the communication in public space, by interpreting the content of the themes and the actors that had visibility. Through this method we intend to analyse the content of the message in order to measure the efficiency of communication in public space. This analysis has its raw data from monitoring the most circulated newspapers in Romania, focusing on the content of the communication in order to find out which are the themes that dominate the public space and the actors present in the public discourse. Also, we compare the political and social discourse in order to establish connections between the two in regard to the matter of protests.