Issue coordinated by Ioana IANCU, Ph.D.

Editorial board:
Prof. Elena ABRUDAN Ph.D., director
Prof. Delia Cristina BALABAN (BĂLAȘ) Ph.D., executive director
Lecturer Ioana IANCU, Ph.D., editor-in-chief
Members:
Mirela Codruța ABRUDAN Ph.D., Veronica CÂMPIAN Ph.D., Ioana IANCU Ph.D., Meda MUCUNDORFEANU Ph.D.,
Radu MEZA Ph.D., Maria MUSTĂŢEA, George PRUNDARU Ph.D., Julia SZAMBOLICS Ph.D.
Review board:
Prof. Alina BÂRGĂOANU Ph.D., National School for Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest
Prof. Ștefan BRATOSIN Ph.D., Paul Valery University Montpellier
Prof. Mihai COMAN Ph.D., University Bucharest
Assoc. Prof. Nicoleta CORBU Ph.D., National School for Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest
Assoc. Prof. Ilie FÂRTE, Al.I. Cuza University Bucharest
Prof. Sandu FRUNZĂ Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca
Prof. Ludwig HILMER Ph.D., University of Applied Sciences Mittweida
Assoc. Prof. Ioan HOSU Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca
Prof. Wilfried KÖPKE Ph.D., University of Applied Sciences, Hannover
Prof. Michael MEYEN Ph.D., Ludwig Maximillians University Munich
Assoc. Prof. Marian PETCU, University Bucharest
Prof. Hans Peter NIEDERMEIER Ph.D., University of Applied Sciences Mittweida
Prof. Ilie RAD Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca
Prof. Flaviu Călin RUS Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca
Assoc. Prof. Dan STOICA, Al.I. Cuza University Iaşi
Prof. Peter SZYSZKA, University of Applied Sciences, Hannover

1
ISSN 1844-8887 • Accent Publisher, 2016
 Contents

Valeriu FRUNZARU
Demetra GARBAȘEVSCHI
3 Students’ Online Identity Management

Margarida ROMERO
14 Intergenerational Digital Storytelling Pairing Teens
as Multimedia Facilitators with an Elder as Narrative Director

Otilia ARMEAN
28 New Media Typography

Ioana IANCU
39 The Perception of Young Adults on Intelligent Advertising.
A Case Study on Romania

Loredana RADU
60 Unconditional Trust? Public Opinion Towards the EU in Romania

Camelia-Mihaela CMECIU
80 Online Discursive (De)legitimation of the Roma Community

Ileana ROTARU
99 The Role of Media in Structuring the Social Representations
of Romanian Immigrants in Germany

Reviews
121 Sandu FRUNZĂ
Advertising Constructs Reality [Otavia Cristina BORŞ]

2
Students’ Online Identity Management

Valeriu FRUNZARU
Associate Professor, PhD
National University of Political Science and Public Administration
Department of Communication
E-mail: valeriu.frunzaru@comunicare.ro

Demetra GARBAȘEVSCHI
PhD
National University of Political Science and Public Administration
Department of Communication
E-mail: demetra.garbasevschi@comunicare.ro

Abstract: Acknowledging the inevitability of an online identity in to-

day’s digital culture, where much of the social interaction has moved
online, this paper places the concept of online identity amidst a highly
commercialized Web, the epitome of our late-capitalist market logic. As
such, online identity is seen as the expected response of individuals that
are exposed to a highly promotional environment which views self-iden-
tity as a valuable commodity – both a product of labor and of market
exchange. In a quantitative study on 945 students, we measure the level
of interest in online identity management, using a scale developed by the
authors; at the same time, we look at several indicators that are likely to
signal an increased interest in online identity management (OIM). Our
findings show that students who are more materialistic, who have higher
levels of self-efficacy, who spend more time on Facebook, and who believe
that employers browse their online self-presentations are more interested
in OIM.

Keywords: online identity management, self-commodification, identity

capital, materialism, self-efficacy.

Journal of Media Research,

3 1(24) / 2016, pp. 3-13
Vol. 9 Issue
 Introduction
More than ever, the self has become a project. Not only has society become in-
creasingly market-oriented, accommodating “a more strategic outlook on matters
of personhood” (van Halen & Janssen, 2004, 391), but it has also seen the transfor-
mation of the World Wide Web into a social experience, opening up completely
new possibilities for self-construction. As such, individuals are now seen “curat-
ing, rearranging, and recirculating what they consider to be their best pictures,
videos, and status updates in multiple venues online while dropping off their
worst, carefully cultivating what in a professional venue would be a concerted
audience-segmentation strategy” (Senft, 2013, 349).
The self has also gained mass exposure. The Social Web (Rheingold cited in
Quittner, 1996) prompts individuals to share more today and to consistently and
consciously engage in this sharing as their real-life selves. Gone are the days when
the Internet was viewed as a different (virtual) reality, a space of infinite possibil-
ity for anonymity or identity play, as depicted in the works of early cyberculture
scholars. Nowadays, the Internet is recognized to be an established manifestation
of reality. Against this background, online identity can no longer be regarded as
a separate construction, in antithesis with offline identity, but as an integral part
of the individual’s identity system, being influenced by and at the same time in-
fluencing the whole. “The real name web” (Hogan, 2013) is already a fact: online
users operate as their real-life selves, as they “post content that is linked to their
offline identity and is available either publicly or to a publicly articulated list of
individuals” (Hogan, 2013, 301).
Moreover, with social life increasingly unfolding on online social media, large
parts of the daily routines of individuals “become accessible, traceable, analyzable
in real time” (Fuchs and Trottier, 2015, 130). As a consequence, “everyone who
uses the internet has a detailed, persistent digital footprint, created knowingly or
unknowingly, actively or passively” (Marwick, 2010: 367), in other words, an on-
line identity. Every piece of information available online about an individual car-
ries relevant identity clues. The fact that two billion of the world’s individuals are
online – connected and interacting – means that vast amounts of personal data are
constantly released and stored. At the same time, they can be easily traced back to
those who have produced them. With a little help from a search engine, self-iden-
tity information can be accessed by virtually anyone, and reassembled to form the
individual’s imagined identity.
As entire life narratives can now be reconstructed based on various types of
data available online (to higher or lower degrees of accuracy), online identities
gain material value. This affirmation can be interpreted from several perspectives.
For commercial companies, online identity data is vital, as it can be repurposed
into marketing intelligence and used, for example, to better target advertising.

4
Hence, their constant effort to persuade individuals into producing more self-
identity data, by offering them an increasingly engaging online experience. For the
individuals themselves, online identity data can be a driver of personal value, or
– the opposite – of digital irrelevance or even stigma. Hence, the digital labor put
into producing an online identity able to potentially generate social or economic
advantages for the individual.

Online Identity Management and the Commodification of the Self

In light of “the late capitalist economy where anything and everything is po-
tentially commodifiable” (Wee and Brooks, 2010), the fate of self-identity seems
to have been sealed. Society’s generalized promotional logic has permeated the
individual’s consciousness, turning the self into “a persona produced for public
consumption” (Wernick, 1991, 193). The idea that self-identity has been subtly
(or less so) transformed into a commodity is openly endorsed by several authors
(Giddens, 1991; Hearn, 2008; Lair, Sullivan and Cheney, 2005; Senft, 2008).
The reflexive project of the self (Giddens, 1991) includes today a materialis-
tic component, if we agree that it represents “a distinct form of labor meant to
produce cultural value and, potentially, material profit” (Hearn, 2008, 198). For
Giddens (1991: 200), “commodification, in the context of consumerism, promotes
appearance as the prime arbiter of value, and sees self-development above all in
terms of display”. Self-identity is thus subservient to its image, which is, in its
turn, interpreted through the frames offered by society.
Against this background, packaging oneself for market consumption has be-
come, in many ways, normalized. Lair, Sullivan and Cheney (2005, 320) discuss
the difference between the “commodification-as-dominance thesis offered by
Marx” and the consensual commodification that takes place as individuals engage
in “their own self-packaging all the while celebrating their sense of personal effi-
cacy”, though self-presentation and impression management.
Without too much error, we can affirm that no other social milieu has had such
a rapid and dramatic effect on the project of the self than the Social Web, nowadays
a main site for self-presentation and impression management. Here, generalized
connectivity and unrestricted access to digital tools, combined with the aspira-
tional role models offered by the marketing and promotion industries have made
online identity management (OIM) not only possible but expected: “The growing
popularity of social and digital media means that users are held accountable to
how they appear online” (Trottier, 2014, xi).
Indeed, in situations when individuals are not physically present, self-identity
can be equated or even substituted for online identity. As Marwick (2010, 396) ob-
serves, “in the absence of face-to-face cues, people will extrapolate identity and re-
lational information from any available digital information” (Marwick, 2010, 396).

5
Referring to Facebook, Gosling et all (2011, 486) reported that “observers can make
effective use of observable profile information when they form their impressions,”
being able to draw at least partial accurate conclusions regarding the individual’s
personality traits. In a research study investigating inconsistencies between on-
line and offline self-presentations, DeAndrea and Walther (2011, 819) have dem-
onstrated that “the content of online self-presentations can shape interpersonal
perceptions, even if strong positive impressions have been established offline and
especially if they have not.”
A system connecting individuals to their online performances is already set in
place. Using search engines or online social network profiles to verify and validate
the identity of an individual has become a routine practice for both private us-
ers and companies (Ivcevic and Ambady, 2012; Vorvoreanu, Clark and Boisvenue,
2011). Vorvoreanu, Clark and Boisvenue (2011, 1) document this phenomenon
from the perspective of employers seeking talent: “Information available online
about an individual, whether of a personal or professional nature, and whether
posted by the individual or the individual’s contacts, is often subject to review as
part of hiring processes.”
Naturally, the more social actors understand the role their online identity plays
in this new social reality, the more they become involved in its construction. Lit-
erature supports the idea of individuals growing more aware of the importance
of their online identity and actively engaged in managing it through the system
of platforms available (Madden, Fox et all, 2007; Madden and Smith, 2010; Van
Dijck, 2013, Vorvoreanu, Clark and Boisvenue, 2011; Young, 2013). Through self-
presentation and impression management online, individuals become engrossed
with the project of the self, performing OIM to varying degrees of awareness.
The diversity of subjects depicted by online self-presentation scholarship does
not lack common threads. Perhaps the most enticing one is that individuals are
operationalized as “rational and strategic beings” (Rui and Stefanone, 2013, 1288).
Supporting this view, van Dijck (2013, 202) notes a transition from self-expression
to self-promotion in the communication of online identity, alluding to the idea of
a willing self-commodification: “Roughly after 2009, the self turned into an object
of marketing and promotion now that connectivity could transform online social
value to real rewards in the offline world.”
This type of identity work is labor-intensive and, most often than not, requires
a long-term effort. It involves “creating a detachable, saleable image or narrative,
which effectively circulates cultural meanings”, whose goal is to produce “cultural
value and, potentially, material profit” (Hearn, 2008, 198). The expectation is that
strategic impression management increases the likelihood of desired outcomes
and circumvents undesired outcomes (Leary and Kowalski’s, 1990). Desired out-
comes may vary greatly, according to individuals’ particular contexts. Some are
interpersonal, while some can be material (Leary and Kowalski’s, 1990). From at-

6
tention, reputation or network power to a better salary, or actual revenue from
advertising on one’s personal web page.
Identity labor in the form of self-presentation and impression management
thus promises to build long-term value for the individual – what Côté (1996) calls
identity capital. The notion of identity capital is meant to denote “what individu-
als ‘invest’ in ‘who they are’” in order to “potentially reap future dividends” on
“identity markets” (Côté, 1996, 425). The variety of personal resources needed to
consolidate one’s identity capital accounts for both sociological assets – such as pro-
fessional and educational credentials, memberships, other significant associations,
personal style –, and psychological ones – “commitments, ego strength, self-effica-
cy, cognitive flexibility and complexity, self-monitoring, critical thinking abilities,
moral reasoning abilities” (Côté, 1996, 426).
OIM, as the digital labor meant to produce identity capital, is thus a strategic
process, whose outcome depends equally on motivation, commitment and skill.
While determining the level of interest in OIM is one way to look at this phenom-
enon, it is worthwhile to connect it to traits, values and behaviors that make OIM
more likely to occur successfully for the individual.

Purpose and Hypotheses

This study focuses on examining students’ interest in OIM. At the same time,
it seeks to establish links between OIM and what we have called agentic dispo-
sitions towards self-commodification, understood as the set of traits, values and
behaviors needed in order to strategically perform OIM.
Based on assumed relevance, we chose to explore four main variables in rela-
tion to OIM:
1. a materialistic outlook – signaling motivation to perform OIM in the hope
of social or material goals;
2. self-efficacy – granting the expectation of success, persistence and com-
mitment to OIM goals;
3. time spent online – indicating involvement with the online medium: we
chose to refer to Facebook as it is the dominant platform of our inform-
ants;
4. audience monitoring – showing awareness of one’s stakeholders: given
the profile of our informants, we looked into perceived employer scrutiny.
We then formulated the following hypotheses:
H1: Students who are more materialistic are more interested in OIM.
H2: Students with higher levels of self-efficacy are more interested in OIM.
H3: Students who spend more time on Facebook are more interested in OIM
H4: Students who believe that employers are interested in their online self-presentation
are more interested in OIM.

7
 Additionally, we decided to check the influence of gender and university major
on OIM.

Method
Sample
The sample (n=945) comprised both undergraduate (n=568) and master stu-
dents (n=377) from three universities in Bucharest: National University of Politi-
cal Studies and Public Administration (n=530), University of Economic Studies
(n=203) and Polytechnic University (n=212). The undergraduate students were
enrolled in on-campus classes, while master students were enrolled both in on-
campus (n=244) and distance learning (n=133). A survey was conducted in May,
at the beginning of the second semester. Questionnaires were administered col-
lectively during class and took approximately 20 minutes to complete. Anonymity
was guaranteed.

Measures
To measure the level of interest in OIM, we used a four-item scale (built by the
authors). Respondents recorded their agreement to each of the four items on a sev-
en-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Reli-
ability of the scale was .79. We used SPSS to run the principal component analysis,
with the varimax rotation (Table 1). The factor analysis shows that the Barlett’s
test of sphericity is significant (p<.01), the KMO that measures sample adequacy is
high (.76), and the average of the communalities is higher than .5.
Table 1. Factor Solution with Varimax Rotation for OIM

1. Factor solution Component

It is very important for me that others see me the way I want them to. .797
Through everything I post, I want to send a certain message about myself. .791
I am aware of the impression I make on online social networks. .784
I post only information that puts me in a good light. .757

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

a. 1 component extracted.
Materialism values were measured with a six-item scale developed by Marsha
L. Richins (1987). Students expressed their agreement with each statement on a
seven-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
The reliability of the scale was .73.
Self-efficacy was measured with a ten-item scale available at http://ipip.ori.
org/. Respondents expressed their agreement to each of the items on a seven-point
Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The reliabil-
ity of the scale was .76.

8
 To test if students’ core areas of study influence OIM, we created a dummy
variable coded with “1” for students in communication and marketing (from two
universities) and with “0” for students in engineering and computer science (from
a third university). Similarly, the “sex” variable was recoded with “1” for female
and “0” for male.

Findings
The first step of the study was to analyse the descriptive statistics of the OIM
scale (Table 2). Results show that students are rather interested in managing their
online identities. The mean and the negative skewness of the scale reveal that stu-
dents tend to agree with statements that highlight the importance of their online
image. Moreover, a subsample of students (N=35) strongly agreed (chose the high-
est level of the scale) with all the items of the scale.
Table 2. Statistics of OIM Scale
Mean 4.5252
Std. Deviation 1.41494
Skewness -.413
Std. Error of Skewness .081
Kurtosis -.303
Std. Error of Kurtosis .163

Regarding the relationship between materialism – as the valorising of posses-

sion and acquisition in self and others (Richins and Dawson, 1992: 304) – and OIM
(H1), results show that students who are more materialistic are more interested
in managing their online identity (Table 3). This result is in line with previous re-
search (Christopher and Schlenker, 2004; Mick, 1996) that has pointed out a posi-
tive relationship between materialism and impression management concerns.
Moreover, people who score high in materialism place similar importance on
interpersonal relationships and financial concerns. Thus, the correlation of OIM
with materialism can have inter alia a pragmatic reason, online identity being an
asset administrated by its owner. Another argument for this logic is given by the
observation that people with higher OIM scores are more aware that employers
are interested in their online presentation across the web. This finding is consistent
with previous research which claims that individuals concerned with impression
management try to control employer access to potentially harming self-identity in-
formation online (Labrecque, Markos and Milne, 2011; Madden and Smith, 2010).
Table 3. Correlations between OIM and materialism,
employers’ interest, self-efficacy, and time spent on Facebook
Employers look for how graduates Time on
Materialism Self-efficacy
presents themselves online Facebook
OIM Pearson Correlation .20** .26** .13** .25**
**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

9
 As expected, self-efficacy has also proven relevant for analysing OIM, in-
creased self-efficacy levels leading to a higher interest in OIM among our sam-
ple. In the context of impression management, self-efficacy “can be described as
the expectation that people will be able to engage in successful self-presentations”
(Krämer and Winter, 2008: 108). Our results are in accordance with prior research
that explicitly identifies self-efficacy as an important prerequisite for successful
impression management (Krämer and Winter, 2008). Moreover, previous research
implicitly links self-efficacy to the practice of online self-presentation: by encour-
aging “self-promotion and viewing oneself as a product”, the Internet puts for-
ward a self “in line with the values of enterprise culture: entrepreneurial, positive,
information-rich and self-motivated” (Marwick, 2010: 348).
If we consider all the independent variables from our hypotheses, multiple
linear regressions show that all explanatory variables have a significant impact.
The highest standardized coefficient belongs to those related to the opinion that
employers scrutinize online self-presentations of potential employees, and to time
spent on Facebook (Table 4). This finding is another evidence that OIM has a prag-
matic reason.
Table 4. Linear Regression with OIM as Dependent Variable

B Std. Error Beta t Sig.

(Constant) 0.927 0.451 2.052 .040
Materialism 0.312 0.067 0.149 4.678 .000
Seld-efficacy 0.262 0.060 0.136 4.326 .000
The opinion that employers look for how
graduates present themselves online 0.237 0.040 0.190 5.893 .000
(on Facebook, LinkedIn, blog personal)
Time spent on Facebook 0.228 0.04 0.185 5.694 .000
University 0.331 0.122 0.100 2.717 .007
Sex -0.406 0.112 0.134 3.617 .000
(Adjusted R Square .20)

Additionally, we found out that both gender and study major also influence
OIM. Students pursuing communication and marketing majors proved to be more
interested in managing their online identity (t(901)=6.995, p<.001) than students
pursuing technical majors. Assuming that students in communication or market-
ing are more aware of the importance of impression management for image con-
struction, given their academic background, it is understandable that they are also
more drawn to OIM.
On the other hand, we found women to be more concerned about OIM com-
pared to men (t(462.47)=6.584, p<.001). This information is in fact in antithesis with
traditional strands of research that depict women to be less assertive than men in
pursuing impression management (Bolino and Turnley, 2003). One explanation

10
may be that women are interested in OIM but not actively engaged in consistent
OIM practices.

Conclusions
We have witnessed how, in today’s society, self-identity is planned and man-
aged more than ever before. Amidst this reality, the belief that the online medium
is granting regular individuals unprecedented means for self-affirmation is almost
unanimous. But even with such means at one’s disposal, social media users man-
age their online identities neither with equal consistency nor with equal outcomes.
Our study has pointed out that there are in fact pre-requisites to successful OIM.
Our four initial hypotheses were confirmed: interest for OIM strongly corre-
lates with time spent online, perceived employer scrutiny, self-efficacy and ma-
terialism. Additional insights surfaced: women are more interested in OIM than
men, while students from universities that include advertising, marketing or PR
in the curriculum are more interested in OIM than students pursuing technical
majors.
The significant relationship between materialism and OIM reinforces the idea
of online identity commodification under a promotional, consumption-driven cul-
ture.
While the consensual commodification of the self is, as we have seen, regarded
as a natural occurrence, the extent to which active users are in fact engaged, moti-
vated and apt to perform OIM can represent a subject for further research.

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Intergenerational Digital Storytelling
Pairing Teens as Multimedia Facilitators
with an Elder as Narrative Director

Margarida ROMERO
Assistant Professor, PhD
Université Laval, Québec, Canada
Département d’études sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage
E-mail: margarida.romero@fse.ulaval.ca

Abstract: Intergenerational communication and learning empowers dif-

ferent generations valuing their knowledge (Ivan & Fernández-Ardèvol,
2014; Newman & Hatton-Yeo, 2008). Traditionally, elders have been rec-
ognized by their wisdom and were given a responsibility in the transmis-
sion of the cultural heritage to younger generations (Stiegelbauer, 1996;
Weinstein-Shr & Henkin, 1991). Scientific and technological knowledge
in the Information society has relegated elders as knowledge authorities;
moreover, younger generations often refuse elders’ knowledge (Cattell,
1994; Weinstein-Shr & Henkin, 1991). Internet, peers, teachers and par-
ents have become the leading knowledge sources for the youngest genera-
tions. Our project aims to value elders’ knowledge by inviting them to
share their life narratives related to the social sciences curriculum. In
line with this goal, we invited an elder to share her immigration life ex-
perience with a group of secondary-level teenagers studying the topic of
migration. This topic is part of the social sciences curriculum (PFÉQ,
Gouvernement du Québec, 2011). The intergenerational learning activ-
ity was designed to promote intergenerational learning and value not
only the knowledge of elders but also the teens’ knowledge of multime-
dia through the creation of a digital Open Educational Ressource (OER)
based on the elder’s immigration experience narrative. Both the elder and

Journal of Media Research,

141(24) / 2016, pp. 14-27
Vol. 9 Issue
 teens (n=8) participating in the experience provided evidences of their
intergenerationnal learning in a semi-directed discussion following the
experience. More importantly, both type of participants felt empowered
and valued through the intergenerationnal digital storytelling activity.

Keywords: Intergenerational learning, digital storytelling, elders, ICT,

secondary education.

From traditional-knowledge cultures to the Internet era

In the early stages of humanity, mankind were organized as tribes, small com-
munities or medium to large settlements where intergenerational interactions was
facilitated by proximity within the different generations living in the same area.
Within these society organizations elders were often considered knowledgeable
entities within the group. They played the crucial role of passing knowledge to
younger generations (Johnson, 1992). The traditional-knowledge cultures based
their knowledge on experience (Ellis, 2005), which relies on the experienced mem-
bers within the groups: elders.
Nowadays, the intergenerational relations are very limited within and outside
the family groups. In the Internet era, elders have lost the role of most-knowledge-
able persons because of the increasing pace of content generation, sharing and dif-
fusion through the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Scien-
tific and technological knowledge in the information society has relegated elders
as knowledge authorities; paradoxically, young generations often refuse elders’
knowledge (Cattell, 1994; Weinstein-Shr & Henkin, 1991) as it is no longer per-
ceived as the most adapted to the Internet era society. Abdullahi (2005) observes
that in early stages of humanity, orality was the main modality for knowledge
transmission. This paradigm situated elders as the main holders of experience-
based knowledge. As soon as the printing revolution was brought by Gutenberg’s
invention, the media for knowledge sharing started to democratize and available
to different publics without the mediation of other humans. The Internet era has
gone ever further and allows an easier access to information in an on-demand,
just-in-time basis. Nowadays, it has become quite common to see someone ask a
question to Apple’s Siri or Google instead of asking other persons they are phys-
ically with; Internet has replaced living, breathing humans as the most reliable
source of information on a daily basis.
That vacuum left elders excluded from the digital debate, as they are required
to join the mainstream technologies if they want to be active members of the soci-
ety. However, despite a different use of technologies, elders have valuable expe-
riences which are often not taken into consideration because they are not avail-
able from a Google search, in a digital-and-indexed modality. Intergenerational

15
communication has become difficult because we don’t live together in the same
“tribe”, and the daily life has suffered a Taylorization in age-related groups. Chil-
dren and teens spend most of their time in school or doing children-oriented activ-
ities. After school time, homework, medias (Internet, social medias, videogames,
TV and other on-demand streaming content provider) and sports are the main
“free time” activities of teens (Larson, 2001; Larson & Verma, 1999). Peers and su-
pervising adults (parents, teachers, sport coaches) are the predominant interactors
of children and teens. Adults try to solve a complex work-life balance (WLB) equa-
tion where their family lives encounters hard-to-solve constraints from a world-
competitive job market (Romero, 2011, 2015). An increasing number of grand par-
ents cannot look after their grandchildren in a daily basis because of the current
society organization leading to an increasing separation of age-specific activities.
Without the grandparents’ support, the parents’ WLB is even more precarious and
elders’ isolation increase. Intergenerational relations within the same family mem-
bers are not as obvious as in the past. In most of the current families, children and
teens already have very limited relations with their grandparents. In some cases,
relations with elders outside of their family are often inexistent. Without a com-
munity organization that shares a common space and activities, the generational
link weaken and the intergenerational learning opportunities of experience-based
knowledge are greatly diminished. While technological progress is presented in
the mainstream discourse as obvious and necessary, the quantity, the quality and
the locations of intergenerational, noninstitutionalized relations have dramatically
decreased in the Western world (Hopkins & Pain, 2007; Ng, 1998).

Life narratives as knowledge processes

Life narratives are biographical methods allowing the structuring of the experi-
enced-based knowledge as a story. Burlea (2010) defines life narratives as “textual
interfaces between the self and the Other” (p. ii); for Smith and Watson (2010)
they are “self referential practices that engage the past in order to reflect on iden-
tity in the present” (cited by Williamson, 2010, p. 9). The use of life narratives as
knowledge conveyors could help anchoring subjectively a sociological fact while
simultaneously creating an empathic link between the subject who shares her life
narrative and the persons that became knowledgeable of her story. Life narrative
wishes to place the human being in the center of the history in order to understand
social facts and “the symbolic relation which connects the person to a group, to a
community and, more broadly, to a society, through the identity game1” (Chan-
frault-Duchet, 1987, p. 12). According to Pruvost (2011), the life narrative subject

1 In French «le rapport symbolique qui, par le biais du jeu identitaire, relie l’individu au
groupe, à la communauté et plus largement, à la société».

16
acts as the spokesperson of a social group and the « life narrative method allows
to locate the network in which the narrator is positioned and to register social
phenomenon in a cause consequence chain2” (p.39). The use of digital resources
for the elaboration, sharing and diffusion of a life narrative leads to the digital life
narrative designation. They present a format characterized by short vignettes of
a few minutes while integrating digital ressources as images, sounds and videos.
The term digital storytelling is also used to refer to a use of ICT in order to cre-
ate narratives with a digital support. As part of the Center for Digital Storytelling
(CSD), academics aim to use digital stories in order to help marginalized commu-
nities make themselves heard (Rossiter & Garcia, 2010) as well as promote cultural
diversity (Skouge & Rao, 2009).

Knowledge construction through life narratives creation

A personal narrative engages the subject in a knowledge (re)construction pro-
cess. From an interactionist framework, life narratives are created in relation to the
meanings that particular symbols have for them and the interactions the subject
develop during the life narrative creation (Edhborg, Friberg, Lundh, & Widström,
2005; Fornaciari, 2012; Mishler, 1997). During the life narrative process, the sub-
ject select and structures his/her experiences in interaction with the context of the
personal narrative creation. The life narrative construction process implies organ-
izing experiences as narratives in a way that could help creating a sense for the
subject (Alterio & McDrury, 2003). But life narratives are not only valuable for
the subject creating his own narrative : they are also a form of knowledge that can
be highly valuable for the other persons that benefit from the experience-based
knowledge vehiculated through the narrative. Life narratives are “a site of embod-
ied knowledge because autobiographical narrators are embodied subjects” (Smith
& Watson, 2010, p. 37) which could help children and teenagers understand, in a
personal way, the recent history (Chanfrault-Duchet, 1987; Pruvost, 2011).

Integrating life narratives in education

Despite the interest of life narratives as embodied knowledge (Smith & Wat-
son, 2010), the current use of life narratives is infrequent according to the number
of reported studies published in the field of the learning science research. A search
of the terms “life narrative” and “education” from 1998 to 2014 in the EBSCO da-
tabase turns out a meager 16 results. Only two of them describes the use of life
narratives for education purposes. Goodson and Deakin Crick (2009) develops the
idea of “narrative learning” engaging Indigenous Australian learners to build their

2 In French «la méthode du récit de vie permet de situer le réseau dans lequel le narrateur se
positionne et d’inscrire les phénomènes sociaux dans un enchaînement de causes et d’effets».

17
stories in order to “connect with themselves, their own culture and tradition, their
hopes and aspirations and ultimately with an intentional, mentored construction
of knowledge which serves their personal and public trajectories” (p. 225). Creme
(2008) analyzes students’ learning journals as a writing modality that merges the
university essay with a life narrative approach to foster meaningful learning and
valuing learners’ subjectivity. In the majority of the other results, life narratives
are used as an inquiring methodology but have not been used as a pedagogical
strategy itself.
Educational manuals and reference books in the social sciences area try to
cover the curriculum objectives through a fact-based informations. However, in
competence-oriented curriculums such the Programme de formation de l’école
québécoise (PFEQ), learners are also required to interpret and discuss from the
facts introduced by the teacher and the reference textbooks. This can be a immense
challenge for some students who do not feel engaged in this fact-based transmis-
sive approach, often perceived as too distant from their daily lives. Teaching the
migration theme by using only a traditional, lecture-based approach tend to rely
too heavily on socioeconomical facts (macro-social) and can result in losing sight
of the human nature of the social sciences reality that is been developed in the
classroom.
In our study, we develop the hypothesis that combining the macro-social per-
spective of a social science topic (e.g. migration and its migration rates, qualified
workers immigration policies, etc) to the experience of a life narrative through
which students can empathize with the story of another person having an experi-
ence on the topic can help to achieve not only the social science curricular objec-
tives and competences but also engage the learners’ in a meaningful and empa-
thetic experience. In the specific topic of migratory movements, the multi-level
approach allows us to enlighten the complexity of the migratory phenomenon
(macro-level) without losing sight of the human component of this topic (micro-
level). Intergenerational learning aims to develop teaching reciprocity between dif-
ferent generations while valuing and preserving the social capital.

Intergenerational digital creation

In order to develop the proposed multi-level approach we will explore an in-
tergenerational digital narrative creation experience engaging an experienced
person (50+) as a narrative “director”. As the narrative director, the experienced
person share her migration experience through a short life narrative of 30 minutes.
The life narrative focus on the migration topic process aims to help the secondary
level student to understand the historic events through her life experience. After
sharing the narrative, the students and the experienced participant engages the
digital creation of the life narrative.

18
 Figure 1. Intergenerational digital creation.

Intergenerational communication and learning empowers different genera-

tions to value shared knowledge (Ivan & Fernández-Ardèvol, 2014; Newman &
Hatton-Yeo, 2008). Simultaneously taking advantage of the digital uses of younger
generations and the life experiences of older adults, our study aims to develop
intergenerational digital stories which are based on an older adult’s life narrative,
but created in an intergenerational context where children and teens shape the life
narrative through their questions and helps to create a digital release of the life
narrative. The objective of our study is then to introduce digital narratives as an
intergenerational creative process where teens learn from the experience of older
adults and, reciprocally, older adults develop new uses of technologies through
participating with teens in the digital creation of their life narrative.
In the collaborative digital creation experience, the learners benefits from the
experienced person life narrative and the experienced person benefits from the
digital creation activity in collaboration with the secondary-level students. Despite
stereotypes, older adults are often interested in new technologies but their learn-
ing and assessment criteria are distinct: older adults typically use more reflexive
and selective approaches instead of the trial-and-error exploratory approach of
youngsters (Kiel, 2005; Selwyn, Gorard, & Furlong, 2005). Intergenerational digital
practice will confront these two approaches of technologies; we expect that the
confrontation of these two types of ICT uses could help teenagers develop a more
acute critical sense vis-à-vis technology and lead older adults to an approach valu-
ing more trial and error experimentations.

Methodology
The experience proposed in this study is based on a participatory design ap-
proach of digital interactive narratives and knowledge-based games (Blat et al.,
2012; Vanden Abeele & Van Rompaey, 2006). We aim to engage both youngers
and older people in digital creation activities (Hyvönen et al. 2013; Uzor et al. 2012)

19
oriented towards the development of creative uses of technologies (Romero & Bar-
berà, 2015). The goal of this intergenerational learning activity is not the life narra-
tive as a product but the digital life narrative participative creation as an intergen-
erational learning process.
The pilot study engaged a senior participant (50+) and secondary level students
(n=8) in Québec. The senior participant shared her life narrative as a political refu-
gee who had immigrated to Québec. They created together an interactive Digital
Educational Resource (DER) based on the life narrative, and experience of immi-
gration of the senior refugee. This activity addresses the curricular objective in the
5th year of the secondary level school program in Québec, which includes “migra-
tion” as a topic (MELS, 2001). The intergenerational digital creation experience in
the pilot project was based on an intergenerational participatory design approach
(Newman & Hatton-Yeo, 2008) to promote an open discussion on the topic of migra-
tion and a guided interactive digital life narrative construction.

Interview template and storyboard for structuring the life narrative creation
In the process of preparing the intergenerational life narrative creation, the
pedagogical adviser of the school shared her concerns on the duration of the activ-
ity. While she was sure about the interest of this participative learning activity, she
wanted to be sure that we control the time of the experience in order to ensure the
curriculum plans are not disturbed. We agreed on dedicating one single morning
to the experience and offer it as an optional activity. A total of 8 students partici-
pated in the 3 hours pilot. In order to ensure the digital life narrative can be devel-
oped in one single morning we prepared two guidance materials to facilitate the
interaction between the experienced person and the learners. The first material in
the interview template aims to guide the discussion between high school students
and the immigrant that shares her experience. In order to facilitate the sharing of
key elements to the migration experience that will be mobilized to learn migration
themes, we elaborated a blueprint organized in 8 different information categories:
(1) Origins (country, city, year of birth), (2) Migration motives but also reasons
to stay in the country of origin, (3) Decision on the country for immigration and
alternative countries that have considered during the migration decision-making
process, (4) Immigration program applied and falicitators entities or persons dur-
ing the migration process, (5) Arrival date in Quebec, city and season of arrival
(Québec has four distinct, including a Winter among the coolest in Eastern Cana-
da) (6) Professional and social insertion, including the integration challenges, (7)
Job search strategy and (8) overall appreciation of the immigration experience and
advice for other immigrants.

20
 Figure 2. Interview template

The interview template also helped the experienced person to know the aspects
of her life that were fitting the social sciences curriculum objectives and orient the
learners toward the key information permeating their life experience. The inter-
view template facilitated note taking for the students and was also used to start
the informal discussion between them and the experienced adult about her im-
migration story.
Based on their notes, the learners engaged together with the experienced adult
in the creation of a storyboard. The storyboard aimed at structuring the note-tak-
ing into different scenes. In the game engine Scratch, a scene is a unit of interac-
tion composed by a stage (a background photo, scenary of stage set) and sprites
(any non-background element in the scene such characters, objects, interface but-
tons…). In the context of Microsoft Office, a scene corresponds a slide which in-
clude a stage and other non-background elements (characters, buttons). In order
to facilitate the procedure, the researcher created a worked example on her own
migration experience.

21
 Interview template item Scene

Figure 3. Interview template and scene

Making a correspondence between the scene of each of the items in the inter-
view template, helped to transpose the life narrative into an interactive digital for-
mat.

Introducing false-but-plausible alternatives choices

Constructing a linear life narrative would had not introduced a sufficient level
of interactivity or challenge to make the learners to develop the critical thinking
competencies related to the social sciences curriculum. In order to make the learn-
ers to reflect on the decision-making done by the experienced person during her
migration process we invited the learners to image other false-but-plausible alter-
native choices that could be considered as reasonable within the life narrative and
context they have started to discover with the immigration person. For each of the
interview template items, the learners were invited to create two or more addi-
tional false-but-plausible alternative choices in the storyboard.
The storyboard was transposed into a digital interactive story by using Pow-
erPoint. In each scene/slide, the interactive choices included the real answer pro-
vided by the immigrant subject and two (or more) additional, wrong answers that
were used to increase the playability of the interactive story. Additional answers
introduced plausible facts that were not part of the immigrant narrative. For each
of the answers, the experienced adult helped the learners develop a comment
feedback that would appear when clicking to the correct or incorrect answer on
the end-user interface.
Once the storyboard was validated with the immigrant, the learners created an
interactive life narrative by introducing each steps of the migration process deci-
sion-making and the different, plausible alternatives within the migration process
that were described in the storyboard.
In this example of decision-making regarding immigration motives, students
have to understand what were the immigrant motives (in this case to leave a com-
munist regime hindering personal liberty and development), but they also have to
understand other possible motives (for example: to flee a civil war, lack of work…)

22
 Figure 4. Multiple choice screen

that allows students that are using this digital resource to choose between alterna-
tive answers, some correct and others that while being highly plausible are not
applicable to this present narrative. The correct answers correspond to those given
explicitly by the migrant; the incorrect answers come from students’ critical think-
ing on alternatives in each decision-making step. In this pilot experience, the soft-
ware PowerPoint was used to allow student to develop a narrative in a limited
amount of time (3 hours). However, the use of a digital game creation environ-
ment likes Scratch or Gamesalalad were considered to create a more complex gam-
ing environment. The use of a game creation environment support the develop-
ment of 21st competencies such creativity and computational thinking.

Discussion of the pilot experience

This pilot experience has been really positive for every participating target
group. We are now going to analyse the experience’s impact for each of the groups.

Secondary students’ experience

Participating high school students (n=8) reported a much more engaging expe-
rience than in their traditional, lecture-based classes. They also spontaneously ex-
pressed their interest in combining traditional transmissive method (macro-social)
with the life narrative technique (micro-social) to develop a richer vision of the
migration thematic. The students also showed a great interest toward the older
adults’ life narrative. Students told us that the activity helped them learn a lot on
aspects of the communist regime that were unknown to them at the time and have
a more nuanced view of the regime in place in Eastern Europe in the 60’s and 70’s.
The narrative of the older adult showed both the negative aspects of the regime

23
(most notably an important lack of individual freedom) and the positive ones, like
a more progressive view on women’s equality compared that what was going on
in Québec at the same time. High school students learning went far beyond the
migration thematic and allowed to establish links with other social sciences con-
cept that are studied throughout high school. Indeed, through the first-hand ex-
perience of the older adult, students were introduced to other concepts present
in the history and contemporary world curriculum like political regime, freedom,
democracy, citizenship, equality and delocalization.

Older immigrant experience

The experience of the immigrant participant was also reported as being very
positive. Sharing her life narrative with high school students allowed her to devel-
op a more nuanced vision of the communist regime and give them an example of
an individual that is a perfectly integrated and contributing member to Québec’s
society. The migrant emphasizes the importance of having a blueprint to facilitate
her storytelling. Thanks to the migrant, the blueprint was improved in order to
facilitate her testimony on her first impressions when she arrived in Québec.

School board experience

The pedagogical counselor of Marcelle Mallet High school showed interest in
creating a digital educational resource trough an intergenerational and participa-
tory approach. She put emphasize on the students commitment during the activity
and, after the experience, perceived it as a great educational tool. A future high
school teacher is currently improving the digital creation issued from this expe-
rience in order to use it again with other students. A second intergenerational
life narrative creation experience is expected during the Silver Gaming Summer
School that is going to take place in Québec City on August 20th-21st. Complemen-
tary analyses will continue to explore this intergenerational learning activity in a
Contemporary World program context.

Acknowledgements
The author aims to acknowledge the contribution to the revision of this manu-
script by Hubert Ouellet, fellowship within the Ageing + Communication + Tech-
nology (ACT) project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada (SSHRC); and the contribution to the research experience of
Nadia Kichkina, Mélanie Bourgault and the students of the Marcelle Mallet school,
the research assistants Benjamin Lille, Jean-Nicolas Proulx and Azeneth Patino.

24
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27
 New Media Typography

Otilia ARMEAN
Lecturer, PhD
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania
Department of Applied Social Sciences
E-mail: armeano@ms.sapientia.ro

Abstract: New media and connected new publication types emerging in

the late 19th and the 20th century (film, television, internet) have raised
new questions regarding the role of typography in publishing. Clearly,
works of typography and publishing have always served a wide dissemi-
nation of ideas to reach a larger audience, and it was evident that the use
of typographic conventions was part of the message itself even if these
conventions were used by professionals such as printers or typesetters
who were clearly distinct from the author.
Typography is separated from the social communication context of publi-
cation, while it is also separated from the paper-based medium and typo-
graphic works. The following paper aims at analyzing the types of typog-
raphy and the way it is influenced by the new media.

Keywords: Typography, New Media, visual communication, the typo-

graphic code.

Changing Landscape of Technologies and Typography

“The semiotic changes are vast enough to warrant the term ‘revolution’, of two
kinds; of the modes of representation on the one hand, from the centrality of writ-
ing to the increasing significance of image; and of the media of dissemination on
the other, from the centrality of the medium of the book to the medium of the
screen” (Kress 2005, 6).

Journal of Media Research,

281(24) / 2016, pp. 28-38
Vol. 9 Issue
 “However, owing to the universal access to digital technology, the word »ty-
pography« is increasingly used to refer to the arrangement of any written material
and is certainly no longer restricted to the work of a typographer. Everyone is a
typographer now…” (Jury 2006, 8).
Ideally, this means that authors can now influence these aspects of their mes-
sage as well, they can take into account the typographic form that their work will
present itself to the readers already when choosing the words, joining the sen-
tences, coupling the images of their works. However, it may also mean that the
typographic choices are neglected or result in a series of bad or unfounded deci-
sions, because typographic choices are today no longer part of the publications, of
disseminating (expert) opinion in the public space. Clearly, the webpages of new
media, news feeds of social networks or publishing areas of blogs do not usually
permit the information to go through all the traditional steps of publication (re-
view, proofreading, personalized typographic form).
However, the information published on online interfaces cannot fully lack ty-
pographic works: and this is the point where the user, the commissioner is ex-
posed to the expert, the typographer, the graphic designer. Desktop publishing
software made it possible for everyone to create their own wedding invitations,
but the web-based interfaces of new media only lets one choose between pre-cod-
ed options. It is far from certain that we can always set the typeface for our text,
and we must also come to terms with the fact that the typographic parameters of
our text may be modified according to the users’ needs when downloading, sav-
ing or reading our content.
Nonetheless, it is a great mistake to assume that typography will be subsidiary
or less important because of all these changes and needless to be researched on its
own. Experts dealing with selling various products, services and information pay
huge sums for the research of users’ habits, the effect of advertisements, conditions
of readability and even eye movements. More precisely, they finance researches in
order to find out what makes something easily readable or remembered, to find
the determinants of what captures our attention from a huge amount of informa-
tion, what are our eyes drawn to, what we read through and why. Part of our
reading habits are biologically, physiologically determined (the size of the letters
we can read, the distance it takes for letters to be distinguishable), another part
derives from our culture, so it is learned (the form of lines and margins, reading
direction – everything that can be associated with different conventions in a differ-
ent writing system).
Bradley, for instance, analyzes the Gutenberg diagram, Z and F pattern lay-
outs, and draws attention to the fact that a well functioning visual hierarchy can
overwrite these patterns and program our eyes to follow other layouts (Bradley
2011). The reader can be permanently trained and new conventions – even if for

29
one single publication – can always be formed in addition to the old ones. New
rules can be based on forgotten habits (for instance marginal notes), but also on
new developments of visual communication (formal changes of new media, for
instance the film, mobile applications or graphical interfaces may all significantly
change users’ habits.)
This way, in the light of the indisputable advantages of visual communication,
typeface choices and character size (in terms of good readability on various carri-
ers) as well as the text as a typographically shaped image are paramount.

Typography and Visual Communication

When we are talking about visual communication, what comes to mind most
often is the power of the image, and how it serves social practices and ideologies,
as well as questions of identity, effect, pragmatism. We should assume, based on
this, that we have long been aware of the characteristics of the image as a media
system, we know the differences between a visual sign and a linguistic sign and
the definition of culture as multimedial representation is no longer a great theo-
retical challenge for us.
However, the image is, by nature, something that avoids the strictness of theo-
retical discourse; or reversely, the place that the image takes up in theoretical dis-
course is where one slips into the tropological movements of substitutions. For
truth is “a reorganizing troop of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms”,
truths are “illusions”, “coins losing their images”. In Nietzsche’s view the concep-
tual construct of the man of reason is shattered by the bold, unheard of images,
the whimsical, incoherent, seductive new shapes, dreams, metaphors of the man
of intuition.
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthro-
pomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and
rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage,
seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. „Truths are illusions which
we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out
and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing
and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins” (Nietzsche 1873).
It would be extremely useful, indeed, if we could control images, if we had
dictionaries that gave, once and for all, the right definition of visual signifiers. Al-
though Kress and Van Leeuwen’s enterprise, the methodology of reading images
(Kress–Van Leeuwen 2006), offered guidance as to the universal grammar that de-
termines how images can be associated with meanings and elaborated the criteria
for decoding vague or ambiguous images based on reading or interpretive actions,
no answer was given to the question of what happens if it takes too long to operate
these actions and the decision taken on a pragmatic basis is more of an obstacle for

30
such a kind of reading of images. One seeks a fast reading experience and this is
precisely what images promise.
Contradictions connected to visuality begin with rapidity. It is both easier and
faster to send an emoticon than writing down how we feel. However, the emoticons
are chosen from a finite set, and their usage is becoming almost compulsory. Quot-
ing Ferenc Hammer: “I still cannot bring myself to using emoticons. I had no idea it
has got so attached to people, only my friends said they’d be offended if I didn’t use
them for they’d feel my message is too harsh. What’s more, who on earth would
have thought what I had read somewhere not long ago, that the period is stronger
than the exclamation mark. That is, the period is the new exclamation mark” (Inkei
2015). “The period was always the humblest of punctuation marks. Recently, how-
ever, it’s started getting angry. I’ve noticed it in my text messages and online chats,
where people use the period not simply to conclude a sentence, but to announce »I
am not happy about the sentence I just concluded«” (Crair 2013).
When we use web-based user interfaces, we may choose from preset and de-
signed options, yet we also have to be aware of the permanent changes. The val-
ues of our old punctuation marks change, other marks come to the surface, whose
original meaning has faded. When we use the number sign or hash character to
signal hashtags (the conceptual frame of our post), then we think neither of any
weight reference (pound), nor the number sign on telephone keypads, or the musi-
cal symbol “sharp” noting a raised semitone. The period is not a period, the excla-
mation mark is no longer an exclamation mark. If we use no punctuation, then the
correctly used marks or other additional characters may have an extra significance
compared to the lack of marks. “But it’s also as if a kind of micro-punctuation has
emerged: tiny marks in the smallest of spaces that suddenly tell us more about the
person on the other end than the words themselves” (Bennett 2015).
As a result, web is the medium with the shortest memory, although every-
thing can be searched in it. And, although supposedly everything can be double-
checked and programmed in it and exists only that what has been programmed,
basic things are missing from it. Yes, we are able to conjure the most varied of
emoticons, there is an application that allows us to send only emoticons to each
other, but we cannot apply the basic rules of typography, such as italicizing titles,
either in Facebook or in prezi also used in academia. There would probably be
even less typographic options for us had it not been for Steve Jobs, who aban-
doned his regular studies to choose a course in calligraphy instead: “If I had never
dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multi-
ple typefaces or proportionally spaced characters. And since Windows just copied
the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never
dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and person-
al computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do” (Jobs 2005).

31
 Visible typography
Advertising is probably the medium that makes best use of typography’s qual-
ity to be able to visually display the content of the text. Image and text become
thus vehicles of the same message: we do not only read that prices are low here
and there, but also see that the word “price” is also smaller in size than the other
words of the advertisement. Not only do we read that services bring people clos-
er together, but also see that the text presenting it fills the entire space available,
pushing the boundaries and coming so close to the viewer that it may even seem
quite intrusive.

Figure 1. We apologize to the claustrophobics! // We made the world look much smaller //
All of our services are meant to diminish the distance between people
// www.posta-romana.ro (Tabu, November 2005, p. 31)

The traditional handbooks of typography do not offer enough guidance to un-

derstand and analyze the creations of kinetic typography and the advertisements,
film inserts, TV spots and subtitles consciously using the elements, rules and ef-
fects of typography. In fact, these books also contain all information and data for
producing or describing the typographic effects of texts, but the approach itself is
often not enough to go beyond the book: the typographic product considered the
greatest of all. In his previously quoted book, David Jury emphasizes that for non-
professionals typography may seem a sum of rules necessitating a scary preci-

32
sion, because it uses technical terms, its technological background is inaccessible,
it is based on strict traditional rules, and its professionalism appears as a care for
the minutest details. Jury also mentions that it is even scarier when it turns out
that some rules should not, cannot, or perhaps must not be always observed (Jury
2006, p. 18).
Typography is traditionally “invisible”, it stays in the background, it reaches
its purpose if we do not notice it. However, in case of products, which use typog-
raphy as a semiotic code, the letters, the writings, the image of writing does not
have to stay in the background, it comes to the forefront and claims our attention.
This is so true in the following example that the creators even used blind text
(“lorem ipsum”) to make the advertisement. Blind or placeholder texts were origi-
nally used by typographers in order for the meaning of the text not to distract
attention from the text form, the typeface and the layout. In the Davidsign adver-
tisement the names of the services were hidden in the blind text, proving that the
highlights in themselves with an appropriate graphical background may draw the
attention of the viewers, so one can obtain a major effect even employing minor
design elements.

Figure 2. Davidsign (Photomagazine, May 2010, p. 95)

Typography is not the “clothing” of the message which is secondary to the

content, but a code system which has its independent signs and also contains the

33
rules of the combination of signs. It may have access to the meaning of the mes-
sage in several ways, it may enforce it, discredit it, make it uncertain, and may
generate extra meanings. For instance, the typographic design of the information
may spare some lengthy verbal descriptions or may save one a meaningless in-
troductory sentence. Theo van Leeuwen in his study Towards a Semiotics of Typog-
raphy (Van Leeuwen 2006) considers that verbality is one of the ways to produce
textual coherence (with help of the means of micro- and macrocohesion, such as
thematic structure, anaphoric and cataphoric references, or use of pronouns), the
other is visual textual coherence (with its means: page design, color, typography).
For instance, when we organize the raw data in tables to display them clearer and
make the connections more visible, then we produce textual coherence with visual
means.

The typographic code

Van Leeuwen argues, in what follows, that a system of meanings can be estab-
lished on the basis of typographic features, and the reader/viewer can be guided
in interpretation and conveyance of meaning by the existence or absence of these
qualities. Such features are the line thickness, character width, tilt angle, curves,
linkage, orientation, regularity, and other non-distinctive features (personalized
diacritical marks, curlicues, decorated characters, etc).
In case of character linkage, for example, one must see whether the characters in
a typeface are linked to each other like in handwriting, or they form independent
units. Van Leeuwen exemplifies different grades of linkage with typefaces Lucida
Handwriting, Lucida Calligraphy and Lucida Console. Linkage can be associated
with handwriting as well, therefore it usually creates the symbolic fields of mean-
ing together with the tilt angle feature, but it can also be interpreted individually
and, in case unity, completeness and linkage are absent, it can be associated with
the meaning of fragmentariness.
The feature of tilt angle is meaningful in the context of the opposition of hand-
written and printed text, and it can be interpreted with the help of meanings and
values of the following opposition pairs: organic – mechanic, personal – imper-
sonal, informal – formal, manual – mechanic, old – new, etc.
Based on the insights of the semiotics of typography and Van Leeuwen’s ar-
guments, one can clearly state that the postcard featured in figure no. 3 uses the
semiotic codes of typography. The old–new opposition that appears in the text of
the postcard is intensified by the chosen typefaces: the characters of “old times”
come from the written category, the changing line thickness hints to the use of
a nib pen, the linked characters to the calligraphic, precisely drawn letters of the
time when writing was taught traditionally, when it needed time and people had
the time for it. The two elements of the expression “new days” are differentiated

34
in character size and color, although the typeface is in both cases a sans-serif (Gro-
tesque). Characters lack linkage not only on word level, but also in syntactic units,
everything falls apart, everything needs to be searched, the various tenses (present
and past) use different character lines, widths and different highlights, and in this
typographic space of past remembrance the lines can get too close to one another,
and the upper case writing may switch to low case writing. The various frames of
the visual background amplify this typographically created world with multiple
viewpoints, shifting from the present to the past, but incapable of reconstructing
the past tense in its entirety.

Figure 3. Old times… New days

(Free card: Boomerang Supports Art. Görög Ferenc Gábor – Galyas Csaba. Free Boomerang Card)

Although Van Leeuwen argues that the utilization of the interface, the page de-
sign (page spread) also entails the use of semiotic codes, he fails to analyze these in
his above mentioned article. In the followings, I shall use Hartmut Stöckl’s system
to continue the analysis, who regards typography as a sign system between lan-
guage and image. He distinguishes between four different scopes of typography,
based on which he speaks about: micro-typography, meso-typography, macro-
typography and para-typography (Stöckl 2005). Micro-typography deals with the
design and use of typefaces and single graphic signs, and includes the typeface,
character size, character version, shades and colors of the typeface.
Meso-typography is responsible for organizing characters and graphic marks
into lines and text blocks: character spacing, word spacing, character organiza-
tion, alignment, line spacing, typesetting. Macro-typography discusses the over-
all graphic structure of the entire publication: paragraphs, indentations, initials,
highlights, ornamentations, rules of text and image organization. Para-typogra-

35
phy explores the materials, instruments and techniques of the use and production
of graphic signs: questions of the paper carrier, the conventions of signaling and
leaving signs.
Figure no. 4 is a typographic advertisement: the means of persuasion is the
well designed text itself. Its analysis requires more than the description of micro-
typographic instruments: micro-, meso- and macro-typography resources must be
analyzed as a whole and possible influences must be taken into consideration.
On the basis of pagination, one may easily identify a dictionary entry (serif
typeface, with the changing width of Renaissance antiqua letters), with the first line
being the headword (capitalization, with added accent sign), plural of the head-
word (smaller character size, italicized), abbreviations of part of speech (noun),
grammatical gender (masculine) (same smaller character size, italicized). The first
line is followed by the definition, in a left aligned, unindented new paragraph. The
last line of a dictionary entry, starting with a hyphen, contains information on the
etymology of the word, and according to the typographic conventions of the dic-
tionary, it employs italics, abbreviations and bold type.

Figure 4. Bachelor // Unmarried man over 40, who matches for short periods of time and at any worldly
occasion his accounts, cabrio and cigars with the charms of persons between 18 and 20 years of age,
preferably possessors of a “miss” or at least “supermodel of the year” title. // From Russian, Ucrainian //
www.cotidianul.ro // You understand more (Tabu, October 2005, p. 127)

36
 That it is not exactly a traditional dictionary, is shown by the facts that: 1. typo-
graphically, that the color of the writing is red (identical to the color of the point in
the title and logo of the advertised newspaper), 2. the interpretation of the verbal
code shows that the text itself is ironic and communicates details which could by
no means be part of a dictionary definition (much rather of the columns of a daily
tabloid). The name of the press product (Cotidianul), the logo and the web address
are written in serif typeface. The serif–sans-serif contrast implies the opposition
of old and new media, the advertisement suggests that the newspaper (also avail-
able on a digital platform) replaces the book, the dictionary, and the reader can
only understand the new meanings of old words from here. This opposition and
dominance may also result from the use of the interface, the visual occupation of
the emphatic lower right corner.
Kress and Van Leeuwen write about the semiotic codes of the composition, and
they list three essential points of view. The first is the information value deriving
from the placement of the elements (right and left, upper and lower, center and
margins), the second is the emphasis (various means of highlighting, which di-
rect more attention to certain elements than to others), the third is framing, which
emphasizes the connection or separation of certain elements, or forms directions
of reading or looking. While in case of emphasis and framing one may associate
meanings depending on the elements used and the layout, the layout is also influ-
enced by culturally defined rules: right and left corresponds to the opposition of
new and old, up and down to ideal and real, centering is the emphasis of the most
important element of the composition, compared to which the degrees of margin-
ality appear.
Typography faces new challenges and also new opportunities by the new me-
dia and new genres, and these create new rules for readability and new frame-
works for interpretation. The use of codes presented here is especially important
in multimodal genres of text and image like the poster, which summarizes and
displays the results of research, the scientific illustration and the infographics. The
balance between the text to be read and the image to be looked at changes alter-
nately, while it is also true that one must see the text and read the image as well.
Moreover, reality itself becomes typographic (augmented reality), the perceived
view and the viewer are separated by a typographic stratum indicating guide-
lines, locations, and directions of orientation.

Translated by Emese Czintos

37
 References
1. Bennett, Jessica (2015). “When Your Punctuation Says It All” (!), New York Times,
2015/3. [URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/style/when-your-punctuation-
says-it-all.html] accessed on July 10., 2015.
2. Bradley, Steven (2011). 3 Design Layouts: Gutenberg Diagram, Z-Pattern, and F-Pattern.
[URL: http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/3-design-layouts/] accessed on
July 10., 2015.
3. Crair, Ben (2013). “The Period Is Pissed When did our plainest punctuation mark
become so aggressive?”, [URL: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115726/peri-
od-our-simplest-punctuation-mark-has-become-sign-anger] accessed on July 10.,
2015.
4. Inkei Bence (2015). “A kommentelés a leghiábavalóbb dolog a világon – Hammer
Ferenc a Cinknek”, Cink.hu,. February 2015 [URL: http://cink.hu/a-kommenteles-a-
leghiabavalobb-dolog-a-vilagon-hammer-1685396115].
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[URL: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html].
6. Jury, David (2006). What is Typography? Essential Design Handbook. RotoVision.
7. Kress, Gunther (2005). “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and
learning”, Computers and composition 22. 5–22. [URL: http://gossettphd.org/library/
kress_gainsandlosses.pdf] accessed on July 10., 2015.
8. Kress, Gunther – Van Leeuwen, Theo (2006). Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual
Design. London – New York, Routledge.
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pastehtml.com/view/crz4xb2u4.html] accessed on July 10., 2015.
10. Stöckl, Hartmut (2005). “Typography: body and dress of a text – a signing mode
between language and image”, Visual Communication. 4/2. (The New Typography)
204-214. [URL: http://stoeckl.sbg.ac.at/Stoeckl/Publikationen_2_files/Stoeckl_Ty-
pography_2005.pdf].
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sign Journal +Document Design 14 (2): 139–155.

38
 The Perception of Young Adults
on Intelligent Advertising.
A Case Study on Romania

Ioana IANCU
Lecturer, PhD
“Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Department of Communication and Public Relations
Email: iancu@fspac.ro

Abstract: This study investigates the way intelligent advertising, name-

ly advertising through augmented reality, is perceived by young adults.
Based on a population of young adults studying advertising and comput-
er science, the research’s main hypothesis is that although the advanced
technology is accepted as a natural flow, there is still a relatively high
skepticism regarding the use of augmented reality techniques in adver-
tising. The results should have implication for both the academic and
the business environment. Academically, the paper might open a new
research perspective regarding the impact of new technologies in com-
munication science. In the business context, the data might influence the
way technology is perceived by the advertising practitioners and the way
companies adopt new technologies for marketing purpose.

Keywords: intelligent advertising, augmented reality, advertising,

technology.

Introduction
We live in a society characterized by a growing inflation of marketing mes-
sages. At the same time, the consumer becomes more and more sophisticated and
increasingly aware of the manipulative role of advertising. However, the techno-

Journal of Media Research,

391(24) / 2016, pp. 39-59
Vol. 9 Issue
logical evolution has gained the capacity to change the way advertising is per-
ceived, mainly by the young generations that use smart devices in their everyday
life within interactive frameworks. In this context, this paper, being rather a de-
scriptive attempt, aims to empirically investigate the role of intelligent advertis-
ing, namely advertising through augmented reality, on young adults’ life.
The meaning of intelligent advertising is twofold. On one hand, intelligent ad-
vertising refers to personalized or customized marketing messages. Personalized
advertising is defined as “a form of customized promotional messages that are delivered
to each individual consumer through paid media based on personal information (such
as consumers’ names, past buying history, demographics, psychographics, locations, and
lifestyle interests)” (Baek and Morimoto 2012, p. 59). For instance, the supermarket
Tesco, one of the online sales leader in United Kingdom, already uses personal-
ized messages by sending consumers specific offers based on correlations with
past buying behavior patterns (Adams 2004, p. 72). On the other hand, intelligent
advertising means marketing information transmitted through intelligent devic-
es. Although the technology is believed to serve only as a carrier (Adams 2004, p.
73), in a context characterized by a growing volume of information, artificial in-
telligence might become indispensable and profoundly applicable (Adams 2004,
p. 78).
Based on knowledge connectivity, reasoning and social connectivity (Davis
2008), the Future Internet paradigms (semantic web, augmented reality, affective
computing, cloud computing etc.) influence the way advertising messages are de-
veloped. Merging the entire range of computer networks into one single IT plat-
form (Vermesan et al. 2009, p. 10), the Internet of Things, as the major component
of Future Internet, allows people and object to be connected anytime, anyplace,
with anything and anyone, using any network and any service (Vermesan et al.
2009, p. 12). In a framework that increasingly implies interactions between the real
(physical) and the digital (virtual) world through intelligent devices, things be-
come context aware and capable of data exchange (Vermesan et al. 2009, p. 13).
The sample used in the research is formed of students from advertising (Babes-
Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) and students from computer science
(Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania). There are two reasons for choos-
ing this sample. First, students are the most appropriate group of people as they
are young and very much informed on new technologies. Second, the two spe-
cializations, advertising and computer science, are exactly the domains of interest
for this research. The research method is the opinion survey. We hypothesize that
although the advanced technology is widely accepted as a natural flow of the so-
ciety, there is a relatively high skepticism regarding the use of augmented reality
techniques in advertising. We expect to find deep differences between the pro-
spective advertising specialists and the prospective computer science specialists.

40
 Theoretical Framework
The theoretical part of the paper emphasizes two main concepts: augmented
reality and intelligent advertising. As augmented reality implies technologies that
can be used in a variety of domains, intelligent advertising integrates augmented
reality within the marketing domain.
Carmigniani and Furht (2011, p. 3) define augmented reality as a view of the
real environment that is enhanced with virtual, computer generated information.
Azuma considers that augmented reality implies a 3D and real time integration
of computer generated images and real environment (Azuma in Balog et al. 2008,
p. 163). By providing a new paradigm for human-computer interaction (Shen et
al. 2011, p. 523) augmented reality is a comfortable mechanism that can simplify
the lives of the users by providing extra information to the real word in real time
(Carmigniani and Furht 2011, p. 3) using technology. Augmented reality differs
from Virtual reality. While in virtual reality individuals are completely immersed
in the virtual environment, in augmented reality virtual objects and the reality co-
exist in the same space (Girbacia 2010, p. 791). While the line between reality and
computer-generated content becomes increasingly blurred with modern technol-
ogy (IJsselsteijn et al. 2005 in Regenbrecht et al. 2011, p. 559), augmented reality can
serve for reconstructing the missing parts of the reality, for instance a human hand
(Regenbrecht et al. 2011, p. 559).
Augmented reality aims “to enable a person to carry out sensory-motor and cogni-
tive activities in a new space by associating the real environment and a virtual environ-
ment” (Hugues, Fuchs and Nannipieri 2011, p. 49). It can be a helpful and optimiz-
ing tool within the decision-making process (Hugues, Fuchs and Nannipieri 2011,
p. 50). In the same respect, Kalkofen et al. (2011, p. 65) consider that augmented
reality applications supplement the real environment with synthetic information.
Moreover, this information must be generated in real time and the virtual objects
must be registered with real world structures (Azuma et al. in Kalkofen et al. 2011,
p. 65).
Mobile phone is one of the most convenient platforms for using augmented
reality, by being equipped with cameras, accelerometers, magnetometers and
GPS systems (Carmigniani and Furht 2011, pp. 20-21). There is a large number
of augmented reality applications for iPhones as WikitudeDrive (a GPS applica-
tions that allows individuals to keep the eyes on the road while understanding
the GPS guidelines) or Le Bar Guide (an application that guides the individuals
to the nearest place where they can drink Stella Artois beer) (Carmigniani and
Furht 2011, p. 36). Ullah khan et al. (2011, p. 92) refer to Layar and Wikitude as
two examples of mobile augmented reality applications that are now available for
both Android and iPhone platforms. Showing real and virtual objects in the same
space, augmented reality is increasingly applied to product marketing, map navi-

41
gation, teaching, and commerce (Botella et al., 2011 in Chang et al. 2011, p. 581),
to entertainment and education domains (Carmigniani and Furht 2011, pp. 29-30;
Lee 2012, p. 14), to medical field (Carmigniani and Furht 2011, pp. 33-35), and to
designing products’ physical parts or prototypes (Lee 2012, p. 14).
If we consider that the evolution of advertising overlaps the technological evo-
lution, we might claim that augmented reality is one of the most efficient future
technologies for promotional messages. Most techniques already used within the
marketing domain require the individuals to use the webcam either on special
software or on company’s websites. One example very present within the litera-
ture is the Mini Cooper car company example: navigating on the website of the
company, the individual must show the ad in front of the webcam and a 3-D Mini
appeared on the screen (Carmigniani and Furht 2011, p. 24). Another very popular
example is the Magic Mirror, a system that allows the individuals to try the shoes
virtually prior to buying them. The user is thus able to see the reflection of the
shoes in the Magic Mirror, which is an LCD screen, without having to test them
per se. One of the advantages is that of having the possibility of personalizing the
shoes based on the color or details preference. Technically speaking, the individu-
als must use special socks with sensors and infrared reflective painted-on mark-
ers, used as a tracking system (Carmigniani and Furht 2011, p. 26). Similar systems
can be used for trying on clothes (Carmigniani and Furht 2011, p. 28). At the same
time, marketing augmented reality is efficient due to the possibility of building
virtual prototypes of products, which are less expensive (Carmigniani and Furht
2011, p. 25).
Since the market place becomes an increasingly complex space with large and
competing number of digital media, the nature of advertising must be reexamined
(Adams 2004, p. 68). Being addressed to the “always-on” generations, the adver-
tising message must be more individualized and contextualized (Adams 2004, p.
70). Moreover, the consumer behavior is changing by becoming more conversa-
tional, more human, and more interactive (Adams 2004, p. 69). Thus, digital media
allows advertisers to talk directly to the customers in a more natural, open, direct,
customized, and personalized language (Cluetrain 2000 in Adams 2004, p. 69).
Considering that a traditional advertising campaign is no longer satisfactory and
efficient, “the right message has to be delivered to the right person at the right time in the
correct context” (Adams 2004, p. 70).
Becoming an important element within the advertising mix, the Internet offers
the two main unique features: addressability – a direct and targeted communi-
cation with the consumer, and responsiveness – an interactive communication is
which the receiver’s respond is very important (Deighton 1997 in Pergelova et al.
2010, p. 41). In the same respect, interactivity is considered one of the main reasons
that make the Internet an efficient advertising tool (Roberts and Ko 2001 in Per-

42
gelova et al. 2010, p. 41). It brings a mutual benefit for advertisers and consumers:
while advertisers have the possibility to specifically target the consumers and to
differentiate them based on preferences and post-purchase behavior (Roberts and
Ko 2001 in Pergelova et al. 2010, p. 41), consumers have the possibility to select the
preferred advertisements and the way they want to interact (Pavlou and Stewart
2000, Pergelova et al. 2010, p. 41).
The literature claims that the growth of interactive advertising is partly due
to the sophistication of the consumer and thus the increased sophistication of the
advertising content and production (Adams 2004, p. 71). It is believed that the
most effective form of digital advertising is the one that encourages the consumer
to pass on the received message, thus creating viral messages (Adams 2004, p. 70).
Although augmented reality is perceived either as a topic that raises contro-
versies regarding long-term benefits or only as a promotional tool, it is defined
as a form of experiential marketing by contributing to the development of a posi-
tive relationship between customer and brand (Bulearca and Tamarjan 2010, 238).
Moreover, it focuses not only on the product but emphasizes the experience lived
by the consumer (Yuan and Wu 2008 in Bulearca and Tamarjan 2010, 238) and
the emotions one feels within the interaction. While augmented reality is a tool of
experiential marketing, it is likely to deliver both emotional and functional value,
and positive satisfaction (Schmitt 1999 in Bulearca and Tamarjan 2010, 240) and
to induce the need of promoting the product to other people or of purchasing the
product (Yuan and Wu 2008 in Bulearca and Tamarjan 2010, 240).
Based on the above literature review, the paper further analyzes the way young
adults perceive augmented realty from the point of view of the way it can be used
in advertising and from the point of view of the feelings it is associated with.

Methodological Framework
Methodological design
The paper aims to analyze the main perceptions of advertising and computer
science students on advanced technology and on using augmented reality in ad-
vertising. The hypotheses of the paper are the following:
H1: The concept of augmented reality is not entirely understood either by advertising
students or by computer science ones.
Although there are individuals that have heard of the concept of augmented
reality, mainly due to the development of Google Glasses, they are not yet able
to give an exact definition of the concept or to connect the concept of augmented
reality with certain types of technologies. In addition, we expect small differences
between the way advertising and computer science students understand the term
of augmented reality.

43
 H2: Although the advanced technology is widely accepted as a natural flow of the soci-
ety, there is a relatively high skepticism regarding the use of augmented reality techniques
in advertising.
We expect that while students on computer science do not consider augmented
reality as an efficient tool for advertising, students from advertising consider aug-
mented reality applications as too intrusive in personal life.
H3: The feeling associated with the use of augmented reality in advertising is mainly
of surprise.
Although we expect a strong association between technology and positive
feeling and between advertising and negative feelings, we sustain that using aug-
mented reality in advertising might generate a rather positive perception. How-
ever, we expect that rather computer science students, in comparison with adver-
tising students, to associate augmented reality in advertising with negative emo-
tions, like sadness, frustration, or anger.
An opinion survey has been conducted with students from the Department of
Communication Public Relations and Advertising (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-
Napoca) and the Department of Computer Science (Technical University of Cluj-
Napoca), in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The sample is composed of students in their
third, respectively forth year of study, namely 20-21 years old. This selection is
due to the fact they have a more in-depth knowledge on the analyzed issues. The
number of the interviewed students is 93. Although the initial aim of the study
has been that of including all the students from the two specializations within the
sample, due to absenteeism, only students that have come to school have filled in
the questionnaire. The responses’ rate is around 60%.
The questionnaires have been self-applied and has been filled in offline. The
number of advertising respondents (44, meaning 46,8%) is almost equal to the
number of computer science respondents (49, meaning 52,1%). However, the gen-
der distribution is reversed regarding the two specializations. Thus, while there
are more males (65,3%) within the computer science specialization, there are more
females within the advertising specialization (72,7%). These numbers highly coin-
cide with the distribution within the entire population.
The main parts of the questionnaire refer to the perception of technology in
general, the perception of advertising in general, and the perception of certain
platforms and applications that include both advertising and technology. The first
part of the questionnaire aims to emphasize the role of technology in peoples’
lives. Thus, the main items refer to the importance of technology nowadays, the
understandings, use and perceived efficiency of the advanced technology, and the
emotions induced by technology. On the second part of the questionnaire, the ref-
erences to advertising are operationalized into the following aspects: the variables

44
that counts within the buying behavior process, the meaning of the future adver-
tising, the consumption of advertising, the efficiency and credibility of advertising,
the most important elements of a commercial, and the emotions attached to adver-
tising. The last and most comprehensive part of the questionnaire aims to correlate
the concepts of advertising and technology and to emphasize the perception of
intelligent advertising. In this respect, the main variables used are: the importance
and efficiency of using new technologies in advertising, the meaning of intelligent
advertising, the knowledge of augmented reality and of affective computing ap-
plications, the degree to which new technology produces fear, and the perceived
profile of the persons that is more probable to use intelligent advertising. Moreo-
ver, within this part, the individuals have been asked to read several examples
of augmented reality and of affective computing, to express their perception on
the feasibility and efficiency of these examples and to associate them with certain
emotions, from happiness to fear and frustration.

Results and discussions

While the questionnaire is composed of three main parts (perception on tech-
nology, perception on advertising, and perception of using advanced technology
in advertising), the results are presented in respect with the same structure.

The perceptions on technology

As expected, the advanced technology is usually perceived by young genera-
tions as a natural flow and it is widely accepted. Thus, all the respondents con-
sider, to a large degree, that technology represents an important component of
life. As presented in the Figure no.1, when asked to define technology, the highest
percentages of individuals consider that technology means smart TV and smart-
phone. Somehow surprisingly, a smaller part of the individuals claim that com-
puter is part of the advanced technology. A possible explanation for this situation
is that the computer has become a very used tool and it is already defined as a
traditional or integrated component of life.

Figure 1. The meaning of advanced technology (%)

45
 There are rather small differences between the students on advertising and stu-
dents on computer science. While smart phones and tablets are considered as part
of the advanced technology by the both categories almost in the same proportion,
some differences appear when it comes to smart TV and computer. Thus, smart
TV is perceived as an advanced technology by 77,3% of the computer science stu-
dents, in comparison with 61,2% of the advertising students. A reversed situation
is valid for computer. While 63,3% of the computer science students consider it
part of the advanced technologies, only 43,2% of the advertising students claim
the same thing. As stated above, this may be explained by the fact that especially
computer scientists, who work with computers every day, perceive computers as
a natural extension of their being and not as a new and revolutionary tool for com-
munication.
In order to complete the above background, some of the respondents have
given other meanings for advanced technology. Some of the main examples are
the following: medical equipment, autonomous automobile, intelligent watch, in-
telligent fridge, intelligent washing machine, robotics, optical computers, cloning
techniques, artificial intelligence, Google glasses, virtual reality, Nano technology,
or technology that is not yet available on the market and about which we do not
have enough knowledge.
Being a part of their lives, technology, beyond the fact that is important for all
the respondents, they all like using it (Figure 2). The main reasons that make tech-
nology efficient are considered to be the possibility to find information quicker,
to communicate faster and to have access to a large amount of information. In
the same respect, other similar responses are related to the improvement of life
quality and to the work facilitation. There was no answer claiming that advanced
technology is not efficient. As presented in the following table, the difference be-
tween advertising and computer science students is minor. While for advertising
students faster communication seems to be more important, for computer science
students finding information more quickly and communicating easier are more
important than for the other category (Figure 3).

Figure 2. Perceptions on technology (%) Figure 3. Reasons for considering

advanced technology efficient (%)

46
 Living in a context in which technological evolution overlap young genera-
tions’ time, almost all the respondents declare that they own a computer and a
smart phone. The differences between advertising and computer science students
are insignificant, yet interesting given the fact that only 88.6% of the advertising
individuals declare that they own a computer (Figure 4). In the situation they have
a smartphone or would own one, the majority of the respondents claims that the
main use of the device is or would be for emails (Figure 5). In the same respect,
they use the device for maps, news, or games. The difference between advertising
and IT students lies in the fact that while the first use the smart phone more for
emails and games, in comparison with the computer science specialists, the latter
use the device more for maps and news. Having the possibility to give additional
answers, the individuals consistently name the navigation on social networks.

Figure 4. What device one owns (%) Figure 5. What applications one uses
on the smart phone (%)

Owning technology to such a large scale, one of the key questions within the
questionnaire refers to the feelings one develops regarding technology. Although
there are feelings intentionally used not fitting technology (as disgust, fear or an-
ger), the results are interesting (Figure 6).

Figure 6. The feeling associated with technology (%)

As presented in the above figure, the positive emotions are preponderantly

associated with technology in comparison with the negative ones. Although the
computer science students are not that surprised, both specializations feel hap-
piness and surprise to a very high and high degree regarding the advanced tech-

47
nology. Interestingly, there are few individuals that feel mainly fear, anger and
frustration. While in the case of frustration there is no difference between the per-
centages of advertising and computer science students (11,4%), more IT special-
ists develop fear and anger than the other category. It might be explained by the
context in which they learn and work, a context characterized by a high level of
technological development and thus, by control over the human being.
Based on the above presented data, it is evident that the advanced technol-
ogy is already adopted by young generations represented in the sample, either by
owning it by now, or by having a large amount of information about its useful-
ness. As expected, the emotional attachment is rather a positive one.

The perceptions on advertising

While the attachment for the advanced technology has been proved to be a
positive one, when it comes to advertising, the data are expected to be more in-
triguing.
While around 70% of the respondents declare that they never or rarely go shop-
ping, a higher number of advertising students consume advertising very often and
often, in comparison with computer science students. Although it is an implicit
result considering the specialization domain, it is interesting to emphasize their
preferences for different advertising channels. The largest part of the respondents,
both advertising and computer science students, claims that they consume mainly
online advertising. While Internet navigation has become a way of life for young
generations and while online shopping is increasingly developing, it is logically
that they consume or are witness to online advertising.
Besides Internet advertising, outdoor and print advertising seems to be the
main advertising types consumed by the respondents, yet in a much lower pro-
portions by the IT students (Figure 7). Women from advertising specialization
tend to consume more often Internet ads (96,9%) in comparison with men (81,8%).
This is not the case for IT students, both genders consuming almost equally often
online advertising (65%). The least consumed types of advertising are TV, radio
and guerrilla advertising. While for the radio, both types of students consume ra-
dio advertising in a similar frequency, the students in advertising declare that they
consume TV and guerrilla advertising more often (Figure 8). To a large extend,
this conclusion is explicable and expected, due to the profile of the advertising
specialization’s curriculum. However, given the omnipresent advertising, the dif-
ferences between the two specializations is rather high.
In spite of declaring that they often consume Internet advertising, only a small
part of the respondents claim that Internet advertising is credible (40,9% of the ad-
vertising students and 24,5% of the IT students). In addition, while few advertis-
ing students consider TV, magazine and outdoor ads credible, there is a large part

48
 Figure 7. Advertising consumption Figure 8. The credibility
very often and often (%) of advertising channels (%)

of the IT individuals (65,3%) that stress that credible advertising does not exist. In
the same category are 22,7% of the advertising students.
When asked what aspects they use to take into consideration in buying prod-
ucts, the respondents’ main choices are quality, price and design. Surprisingly, in
this context, advertising seems to be an important purchasing component for only
around 20% of the respondents.
Although advertising is not a domain of interest for all of the respondents, a
large part of them declare that advertising is important or very important in buy-
ing behavior (Figure 9). While there are more than 85% of advertising students
that consider advertising as being important, there are almost 60% of IT students
considering the same thing.

Figure 9. The importance of advertising Figure 10. The elements that make
in buying behavior (%) a commercial efficient (%)

More specifically, while almost 75% of the respondents declare that they do
not have a preferred commercial, the most important elements that make a com-
mercial efficient seem to be creativity, the information on the products, humor,
and unconventional elements (Figure 10). Although not very significant, there are
several differences between the two specializations. First, while advertising stu-
dents appreciate more all the above mentioned elements, demonstration with the
product is a very important element for the IT students. Second, unconventional

49
elements and humor are less appreciated by the computer science students, in
comparison with advertising ones. All these differences might exist due to the fact
that advertising domain and some specific concepts are much better understood
by advertising students who theoretically and empirically study them. Complet-
ing the above information, the elements the respondents would use in promoting
a product are online advertising, emotions, shocking and unique elements, guer-
rilla elements, humor, celebrities or superheroes, quality, and sensory elements.
When asked if they have a preferred brand, the positive and negative answers
have been similar in number. The most often named brands are Apple, Asus, HTC,
Google, Samsung, Sony, Milka, Zara, or Lenovo. As it can be remarked, regardless
of the specialization of the respondents, the main brands belong to the technology
domain.
One of the most interesting questions is the one that asks the respondents to
attach a single word to the phrase “future advertising”. Although the answers are
diverse, the following description is an attempt to classify them in specific groups.
The words that have been chosen by the most of the respondents are the follow-
ing: online or Internet, innovation, interactivity, creativity, annoyance, personalization,
technology, and adaptability. Besides these concepts, the answers can be categorized
into positive and negative ideas. While positive notions used are truth, efficiency,
evolution, unlimited, rapidity, revolution, speed, facilitation, words with negative con-
notations are unsafely, unethical, mind control, irritating, inefficient, false, exaggeration,
and control. As expected, computer science students tend to give more negative
connotations to the concept of “future advertising”.
In the same perspective, the emotions associated with advertising are interest-
ing and different based on specialization (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Feelings on advertising (%)

As the above figure shows, advertising students associate advertising with

feelings as happiness and surprise. However, computer science students correlate
with advertising rather negative emotions like disgust, frustration and anger. A
possible explanation for this last results is that, in general, especially TV advertis-
ing is considered to be annoying.

50
 Concluding, in comparison with technology that is a widely accepted and
liked, advertising is perceived rather as a negative phenomenon. Moreover, the
label of “non-credible” given to advertising and the negative emotions associated
with it might mean that a change in the advertising domain is desirable.

The perception of using technology in advertising

When the concepts of technology and advertising are put together, the results
become even more interesting. Almost all the individuals consider that technology
is an important component in advertising, mainly due to the fact that it captures
attention (Figure 12). In the same respect, while 51,2% of the advertising students
consider that technology in advertising can help in producing personalized mes-
sages, 34,7% of the IT students consider that the efficiency of using technology in
advertising resides in being something new. Other reasons named by the respond-
ents are easy and rapid access, a more exact targeting, and a large coverage of
technology use (Figure 13).

Figure 12. The degree to which technology Figure 13. The reasons for which technology
is important in advertising (%) can be efficient in advertising (%)

As expected, less than a half of the respondents declare that they know the
meaning of “intelligent advertising” (Figure 14). In contrast with the initial ex-
pectations, significantly more advertising students (65%) declare they know the
meaning of the used concept. Only 21,7% of the IT students have heard about it. In
addition, the most chosen meanings of the concept are the following: personalized
advertising, advertising that uses new technologies, advertising that is efficient, innova-
tive and creative. Interestingly, 42,9% of computer science students, in comparison
with 70,7% of the advertising students claim that intelligent advertising implies
the use of new technologies (Figure 15). This result can be correlated with the com-
puter science students’ knowledge on the concept and with their prudence in as-
sociating the idea of technology with something they do not really know.
In the same respect, while around 20% of the respondents consider that there
is no need for technology and around 60% claim that TV is a proper device for
intelligent advertising, more than 80% of the individuals have chosen computer,

51
 Figure 14. The knowledge Figure 15. The perception
of “intelligent advertising” concept of “intelligent advertising” meaning (%)

telephone and table as being suitable platforms for intelligent advertising. The ad-
vertising students, more than the IT ones, slightly tend to associate intelligent ad-
vertising with the three above mentioned devices (Figure 16).

Figure 16. The perception of the devices used for intelligent advertising (%)

More specifically, when it comes to augmented reality, almost 30% of students

from each specialization have heard of the concept. Although we have expected
that computer science students to be more aware of the concept of augmented
reality, the difference between advertising students and IT students is minor. Men
declare in a much higher degree that they have heard of augmented reality. Thus,
there are 63,6% of the advertising male students and 34,4% of the IT male students
that know the above concept, in comparison with 19,4% of female advertising fe-
male students and 14,3% of IT female students.
In spite of the fact that almost 60% of the respondents claim that they know the
concept (Figure 17), only a small part of them has tried to give a definition. From
the most valid definitions, several example are the following: “adding virtual in-
formation to real in real time”, “3D applications that offer extra information by using the
video camera of a smart phone”, “a copy of reality to which sensorial data are added”, “hol-
ograms”, “the combination between physical reality and virtual reality”, “the improve-
ment of the reality by using real or virtual technological devices”, or “a mixture between
real and virtual elements that overlap or are complementary”. Some of the respondents
have tried to explain the concept by making connections with marketing domain.

52
Several examples are: “within a visual reality, there is a promotional element of a prod-
uct or brand; by using advanced technology, the element is accessed and the message is
transmitted to the consumer”, “personalized reality, based on each consumer’s character-
istics”, “QR code scanning possibilities that directs you to a website where a commercial
is presented”.

Figure 17. The knowledge on “augmented reality” Figure 18. The perception on Google Glasses (%)
and Google Glasses (%)

Asked whether they have heard of Google glasses, 75% of the advertising stu-
dents and 91,8% of the IT students have given a positive answer (Figure 18). Inter-
estingly, there are significantly more respondents that know about Google glasses
than about augmented reality, although the first is an application of the latter.
While almost half of the respondents consider Google glasses as being attractive,
more than 70% of the students from each specialization claim that Google glasses
are suitable for promoting other projects or services, due to its applications.
In a context in which the concept of augmented reality is rather poorly known,
the questionnaire translates this concept into several examples. The respondents
are asked to decide the feasibility, the efficiency and the feelings for each situation.
All the following situations can be properly used in marketing in order to attract
attention over a specific product through technology.
The first situation describes the context of a museum; only by pointing the
smart phone to one of the paintings, a large amount of information on that paint-
ing becomes available for the visitor. While all the advertising students claim that
this situation is feasible and efficient to a high and very high degree, more than
90% of the computer science students claim the same thing (Figure 19). As expect-
ed, only the positive feelings, as happiness and surprise are highlighted within
this situation (Figure 20). However, there are 16,3% of the advertising students
and 11,3% of the IT students that evoke sadness as an emotion associated with the
situation. A possible explanation might be the fact that having such a technology,
museum guides might become useless and machines might replace the humans.
The second situation reveals a similar context with the above one. By pointing
the smart device to an office building, information on the companies that have the
headquarter within the building is available. This situation appears feasible and

53
 Figure 19. The feasibility and efficiency Figure 20. The feeling regarding the situation 1 (%)
of the situation 1 (%)

efficient for an average of 85% of the respondents (Figure 21). There are small
but significant differences between the respondents form the two specializations
mainly when it comes to the feasibility of the situation. Thus, as expected, comput-
er science students are more skeptical than the advertising students when it comes
to technology. As in the above mentioned situation, the feelings of happiness and
surprise are preponderant. However, there are several cases in which this situa-
tion is associated with frustration (Figure 22).

Figure 21. The feasibility and efficiency Figure 22. The feeling regarding the situation 2 (%)
of the situation 2 (%)

The third example refers to the shopping behavior: wanting to buy a shirt, one
does not have to physically try on the product. Having a virtual dressing room,
the image of the person, dressed with the shirt, is available in the mirror. The
resulted pattern is respected within this situation as well, computer science stu-
dents claiming less than the advertising students that the presented case is feasible
and efficient (Figure 23). Although the negative feelings, as fear, sadness, or an-
ger have not been widely chosen, they have been chosen in this particular context
more than in other cases. There are two possible explanations: while this situation
is a more personal experience and the outcome is something that directly affects
the individual, there might be a larger degree of pleasure while physically trying
on clothes. Moreover, the fact that more than 30% of the IT students associate the
virtual fitting room with fear, might signify that the technological evolution or the
way the technology is used are exceeding a certain accepted limit (Figure 24).

54
 Figure 23. The feasibility and efficiency Figure 24. The feeling regarding the situation 3 (%)
of the situation 3 (%)

The fourth situation describes the possibility to feel the texture of a blouse on
the touchscreen of a smart phone. It is a situation that can be contextualized espe-
cially in the case of Internet purchasing. While the majority of the advertising stu-
dents consider this situation feasible and efficient, the computer science specialists
are much more skeptical. Only 17,4% of them claim that it is a feasible situation
and 55,8% that it is an efficient one (Figure 25). When it comes to the emotions as-
sociated with the situation, as in the other cases, the positive ones are much better
represented. However, it can be emphasized that computer science students are
less happy and less surprised than the advertising students. In addition, this par-
ticular situation raises feelings as anger and sadness for an average of 10% of the
respondents from each specialization (Figure 26).

Figure 25. The feasibility and efficiency Figure 26. The feeling regarding the situation 4 (%)
of the situation 4 (%)

Asked what is the general opinion on the abovementioned situations, the

thoughts are dichotomous. A part of the individuals perceive these examples as
rather intrusive and non-pragmatic. Some of the respondents’ arguments are that
these applications “induce wrong habits”, create dependency on technology and the
possibility to be controlled. Another part of the individuals claim that these exam-
ples are a natural evolution and the respective technologies and applications can
be useful.

55
 Complementary, asked if they would use the described applications, the re-
sults are intriguing. The most accepted situation is the first one, referring to the
application for the museum (Figure 27). There are fewer individuals that would
use the two situations referring to clothes. While computer science students clear-
ly prefer the museum and the office building situations, the advertising students
claim, more than the IT students, that they prefer the last two situations. Related
to gender, the data state that both men and women, from both specializations bet-
ter prefer the first two situations (Figure 28). However, there are a few interesting
differences. Thus, while all the women from IT specialization would use the ap-
plication for the museum, a much significant percentage of the advertising women
would use the applications for the virtual fitting room and for fabric and texture
recognition of a blouse.

Figure 27. The hypothetical use Figure 28. The hypothetical use
of the four situations (%) of the four situations based on gender (%)

The above described situations can be used in marketing as unconventional

instruments in order to attract individuals that are searching for new marketing
types of communication, that are curios and comfortable. Thus, for instance, a
company can invest in the necessary technology in order to help a customer find
information about it or about its products (to create marketing messages) by only
using an application on a smart device. In the same respect, a company that sells
online can invest in offering the customers the possibility to online “touch” the
products.
Although, technology has been expected not to scare the respondent, around
30% of the advertising students and around 25% IT students claim that they are
much or very much scared by it. This conclusion might consciously appear only
after the four situations have been presented.
Concluding, technology is largely accepted as a natural evolution on human
kind. Moreover, it is perceived as being efficient to be used in advertising in order
to create a novelty element, especially for young generations. The concept of intel-
ligent advertising is pretty strongly associated with personalized messages trans-
mitted through advanced technology. Although the majority of the respondents

56
have not heard about the concept of augmented reality, the Google glasses ap-
plication is widely known. Moreover, the four presented situations that use aug-
mented reality applications in order to communicate a message are significantly
considered feasible and efficient and are associated rather with positive emotions
than negative ones.

Conclusions
This paper has aimed to empirically investigate whether advertising through
advanced technology, mainly through augmented reality, might be a feasible
possibility in order to create more desirable advertising. Moreover, the research
analyzes the differences between advertising and computer science students in re-
spect to their perceptions over the use of the advanced technology in advertising.
In general, due to the technological context, the perception over the advanced
technology is a positive one. While technology is linked with positive emotions
by the advertising students, as happiness and surprise, a part of the computer sci-
ence students tend to relate it with feelings as fear and anger. In the same respect,
some of the respondents emphasize that advanced technology tends to scare them.
When it comes to advertising, the majority of the students consume mainly online
advertising. However, only a small part of them considers this type of advertising
as being credible. As expected, IT students are more skeptical regarding advertis-
ing in general and online advertising in particular. More than half of them un-
derline that there is no credible advertising. Although advertising seems to be an
important purchasing tool for a small number of individuals, the most important
elements an ad must have in order to be efficient are creativity, information on the
product, humor, and unconventional elements. The emotions associated with ad-
vertising are positive for advertising students (happiness and surprise) and rather
negative for computer science students (disgust, frustration, anger).
Almost all the respondent, regardless of the specialization, consider technol-
ogy as an important component in advertising and claim that by using it there
can be generated personalized messages and a new way of communication. Only
around 30% of the students from each specialization have heard of the concept of
augmented reality and much less of them have tried to give a definition. Based on
these results, the first hypothesis is to a large degree validated. Although there are
many respondents that know the concept of Google glasses, they do not associate
it with augmented reality and they do not give suitable definitions of the latter
concept.
The questionnaire underlines four situations in which augmented reality is
used. All the presented applications may be used as a marketing tool in order
to attract consumers’ attention for different products or services: an application
used in museums in order to give extra information of a work by using a smart

57
phone, an application used for smart devices that can transmit information about
the companies within an office building, a virtual fitting room, and an application
used for smart phones based on which one can feel the texture of a blouse on a
touch screen. Practically, any brand that uses such a technology might be posi-
tively perceived by young generation for which technology is a way of life.
Based on these situations, the opinions can be grouped in two parts. For one
group, the development of technology and its use for marketing purpose are
perceived as a natural evolution and can be integrated into daily life as useful
tools. However, for another group, technology and the presented situations are
perceived to induce wrong habits and are rejected due to their capacity to con-
trol the human behavior. In general, it can be said that computer science students,
in comparison with advertising ones, are much more skeptical and against using
such developed technologies by masses. Considering these aspects, the second hy-
pothesis is validated.
Regarding the last hypothesis, the data show that the use of augmented reality
in advertising is preponderantly associated with positive feelings, as happiness
and surprise. However, there are several cases in which the respondents feel nega-
tive emotions, as disgust, fear, sadness and frustration when it comes to situations
in which technology assume a large part of the human’s task or responsibilities.
Concluding, the advertising and computer science students are different re-
garding their perceptions over technology, advertising and the use of augmented
reality in marketing. However, the differences between them are not that signifi-
cant as expected. In general, they all have already adopted the advanced tech-
nology and a large part of them condemn advertising. In addition, although they
consider the use of technology in advertising a proper tool in making advertising
more efficient, the use of augmented reality in marketing seems to be too intrusive
and controlling in patches.

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 Unconditional Trust?
Public Opinion Towards the EU in Romania

Loredana RADU
Associate Professor, PhD
National University of Political Science and Public Administration
Department of Communication
E-mail: loredana.radu@comunicare.ro

Abstract: Building on the largely acknowledged fact that attitudes to-

wards the European Union are multidimensional (Hobolt 2014; Harteveld
et. al. 2013), this paper aims at exploring the relationship between three
important and presumably related dimensions: trust in national institu-
tions, trust in the European Union, and confidence regarding the future
of the European Union. Based on some relevant questions from the Stand-
ard Eurobarometers implemented between 2007 and 2015, I pose that Ro-
manians (still) perceive the European Union as a “lifebuoy”, as a better
potential alternative to the national system of governance. I argue that
the source of the Romanians’ Euro-enthusiasm has national, rather than
European, roots. This phenomenon – which I call rational extrapolation -
is emblematic for the countries where citizens see the European Union as a
panacea for domestic problems that cannot be effectively addressed within
the nation state. One important implication of this paper is that national
proxies play a leading role in shaping EU-related opinions and attitudes.

Keywords: European Union, national government, trust, public opinion.

Introduction
There are few moments in the history of the European Union when public
opinion towards the European Union has ever attracted more scholarly interest.

Journal of Media Research,

601(24) / 2016, pp. 60-79
Vol. 9 Issue
And this happens due to several facts, which could be easily categorized under
what Jurgen Habermas called “the crisis of the European Union”. Technically, the
EU has been facing various types of crises since 2005, when two “veterans” of Eu-
ropean integration - the Netherlands and France – voted “No” in the referenda for
the Constitutional Treaty. The failed constitutionalization of the EU has obliged
the European leaders to re-think the design of a much-dreamed “European Con-
stitution”. But this has been mainly through “informal incrementalism and semi-
permanent reform, rather than explicit public endorsement and a ‘constitutional
moment” (Christiansen and Reh 2009, 2).
What started as an economic crisis back in 2007, turned into a never-ending
quest for the lost logic of European integration, which – as it became more and
more evident – could not be taken for granted anymore. Nowadays, the strength
of the European project is put under severe scrutiny. As Jan Zielonka put it, the
EU “proved poorly prepared for navigating through the stormy weather and it
lost the confidence of Europe’s citizens” (2014, 3). The austerity measures, the
Greek bailout, the Ukrainian conflict, the Brexit, and, now, the refugees crisis,
have triggered waves of public discontent. All these moments have made the EU
more vulnerable than ever; they have widened old gaps and generated new rup-
tures. Despite EU officials’ repeated calls for solidarity and their declared com-
mitment to a prosperous European future for all Member-States, fractures have
continued to appear. Now we are dealing with a European Union, which only
serves as a shelter for individual countries and/or clusters of countries, grouped
based on their financial and/or political positioning in the EU. There is the cluster
of “net contributors” or “net creditors”, composed mainly of Western and North-
ern states, such as Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The opposing cluster
belongs to the “net spenders” or “net debtors”, consisting of the poorer countries
in South and East.
The North-South cleavages rival with the East-West gap. The “new member-
states” are antagonists – in terms of political and financial performance – to the
“old member states”. The “wasteful” Easterners are sometimes presented, as the
“black sheep” of the EU, for these countries are only proficient at one thing –
spending the European money, the wise Westerners say. Then, another dichotomy
emerges: the “Eurosceptic” countries, which oppose the naïve “euro-enthusiast”
states. Eurosceptics think that the EU needs an overhaul, and they partly blame
the European “mess” on the East enlargement that weakened the Union and basi-
cally spoiled its harmony (Toshkov et. al. 2014). On the other hand, Euro-enthu-
siasts still see European governance as a better alternative to their national de-
mocracies – young democracies, which still have a lot to learn from their far more
experienced Western peers. The Easterner could be portrayed as a young teenager
hopelessly in love with his beautiful yet inaccessible teacher. In mid-2015, a new

61
antagonism has been revealed: Member-States that welcome refugees vs. Mem-
ber-States that do not welcome refugees.
One thing is sure: today’s Europe is full of cleavages. Mass media and scholars
alike seem to have engaged into a competition for trying to organize Member-
States into “camps” or clusters, based on various criteria (i.e. economic perfor-
mance, fiscal soundness, public opinion towards the EU, measures concerning
refugees, position towards the Ukrainian “issue”). But how relevant is this? And
what is the baseline against which we could do these measurements so that we are
sure that we haven’t established a false standard? I believe that clustering is a dan-
gerous practice; for it might contribute to oversimplifying what it should be the
very complex image of a multicultural and diverse Europe. Despite its organizing
force, clustering creates labels and stereotypes, with a very limited explanatory
power, preventing us from building valid cases and addressing the right problems
to be solved. I will illustrate this by looking at the Romanians’ public opinion to-
wards the EU and, more specifically, at how Romanian citizens trust the EU.

Affective vs. Instrumental Approaches in Explaining Euro-opinions

The most important European crisis seems to be “one of cohesion, imagina-
tion, and trust”, the latter being “obviously harder to address” (Zielonka 2014,
3). As Eurosceptic voices gain grounds in many Member-States, understanding
EU-related opinions and attitudes becomes of topical importance. Defining Eu-
roscepticism is difficult because – given its British genealogy - this concept bears
an essentially anti-EU legacy. Looking at it as a mere opposition towards Euro-
pean integration (Taggart, 1998; Gabel, 1998; Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2002) seems
like a limited approach, since this Euroscepticism has been used to signal distrust,
cynicism, opposition or plain detachment. Taggart (1998) proposed a definition of
Euroscepticism as “a contingent or qualified opposition, as well as incorporating
outright and unqualified opposition to the process of European integration” (p.
366). Thus, Euroscepticism designs a spectrum of opinions and attitudes towards
the EU and the integration process.
Existing studies examining public opinion towards different aspects of the in-
tegration process have demonstrated the influence of three groups of explanatory
factors – economic interests, group identities and political ‘cues’ (McLaren, 2006;
Hooghe and Marks, 2005, 2004; Carey, 2002; Gabel, 1998; Anderson, 1998). The
economic and political explanations fall under an instrumental approach, where-
as identity-related studies subscribe to a more cultural perspective on European
integration. In a nutshell, we can differentiate between two “schools” in the study
of EU-related opinions and attitudes: rational choice – also known as utilitarian
– approaches vs. affective approaches (Hobolt, 2014). The first approach consists
in a pragmatic assessment of European integration. The underlining assumption

62
is that trade liberalization and the free movement of people favor citizens with
average to high skills and income, who, as a consequence, will be more support-
ive of European integration (Anderson and Reichert, 1996; Gabel, 1998). This in-
strumental perspective focuses on some very concrete gains of membership, such
as the possibility to participate in exchange programs and to study abroad, the
opportunity to work in any Member-State, or the capacity to use EU funding for
developing relevant projects. In brief, the more a Member-State will benefit from
European integration, the more EU-oriented its citizens will be (Anderson and
Kaltenthaler, 1996). In employing the utilitarian logic, it is useful to differentiate
between macroeconomic and microeconomic evaluations, the latter being more
relevant for understanding how EU-related opinions are shaped. Macroeconomic
factors (such as inflation and unemployment) are important (e.g. Eichenberg and
Dalton, 1993), but micro economy and, more specifically, people’s perceptions of
their own wellbeing are powerful predictors of Euro-enthusiasm or Euroscep-
ticism (Gabel, 1998). In particular, the ‘subjective utilitarian model’ – anchored
in behavioral economics – suggests that European integration is supported if
perceptions and future evaluations of the economy are positive (De Vreese et.
al. 2008; Bargaoanu et. al. 2013). This also implies that, once these benefits are
contested or simply vanish away, the public support for integration drops al-
most instantly. Following this utilitarian logic, Member-States could be clus-
tered into “winners” or “losers” of the integration process: “winners” are those
where the net transfers flow, whereas “losers” are the so-called net creditors or
donors, as they fuel the Union with the needed resources for increasing region-
al convergence. This has important consequences: if pragmatic benefits become
scarce, then many Member-States will be tempted to ensure that their own coun-
tries hold the best positions in a given context, no matter if this would imply to
hamper others’ access to strategic resources. Noteworthy, according to the 2013
YouGog poll, over 70% of Germans objected to any suggestion of direct fiscal
transfers to euro-zone partners, while 52% opposed any further loans (Zielonka,
2014). Bârgăoanu et. al. (2014) revealed that the crisis has prompted Europeans to
reconsider their attitudes towards the EU and the integration from a utilitarian
perspective, which has led to an increase of Euroscepticism. In a recent study,
Sara Hobolt demonstrates that “the winners of the integration process want to
consolidate and strengthen the union, but close the door to additional (poorer)
member states” (2014, 678). Thus, the principle of European solidarity becomes
fuzzy in the utilitarian logic, since it is this very solidarity that will be the first to
be sacrificed in favor of national financial stability and domestic prosperity. This
is why “membership of the euro-zone seems to have become more crucial than
membership of the EU, and the frontier between these two zones is solidifying.”
(Zielonka 2014, 19).

63
 At the other side of the opinion spectrum lies the affective set of theories, which
underline that people with post-materialist values are more strongly in favor of
integration (Inglehart, 1977; Sanchez-Cuenca, 2000). Identity-related theories as-
sume that attitudes towards the EU are not shaped only by a simple cost to benefit
ratio, but involve a series of more subtle, yet complex, concepts, such as cognitive
capacity, culture and sub-culture, national values, or religion. Inglehart’s basic as-
sumption is that “given individuals pursue various goals in hierarchical order giv-
ing maximum attention to the things they sense to be the most important unsatis-
fied needs at a given time” (1971, 991). Building on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy
of needs, Inglehart assumes that each generation faces specific challenges that are
shaped under the pressure exerted by its most unmet – yet critical – needs. For ex-
ample, those that are faced with financial insecurity will tend to pursue their finan-
cial wellbeing throughout their existence; whereas individuals who take their own
economic security for granted, face different – more sophisticated – needs, such as
self-affirmation or self-development. This entails a whole range of variables that
might influence EU-related attitudes and, therefore, deserve a close investigation.
Individuals’ attachment to their nation or their perceptions of people from other
countries are only two of such variables. The concept of identity became particu-
larly useful, because it helped scholars engage into a contentious debate on the
compatibilities between national identity and European identity, which have been
tested in various studies. For example, Christin and Trechsel (2002) demonstrated
that Swiss citizen’ strong national identity and national pride trigger anti-EU at-
titudes makes them very unlikely to be in favor of EU membership. Similarly,
Carey (2002) showed that national attachment combined with national pride has
a significant negative effect on support for European integration. According to De
Vreese and Tobiasen (2007), the way citizens frame their national identity has af-
fected the results of the European elections organized in 2004 in Denmark. Based
on a study conducted in 13 countries from Central and Eastern Europe, Elgun and
Tillman (2007) revealed that negative attitudes towards others (generated by ra-
cial, cultural, and religious differences) are strong predictors of anti-Europeanism.
Inquiring into the nature of public oppositions to Turkey’s ascension, researchers
highlight the role of “soft” factors and conclude, “in relation to an issue that touch-
es on economic, political, and social and cultural dimensions, the latter outweigh
the first in terms of importance for understanding public opinion” (De Vreese et
al., 2008, 523).
However, strong national identities do not automatically collide with the very
idea of European integration. According to Thomas Risse, “individuals and social
groups hold multiple identities and the real question to be asked concerns, there-
fore, how much space there is for <<Europe>> in collective nation-state identities”
(2001, 199). That is why the distinction between exclusive and inclusive identities

64
is particularly important: “citizens who conceive of their national identity as ex-
clusive of other territorial identities are likely to be considerably more Euroscepti-
cal than those who conceive of their national identity in inclusive terms” (Hooghe
and Marks, 2004, 2). Furthermore, history counts, in the sense that it creates the
grounds on which national identity might be or not compatible with the European
“we-feeling”. For instance, Diez Medrano (2003) found that English Euroscepti-
cism is rooted in Britain’s imperial history, that West German pro-Europeanism
reflects World War II guilt, and that the Spanish tend to support European inte-
gration because of its modernization and democratization values.

The “Sleeping Giant” is now awake

Explanatory models (i.e. utilitarian vs. affective) are very helpful in building
and systemizing coherent explanations regarding Euro-opinions. But are they as
helpful in creating complete cases? Inevitably, economy affects identity and vice-
versa. If citizens feel that they have to compete with “others” (i.e. immigrants, citi-
zens from “new member-states”, “Easterners”) for obtaining access to some scarce
strategic resources, then they might manifest an exclusive – rather than inclusive
– identity. For instance, McLaren (2007) shows that attitudes towards enlargement
are determined by a combination of economic and symbolic factors: the more citi-
zens fear economic malaise as a result of immigration, the more they oppose en-
largement of the EU. Similarly, De Vries and van Keerbergen (2007) reveal that the
more economically disadvantaged is an individual, the more nationalist he tends
to be. In a more recent study, van Spanje and de Vreese (2011) combine econom-
ic and affective considerations to identify five predictors of the Eurosceptic vote
in the 2009 parliamentary elections: 1. EU’s democratic performance; 2. negative
evaluations of EU membership; 3. negative feelings towards the EU; 4. opposition
to EU enlargement and 5. lack of European identity.
Furthermore, drawing on Inglehart (1971), explanatory models are strongly in-
fluenced by the “state of the Union”, in the sense that their validity is influenced
by contextual factors, such as economic wellbeing or political performance. Thus,
if the EU is doing well, then identity-related explanations might be powerful
enough to explain opinions and attitudes towards the EU; if the EU is doing badly,
then the utilitarian model will most probably offer the most reasonable explana-
tions for the drop in public support towards the EU. The “overlapping crises”
of the EU have determined scholars to acknowledge the real depth and implica-
tions of the debate on EU’s legitimacy (Dobrescu and Palada 2012). Highlighting
the complex nature of the EU-related opinions and attitudes, Trenz and DeWilde
(2009) consider that – when addressing Euroscepticism - it is more correct to speak
about a “general dynamics of contesting and justifying European integration that
cannot be controlled by a single actor’s strategy and choice.” (Trenz & DeWilde,

65
2009). According to Crespy and Verschueren (2009), the very concept of “euro-
scepticism” is too shallow; they propose the phrase “resistance to European inte-
gration” as a means of capturing a “flexible and unified approach to diverse em-
pirical realities” (2009, 381).
Thus, both he utilitarian and affective theoretical models are limited, in the
sense that they afford generalizations to a certain extent and under specific cir-
cumstances. Stepping out from the rational vs. affective dichotomy, this paper
focuses on the role played by national proxies in shaping Euro-opinions in Ro-
mania. My approach is premised on the idea that attitudes towards the EU are
multidimensional and that Euroscepticism designates a vast array of individual
preferences, vulnerabilities, and inclinations, which are highly influenced by how
citizens assess the performance of the incumbent government, as well as by sali-
ence of European topics.
Many refer to Romania as a pro-European country, which lacks Eurosceptic
trends and extremism. Is that 100% accurate? Do Romanians genuinely and con-
sciously trust the EU? Or do their EU inclinations reflect a flawed trust in the na-
tional system of governance? Research has demonstrated that national proxies,
such as the performance of the domestic system of governance, impact upon citi-
zens’ attitudes and opinions towards the EU. These proxies are typically anchored
in the national political arena (Anderson 1998; Franklin et. al. 1994). In particular,
the public support for incumbent political parties and government has been ana-
lyzed. More specifically, Franklin et. al. (1994) found that when a pro-European
government calls a referendum on an issue of European integration, supporters of
that government are more likely to follow in favor of a pro-European proposition.
EU issue voting has emerged as a concept meant to clarify how parties capi-
talize on existing opinions towards European integration (see, for example, the
research done by Tillman 2004; De Vries 2007; Schoen 2008). Briefly put, ”some
parties can strategically use the EU issue to their electoral benefit” (De Vries 2010,
111). In the same vein, De Vries and Hobolt (2012) argue that the inter-play be-
tween mainstream and challenger parties impact upon how European integration
is positioned on both the political and public agendas; noteworthy, challenger
parties are more likely than mainstream parties to employ issue entrepreneurship
strategies (i.e. European integration or crisis) in order to mobilize new issue de-
mands among a small portion of voters. Consequently, mainstream parties tend
to adjust their positioning so that the gap between their own discourse and that
belonging to the challengers does not endanger their electoral success. This goes
hand in hand with the concept of ”contagious Euroscepticism” (Meijers 2015),
wich describes the phenomena in which ”Eurosceptic challenger support is capa-
ble of influencing mainstream position shifts on European integration provided
that Eurosceptic challengers on average regard EU issues to be important.” (Mei-

66
jers 2015, 2) Thus, ”the electoral success of Eurosceptic challenger parties can pro-
voke mainstream parties to be less supportive of European integration.” (Meijers
2015, 9).
”Contagious Euroscepticism” is rooted into the fact that European integration
is - as Van der Eijk and Franklin (2004) argue – a ”sleeping giant”. This is not sim-
ply due to the latency of negative attitudes among citizens. It is a sleeping giant
especially because the search for democratic legitimacy opens a competitive field
for the evaluation of the EU. Or, in a clearer note, “the existence of a justificatory
discourse through which the EU defines its democratic legitimacy is rather the
enabling condition for the rise of Euroscepticism.” (Trenz and De Wilde 2009, p.
8) Thus, the more salient the European issue in the national public sphere, the
higher the probability for people to react and resist to European integration. But,
in the realm of what seems to be a never-ending crisis of the European Union,
the “sleeping giant” has been awakened and has unleashed some “mythical crea-
tures” – such as populism and righ-wing extremism - which will ultimately test
the strength of the European project. In this vein, Leconte wisely concludes “the
study of Eurosceptic discourses and mobilizations cannot be separated from the
realm of domestic politics, where the notion of populism has long been used.”
(Leconte 2015, 259).

“In EU We Trust!”
In order to illustrate the interplay between national and European influencers
in shaping Romanians’ prospective “Euroenthusiasm”, I have conducted a sec-
ondary analysis of Eurobarometers between 2007 and 2015. The vast majority of
research on EU-related attitudes and opinions focuses on regions or events that
are emblematic for their rather negative connection to the European project. The
referenda for the Constitutional Treaty, the economic crisis, the Eastern Enlarge-
ment, the European Elections, as well as other moments when the EU has been
uncomfortably placed under public scrutiny, have attracted a vivid scholarly in-
terest. Not surprisingly, most of the research focuses on the Member-States that
played important parts in the EU contestation play, such as The Netherlands, Den-
mark, or the United Kingdom. Little research is dedicated to countries where EU
is still regarded as a “savior” (Bargaoanu et. al, 2010) and where citizens are still
committed to trust the European project, despite economic turmoil, rigid auster-
ity, and poorly addressed regional disparities.
Since Euro-opinions are multi-faceted, I chose trust as a dimension that cap-
tures the very essence of attachment towards the EU. More specifically, I look at
Romanians’ trust in the EU and I compare it against trust in the incumbent gov-
ernment. I also look at confidence levels in the future of the European Union. I
build on the research done by Harteveld et. al. (2013), who test three explanations

67
of trust in the European Union. First, subscribing to the utilitarian paradigm, the
rational trust originates from actual and perceived performances and benefits of
European integration. Second, trust within the logic of identity depends on citi-
zens’ emotional attachments to the European Union. Last, the logic of extrapola-
tion regards trust as “an extension of national trust and therefore unrelated to the
European Union itself.” (Harteveld et. al., 2013). My assumption is that, in the case
of Romania, citizens’ trust in the EU is a mix of instrumental and national motiva-
tions, resulting into a phenomenon which I call “rational extrapolation.”

Methodology
To understand the changes registered in the European citizens’ attitudes to-
ward the EU since 2007, I employ secondary data analysis starting from data from
Eurobarometers. I use standard Eurobarometers since EB 67, spring 2007, up to
EB83, autumn 2015 (the last EB available), from where I selected the questions
related to the general level of trust in the European Union, in the national and Eu-
ropean main institutions (Government and Parliament), and optimism about the
future of the European Union. The general research questions are as follows:
RQ1: How did Romanians and Europeans’ trust in the European Union changed since
2007 (integration of Romania in the European Union)?
RQ2: How did Romanians and Europeans’ trust in the European and national institu-
tions changed since 2007 (integration of Romania in the European Union)?
RQ3: How did Romanians and Europeans’ perceptions about the future of the Euro-
pean future changed since 2007 (integration of Romania in the European Union)?
The research aims at understanding both the trends of evolution of general at-
titudes towards the European Union and perceptions about its future, but at the
same time to understand if there is a general correlation (and thus a possible ex-
planation) between the levels of trust in the European institutions as compared to
the Romanian ones. I argue that those trends followed the logic of the evolution of
the economic crisis. At the speculative level, I also argue that we are at the dawn
of a new crisis, of a totally different nature, which will probably bring about new
dramatic shifts in the general perceptions of the Europeans. This urges EU to capi-
talize on the very few islands of Euro-enthusiasm that still exist.

Findings
Generally speaking, the level of trust in the European Union since 2007 has
dropped significantly among the citizens of the member states. As data show, Ro-
manians were and still are above the average levels of trust in the EU, with more
than 15%. Nowadays Romanians trust the EU even more than they did before the
beginning of the economic crisis. (Figure 1).

68
 The evolution of attitudes toward the EU has seen two significant moments
since 2007: the end of 2009, when the effects of the economic crisis became more
than salient in the lives of the Europeans and the end of 2013 and the beginning of
2014, when there has been evidence that the crisis is approaching its end. A clear
positive trend registered at the European level ever since, continuing for three or
even four Euro-barometers in a row.

Figure 1. The general level of trust in the European Union (Romania vs. the EU average)
When looking at the Romanians’ trust in the Union, one could notice that the
“recovery” from the historical lows between 2009 and 2013 was spectacular, with
more than 20% in less than two years. Ever since its adhesion to the EU, Romania
was among the most euro-enthusiast countries of the European Union, scoring
much above the average level of trust of the European citizens. Following the ac-
centuated descending trend during the crisis, Romania has again gained momen-
tum after 2013, the levels of trust at the beginning of 2015 being the highest since its
integration in the Union.
We argue that there is a correlation between the general levels of trust – trust
in the main national and European institutions (and hopes for the future), mainly
explained by the fact that Romanians (and other euro-enthusiast European coun-
tries) still believe that “salvation” comes “from above”, that is to say the EU is still
somewhat perceived as a savior. The correlation though does not entirely stand,
because in the last two years, the levels of trust in the national institutions have
raised as well, even though they remain much lower than the trust in the Euro-
pean institutions. However, it should be noted that the trust in the Romanian in-
stitutions has just slightly increased, whereas the percentages for the European
institutions trust raised with no less than up to 17 points.
As shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3, all general trends of trust in the Romanian
and European Governments (national Government and the European Commis-

69
sion) and Parliaments increased since the end of 2013, both at the national and the
European levels. But the only spectacular “recovery” registered after the fall of
2013 concerns the Romanians’ trust in the European institutions, with an increase
of 17% for the European Commission, and, respectively, 14% for the European
Parliament. Thus, in Romania we can see one of the widest gaps between trust in
EU institutions, on the one hand, and trust in Romanian institutions, on the other
one.

Figure 2. The level of trust in the national and European Government/Commission

(Romania vs. the EU average)

Figure 3. The level of trust in the national and European Parliament (Romania vs. the EU average)

Another important aspect related to the general perceptions regarding the Eu-
ropean Union and its institutions is the fact that the means of trust of all Europe-
ans show that the citizens of Europe trust more (on average with 12% for the Com-

70
mission and with 14% for the Parliament) the European institutions than their
own countries’ institutions. Of course things should be nuanced: there are several
countries (Germany being on top of the list) for which the trust in the national in-
stitutions is much higher than in the European institutions. However, these cases
are rather the exception that makes the rule.
At this point in the history of the EU there is only place for speculation, but
we have reasons to believe that the following barometers will show new dramatic
changes in the citizens’ attitudes towards the EU because of the new crisis of mi-
grants taking place as we speak.
These arguments are also supported by the evolution of perceptions about the
European Union’s positive image. Starting 2008 both the European and the nation-
al trends regarding the EU image became descendant, touching the lowest peak in
spring 2013, followed by a clear and steady recovery ever since. As in the case of
trust, Romanians are more optimistic than the average Europeans, the difference
of percentages from fall 2013 up to date being of 21% among Romanians and only
11% among Europeans in general. (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Perceptions about the positive image of the EU (Romania vs. the EU average)

In terms of average distance between Romanians and Europeans since 2007,

the general mean (in percentages) of people rather perceiving the EU in a positive
way is 40% at the EU level and 56% at the level of Romania. This also shows the
wide gap of perceptions about the EU among the European citizens.
As far as the future of the EU is concerned, the levels of optimism are slight-
ly more inconsistent across time: there is a slight decrease in people’s optimism
about the future of the EU since 2009 and a rather abrupt decreasing trend since
2011. After 2013, the trends are also positive (as for all other indicators), both at the
national and at the European levels.

71
 Figure 5. Perceptions about the future of the EU (Romania vs. the EU average)

Across time, a general average of 71% of the Romanians are optimistic about
the future of the European project, whereas 60% of the Europeans share the same
view. As for the other indicators analyzed in this paper, the positive trend in the
last two years is more salient for the Romanians (an increase of 13%) than for the
Europeans in general (9%).
Summing up, it is clear that the general levels of trust and optimism for the
future at the level of the European Union since 2007 followed the logic of the eco-
nomic crisis, with low peaks at the moment when citizens started to feel the effects
of the crisis and a soft but steady recovery since the second part of the year 2013.
At this point, predictions for the future are very hard to make, since a new severe
crisis will most probably follow, but of a totally different nature. I believe though
that people’s perceptions and expectations about the future of the European pro-
ject follow a cyclical evolution, reflecting their fears and hopes. This is the reason
why we expect again a disruptive moment in what concerns the trends related to
the various attitudes towards the European Union among its citizens.

Discussions
When analyzing the attitudes toward the European Union as reflected by the
data in the Eurobarometers, one should notice that, since 2007, data followed the
logic of the economic crisis. This is also consistent with some of our previous find-
ings (see, for example, Bârgăoanu et. al., 2014). The end of 2009 was the moment
when Europeans became aware that the economic crisis that started across the
ocean had hit them as well and the levels of trust dropped abruptly accordingly.
A similar trend could be observed in the case of Romanians’ attitudes towards the
EU, the difference remaining though in terms of the wide gap between the much

72
higher levels of trust in the European project among Romanians, even at the low-
est peak of this descending evolution of trust.
When looking at the main institutions, both at the national and at the European
level, data show some correlation between the very low levels of trust in the Ro-
manian institutions and the much higher levels of trust in the European institu-
tions among Romanians. On the other hand, at the level of the European Union,
the “average European” still trusts more the EU institutions than its own country’s
institutions, but – in what concerns Romania - the trust void between national and
European dimensions is one of the biggest in the EU. Of course these are average
trends; in order to fully understand them, a future analysis should split results by
countries or groups of countries, thus accounting for the “multi-speed” European
economic evolution.
As far as the optimism about the future is concerned, Romanians are more op-
timistic than the average at the EU level, this difference remaining constant across
time, with the general “shape” (lows and highs) of the general evolution trends in
this regard being similar.
At this point it is difficult to anticipate how things will evolve at the level of the
EU in the near future, especially since there is no data available to reflect people’s
attitudes towards the EU after the beginning of the migrants’ crisis. However, we
can only speculate that, following the logic of the “crisis”, we expect new disrup-
tive negative evolutions in all trends, following peoples’ fears regarding the out-
comes of the new crisis, which seems not to have reached its climax, yet.
This secondary analysis reveals that, despite tough times, Romania is a still
Euro-enthusiast country. We might rightfully conclude that it is an island of Eu-
rophilia in an ocean of distrust. Drawing on relevant research, there are three key
explanations for this phenomenon.
Firstly, the “the sleeping giant” has not awakened in Romania, yet (Van der
Eijk and Franklin 2004). As previous research shows, the salience of European is-
sues on the media agenda (Corbu et. al. 2011; Radu and Stefanita 2012), as well as
in the in the public discourse (Radu and Bargaoanu 2015) is extremely low even
during European events, such as the 2014 European Elections. In Romania, even
European topics are framed in a national logic. Following Trenz and De Wilde’s
logic (2009), since there is no justificatory discourse through which the EU defines
its democratic legitimacy, Euroscepticism is simply not enabled. Salience of Eu-
roscepticism over the last years is anchored precisely in the fact that many ac-
tors capitalize on European integration issue and its huge mobilization potential.
Thus, resistance to European integration is not simply due to the latency of nega-
tive attitudes among citizens; rather, the search for democratic legitimacy opens
a competitive field for the evaluation of the EU (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004),

73
which is not often exploited at its benefit. The conflicting potential of European
integration for many years suppressed, only starts to be exploited.
Secondly, national proxies are not interested in dismantling the European idea,
yet. Considering that political parties do respond to public opinion concerning the
EU, “when aggregate Euroscepticism is higher, larger parties will have more Eu-
rosceptic manifestos than smaller parties there” (Williams and Spoon 2015, 187).
This phenomenon, which is known as mainstream responsiveness, is absent in Roma-
nia. By mainstream responsiveness, it is meant “a situation where growing skepti-
cism over integration pits an EU-critical camp of both extreme and mainstream
parties against a group of pro-EU parties.” (Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2015,
2). In Romania, smaller and ideologically narrower parties are hardly function-
ing, or, if they do, their agendas are quasi-invisible and largely unknown to the
general public. Since the media salience of the EU at such or of European topics is
very low (see above) and, thus, do not constitute an object of debate and reflection,
the mainstream parties are bound to no interest in approaching or contesting the
EU. This is also in line with the assertion that parties will alter their positions to
match the stances of their proximate voters (Downs 1957). For mainstream parties
to grow more eurosceptic, two conditions must be met: a) voters to become more
opposed to European integration – a trend that has been identifiable since 2007–
2008, and b) media to regard the issue with greater salience (Roth et al. 2013). If
these conditions are met, spatial reasoning theory “predicts that mainstream par-
ties should also have become more skeptical about integration to ward off compe-
tition from challenger Euro-skeptic parties” (Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2015,
3). In Romania we do not have any mainstream responsiveness, yet – and this is
mainly due to low salience of European topics and to the very structure of the Ro-
manian political system. Our statement is also consistent with Rohrschneider and
Whitefield, whose research reveal that “rising public Euro-skepticism has been
met mainly by growth in Euro-skepticism among extreme parties, with only mod-
est evidence that mainstream parties have responded by muting their support for
integration” (Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2015, 19).
Thirdly, Romanians’ discontent with the performance of the incumbent gov-
ernment and parties impacts upon how EU-related attitudes are shaped. As re-
peatedly confirmed by Eurobarometers, the majority of Romanians distrust the
national system of governance. Thus, in line with the rational trust model, “cit-
izens might actually start trusting the European level because it provides them
with an alternative source of – potentially better – governance”. (Harteveld et.
al. 2013, 8). Romanian citizens continue to approach the EU as a lifebuoy, which
means that the Romanians do not trust the EU for its very nature, for its policies
or institutions, but, rather, on grounds of a presumably inefficient national system
of governance.

74
 Concluding remarks
In a nutshell, by combining the explanatory streams above, there is evidence
that Romanian Euro-enthusiasm is an aggregate result of three factors: low sali-
ence of European issues, lack of mainstream responsiveness, and a weak system
of governance. Noteworthy, Romanian Euro-enthusiasm does not reflect genuine
Europhilia. Romanian citizens’ trust the EU is not entirely tributary to the rational
trust model, because it does not involve solely a positive assessment of the ben-
efits related to European integration. It is (highly) influenced by national proxies
and especially by public opinion towards the performance of the national democ-
racy. Thus, we might say that Romanian citizens’ trust in the EU is based on a mix
of utilitarian and national factors; it could not be explained solely on instrumental
grounds and it could not be 100% correlated to national proxies.
In the original extrapolation model, “EU citizens’ trust in the EU should at least
be highly predictable on the basis of their trust in other institutions.” (Harteveld
et. al. 2013, 6). However, in the case of Romania, trust in EU is an inverse conse-
quence of trust in national institutions: if citizens cannot invest their trust capital
in national actors, then they choose to invest it into a remote entity, which they
often perceive as being better and more effective than the incumbent government,
that is the EU. Citizens see the EU as a model of better governance, thus extracting
some indirect benefits from it, such as the idea of stability, modernization or pros-
perity. I call this phenomenon rational extrapolation. In this vein, trust might seem
as unconditional – even naïve - but it is actually conditioned by the citizens’ need
to believe in a higher sense of political order and in the very idea of democracy.
However, Romania is not entirely incompatible with Euroscepticism. As soon
as Europe becomes more salient and political actors are more tempted to exploit
its turmoil at their own electoral advantage, resistance to European integration
might emerge here, too. And this assertion becomes particularly valid in the cur-
rent context, when the EU is literally torn apart by conflicting views, ultimate ges-
tures, and external pressures.
This study has some obvious limitations, such as the lack of the qualitative di-
mension, in order to be able to better explore citizens’ motivations accounting for
their relatively low levels of trust in the national government. Is it due to poor per-
formance or to other type of reason? Also, a comparison with other “New Mem-
ber-States” would have been particularly helpful in identifying some patterns of
trust and distrust.
Uncovering the mechanisms of trust in “Euro-enthusiast” countries has impor-
tant implications, for it might support policy-makers in finding some ways for
reinvigorating the European idea. EU contestation strategies are part of the demo-
cratic game. So should be the EU legitimizing strategies. National proxies seem to
have an important say in legitimizing the EU. Of course, I do not mean that Euro-

75
pean citizens should grow more skeptical in what concerns the national systems
of governance in order to learn how to appreciate the benefits of the EU. Rather,
I pose that it is high time for national political actors to find some ways of mak-
ing the electoral logic more compatible with the European idea. In the words of
the World’s most renowned contemporary philosopher, “both, the terror and the
refugee crisis, are – perhaps for the last time – dramatic challenges for a much closer
sense of cooperation and solidarity than anything European nations, even those
tied up to one another in the currency union, have so far managed to achieve”
(Habermas 2015). This is a matter of more political wisdom, than political power.

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79
Online Discursive (De)legitimation
of the Roma Community

Camelia-Mihaela CMECIU
Associate Professor, PhD
University of Bucharest, Romania
Department of Cultural Anthropology and Communication
Email: camelia.cmeciu@fjsc.ro

Abstract: European Union has started to use online platforms in order

to decrease the democratic, symbolic and communication deficits with
which it has been associated. The online subsidiarity adopted by EU
has allowed a new form of European citizenship where the EU citizens
turned into active content producers. Alongside with Futurum or EU-
ROPA, the ‘Debating Europe’ platform is a transnational communica-
tive space where citizens engage themselves in debates on various EU
issues alongside with other EU citizens and policy-makers. In this paper
the discursive online power-holders will be the EU citizens who will de-
bate upon the inclusion aspects of the Roma community in Europe. The
network analysis will provide an insight into the online participation of
the EU policymakers and citizens debating on the Roma community. The
main topic of this online debate will clearly highlight a polarization be-
tween a positive other-presentation and a negative other-presentation of
the Roma community and thus the EU citizens will become legitimators
and delegitimators of this ethnic community. The integrated model of
discursive (de)legitimation developed in this article will reveal the most
relevant discursive structures and strategies of legitimation and delegiti-
mation used in the online representation of the Roma community.

Keywords: inclusion, education, legitimators, delegitimators, discur-

sive structures, discursive strategies.

Journal of Media Research,

801(24) / 2016, pp. 80-98
Vol. 9 Issue
 I. Introduction
Throughout the years, attempts have been made to bridge the gap between
EU organizations and European citizens: the European Capital of Culture (Aiello
and Thurlow 2006), the European Years (Cmeciu and Cmeciu 2014), or EU’s on-
line platforms (Hoppmann 2010). The main aims of these attempts have been to
adopt a ‘bottom-up’ strategy of communication. Subsidiarity and decentralization
are the governing principles (Pütz 2002) on which the 2005 Action plan to improve
communicating Europe by the Commission relied. Since 2005, the Commission has
released policy documents on communication. These documents focus on three
principles1: (a) listening to the public, and taking their views and concerns into ac-
count; (b) explaining how European Union policies affect citizens’ everyday lives;
(c) connecting with people locally by addressing them in their national or local set-
tings, through their favorite media.
The e-platforms have gradually introduced the debate within the European
public sphere focusing on Bakhtin’s participatory dialogue and heteroglossia
(Koller and Wodak 2008). European Union has adapted to the new social forma-
tions that have been greatly influenced by the evolution of mass-media and the
internet-based technologies (Castells 1996) which have held “the promise of reviv-
ing the public sphere” (Papacharissi 2002) by shaping “a network society”. This
new form of social formation has “an infrastructure of social and media networks
enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels (individual, group/organiza-
tional and societal)” (van Dijk 2006). Nowadays online subsidiarity through which
the European citizen is empowered, has become more salient within the context of
digitalization and it allows the development of a new form of European citizen-
ship.
Alongside with Futurum or EUROPA, the ‘Debating Europe’ platform is a vir-
tual public sphere where three principles rule: inclusiveness, diversity, and citizen
participation. Launched in 2011 and having the European Parliament as a strategic
partner, the ‘Debating Europe’ platform claims to foster a two-way debate and to
target a more involved and critical European citizen.
This study focuses on the way in which the two-way communication on ‘De-
bating Europe’ platform was achieved in the debate over a sensitive issue in Eu-
rope, namely the Roma community. The main aims of the this study are (1) to

1 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_5.13.8.html
(accessed March 10, 2015). As a consequences of these principles of the policy documents on
communication, several main initiatives have been taken: the Europe for Citizens Programme,
Communicating Europe in Partnership, Engaging the Citizens (communication about Europe
via de Internet); Debating Europe; the European Radio Network (www.euranet.eu) or Presseurop
(www.presseurop. eu).

81
provide an insight into the network of communication between European politi-
cians, experts and EU citizens debating on the Roma community; (2) to highlight
the most visible EU citizens involved in the online dialogue; (3) to identify the
most relevant discursive structures and strategies of legitimation and delegitima-
tion used in the online representation of the Roma community.
I chose the debate issue on the Roma community for two main reasons: on the
one hand, the ongoing social exclusion, discrimination and intolerance towards
this community, and on the other hand, the scarce scientific literature on citizens’
opinions regarding the Roma community. Being the EU’s largest ethnic minor-
ity group (six million Roma in Europe2) and mainly living in Romania, Bulgaria,
Spain and the Balkans, this community has had a history of severe persecution
from the Middle Ages to the Second World War. Even nowadays their living in
very poor socio-economic conditions and certain stereotypes with which its mem-
bers are labelled make this community to be discriminated and excluded.
The studies on the Roma community have focused so far on two main strands:
(a) the media coverage of Roma discrimination (Erjavec 2001; Jovanović 2014) and
(b) insights into the inclusion of this community (NGOs’ campaign discourses on
Roma inclusion - Patrut, Cmeciu and Miron 2011; Schneeweis 2013; EU Roma poli-
cies - McGarry 2012; Roma cultural identity - Tavani 2012).

II. The Framework of Online Discursive (De)Legitimation

Ruth Breeze (2012) has argued that “legitimation aims to create an ideological
space within which the institution can operate, enjoying sufficient social accept-
ance to pursue its activities freely”. Legitimation applies to those groups which
position themselves as power-holders. I consider that “legitimation as a form of
collective action” (van Dijk 2000) should be associated with three types of power-
holders. First, there are the political groups, governments or multinational com-
panies which try to legitimate themselves downwards to voters, citizens, or cli-
ents and to justify their actions within what Teun van Dijk (2000, 256) labels as
“prevalent moral order”. Second, there are the disadvantaged groups (e.g. the eth-
nic groups) which try to legitimate their actions in a situation of inequality with
respect to the dominant group. The voice of these groups is an instance of a shift
from a top-down direction to a bottom-up direction of legitimation which allows
various ethnic groups in a society to have different interpretations of the histori-
cal, social, political or cultural contexts. Third, there are the online users who are
active information prosumers. The online platforms, as it is the case of the ‘Debat-
ing Europe’ platform, have provided another instance of bottom-up direction of
legitimation, namely the EU citizens as power-holders through the online content

2 http://www.debatingeurope.eu, accessed March 10, 2015.

82
generated. This online empowerment turns EU citizens into discursive (de)legiti-
mators of various issues that have been debated in the European context. The ‘De-
bating Europe’ platform allows EU citizens to become active social actors eager to
support or to challenge the dominant national or European groups.
Both Teun A. van Dijk (2000) and Ruth Breeze (2012) make a connection be-
tween legitimation and ideologies. R. Breeze identifies the aim of legitimation as
being the shaping of an ideological space and T.A. van Dijk considers that ideolo-
gies are an instrument of legitimation. The integrated model of legitimation used
in this analysis is a blending of the socio-cognitive approach to ideologies, specific
to critical discourse analysis (CDA) and of the grammar of legitimation (van Leeu-
wen and Wodak 1999; van Leeuwen 2008).
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) provides a discursive perspective to legiti-
mation by placing an emphasis on the role of discourse in the social shaping of
power relations and the structures of domination in the contemporary society
(Fairclough 1989; van Dijk 2000). An analysis of these power relations involves a
blending of three levels (Fairclough 2003): text (microlevel textual elements), dis-
cursive practices (the production and interpretation of texts) and social practices
(the situational and institutional context). Since a critical perspective on legitima-
tion deals with broader social practices and power relations of the social actors
involved, we consider that the socio-cognitive approach to ideologies (van Dijk
2000) is appropriate in this context. The novelty of this approach lies in the inclu-
sion of the social practices of a particular group (dominant or dominated groups)
within the study of ideologies. According to Teun A. van Dijk (2000), an ideology
is “the foundation of the social beliefs shared by a social group. Ideologies consist
of those general and abstract social beliefs, shared by a group that control or or-
ganize the more specific knowledge and opinions (attitudes) of a group”. It is ob-
vious that ideologies embed those elements which provide a group legitimation,
identification and cohesion. Teun A. van Dijk (2000) identifies six categories which
supply the structure of ideologies: membership, activities, goals, norms, position
(group-relations), resources.
The grammar of legitimation (van Leeuwen and Wodak 1999; van Leeuwen
2008) distinguishes four types of semantic-functional strategies used in legitima-
tion: authorization (legitimation by reference to the authority of tradition, custom,
law etc.), rationalization (legitimation by reference to the goals and uses of institu-
tionalized social action), moral evaluation (legitimation by reference to value sys-
tems) and mythopoesis (legitimation conveyed through narratives).

A. The Integrated Model of (De)legitimation, Method, Research Questions

I will employ a discursive analysis of the comments posted by EU citizens on
the ‘Debating Europe’ platform over the issue ‘How can Europe end poverty and

83
exclusion in the Roma community?’3, launched on January 7, 2014. The sample
will include 184 comments and the primary units of analysis will be words and
syntagms. The study employs both a deductive and an inductive method. I used
a deductive method by seeking to find how the six ideological structures and the
four semantic-functional strategies were used in order to (de)legitimate the Roma
community. By combining the ideological structures and the discursive strategies
we generated an integrated model of (de)legitimation which encompasses three
forms of (de)legitimation:
−−(de)legitimation through membership and position,
−−(de)legitimation through goals, activities and resources,
−−(de)legitimation through norms and values.
The inductive method was used for an in-depth analysis of the EU citizens’
comments in order to find out the discursive specificity beyond the three types of
(de)legitimation of the Roma community.
The integrated model of (de)legitimation of the Roma community will embed
the following three instances of (de)legitimation:
• (de)legitimation through membership and position (group-relations). It refers to
the origin, appearance, belonging and social position of the organization.
The following questions delimit the two structures (van Dijk 2000): mem-
bership (Who are we? Who belongs to us? Who can be admitted?) and posi-
tion (Who are our friends or enemies? Where do we stand in society?).
In the content analysis these two structures will be adapted to the online debate
over the Roma community. In the category of membership I will identify three types
of participant roles: a micro-group (members of the Roma community), a mezzo-
group (members of the MS countries where the Roma community is present) and
a macro-group (other EU countries). In the category of position we will include
two types of relations: positive relations (legitimators of the Roma community) and
negative relations (delegitimators of the Roma community).
The major semantic-functional strategies that may prevail within this type
of (de)legitimation are authorization and mythopoesis. The members of the three
groups mentioned above may use the categories of personal authority (people
who have a certain status or role in a community), the authority of tradition (com-
munity practices carried on by its members), or the expert authority (persons used
for their expertise rather than for their status) to (de)legitimate this ethnic commu-
nity. The mythopoesis strategy relies on the important role played by storytelling in
(de)legitimating one group. These stories are often told by community members

3 http://www.debatingeurope.eu/2014/01/07/eu-push-inclusion-roma-people/#.VdQox_
mqqko, accessed March 17, 2014.

84
or persons who interacted with these members and they may be moral tales or
cautionary tales.
Two other important aspects that I would like to address within this type of
legitimation are (1) to what category (pro or against the Roma community) the
EU citizens taking part in the debate belong to and (2) the degree of interaction
between the EU online citizens. I will use the Node XL Pro software program to
provide an insight into the network of the debate on the Roma community.
• (de)legitimation through goals, activities and resources. It refers to the pro-
cesses performed by the social actors, their final outcomes, the means
used in their performance. The following questions delimit the three cat-
egories (van Dijk 2000): goals (Why are we doing this? What do we want
to achieve?); activities (What are we doing, planning? What is expected of
us?); resources (What do we have that others don’t? What don’t we have
what others do have?).
In the context of the Roma community, these three categories (aims, activities
and resources) mainly rely on the strategy of rationalization. Thus the (de)legitima-
tion of the Roma community is obtained through reference to the goals and uses of
the Roma community members’ social actions within a specific context and to the
perceptions that society has constructed to endow the Roma community with cog-
nitive validity. In the case of this community, validity is provided by its members’
past activities which may constitute a reason for future investment in this ethnic
community.
• (de)legitimation through norms and values. It refers to one’s own evaluation
and others’ evaluation, changes to be brought within the system of beliefs
of a certain community. The following questions delimit this last category
of a group self-schema (van Dijk 2000): What is good or bad, allowed or
not in what we do?
The norms and values expressed by the EU citizens will be analyzed through
the three categories of the moral (de)legitimation strategy: evaluation (evaluative
words), abstraction (abstract practices (de)legitimating qualities of engagement,
cooperation etc.) and analogy (positive or negative comparisons and intertextual
references which may activate some well-known past historical or social contexts).
The following research questions are to be addressed in this article:
RQ1: Which category (legitimators or delegitimators of the Roma community) is the
most active in the online debate?
RQ2: What is the degree of interaction among the EU officials and the EU citizens de-
bating on the Roma community?
RQ3: What types of (de)legitimation structures do the legitimators and delegitimators
use when talking about the Roma community?

85
 RQ4: What discursive strategies do the legitimators or delegitimators draw upon in
their online representation of the Roma community?

III. Findings
A. Network of Communication - Debate over the Roma Community
The network analysis provided the visibility and interaction (RQ1, RQ2) among
the EU citizens who participated in the debate over the ending of poverty and ex-
clusion of the Roma community. Using the NodeXL Pro software I divided the
EU online citizens into two major clusters: the legitimators of the Roma community
(the group members who support this ethnic community – marked with a green
vertex) and the delegitimators of the Roma community (the group members who are
against this community – marked with a red vertex). As observed in Figure 1,
the number of delegitimators outscored the number of legitimators. Although in
terms of visibility (RQ1), the delegitimators are more visible than the legitimators,
the network shows that the most interactional node (Ruth) belongs to the legitima-
tors’ group. EU citizens of both groups either respond to her comments or interact
with her. Another important aspect shown in Figure 1 is the degree of interaction

Figure 1. The network of EU online participants in the debate

“How can Europe end poverty and exclusion in the Roma community?”

86
(RQ2). As observed, there was a high interaction degree among the legitimators
and delegitimators of the Roma community and a scarce interaction among the
members of the same legitimating or delegitimating group.
The number of bidirectional arcs clearly shows that the EU online participants
in the debate over the Roma community were not highly involved in a two-way
communication. There were only several instances of two-way communication
(bidirectional arcs). The bidirectional connections (marked by wider edges) were
the following: Ruth (legitimator) - Milen (legitimator), Ruth (legitimators) - Cathe-
rine Benning (delegitimator), Milen (legitimator) - Daniela Trifu (legitimator), Tar-
quin (legitimator) - Borislav (delegitimator), Tarquin (legitimator) - HT (delegiti-
mator), Rob Riley (legitimator) - Livi Bez (legitimator), Dami An (delegitimator)
- Maria (delegitimator), and Borislav Valkov (delegitimator) - Eduard (delegitima-
tor). In our opinion, this scarce number of bidirectional communication instance
among EU citizens shows that, at least for this debate, the ‘Debating Europe’ plat-
form served more as a unidirectional communication where EU citizens’ role was
to provide a comment to previous comments. Another important aspect of this
network analysis is to be found at the level of the vertex labels. As observed, all
vertex labels belong to EU citizens and none to EU policymakers or experts. The
communication among the EU citizens and the policymakers was mediated by the
platform managers: the policymakers answered the EU citizens’ comments dur-
ing an interview carried out by the platform managers. For this debate on ending
the poverty and exclusion of the Roma community, the policymaker interviewed
was: Andrey Kovatchev, a Bulgarian MEP who sits with the Centre-Right in the
European Parliament and who has authored a report on the EU Strategy on Roma Inclusion.
The frequency of comments by EU online citizen (Figure 2) also illustrates the
scarce use of bidirectional communication: 62% of the participants provided only
one comment in this debate. Despite this high percentage of EU citizens who pre-
ferred to give only one comment, there were several online participants who were
very active. For example, Ruth (legitimator) provided 45 comments and Borislav
Valkov (a delegitimator) gave 24 comments and they were actually the two main
strong components who maintained a constant interconnectedness among the EU
online citizens.

B. (De)legitimation through Membership and Position

The main topic associated with the discursive legitimation of the Roma com-
munity is the possibility of European integration of Roma community through
education and tradition. The legitimation of the Roma people is expressed by
members belonging to all three types of groups (micro, mezzo and macro). The
online EU citizens mainly used two categories of authorization: personal authority
and authority of tradition.

87
 1% 1%1%
1% 1 comment
1%
3% 2 comments
4%
3 comments
5% 4 comments
3%
5 comments
5% 6 comments
7 comments

13% 9 comments
62%
12 comments
14 comments
24 comments
45 comments

Figure 2. The frequency of comments by EU online citizen

At the level of the micro-group, legitimate authority is vested in people who are
members of the Roma community and who have succeeded in their lives through
education. Natalia Duminica plays an important role in this debate because of her
role in the community: being a Moldavian Roma woman, she graduated the uni-
versity thus setting up an example that education may change an ethnic commu-
nity. In her comments she uses a local strategic move from an apparent exclusion
from the micro-group to an assumed inclusion in this community. This discursive
shift is obtained through pronouns: the pronominal exclusiveness (the pronoun
“they” draws a clear demarcation line between her and the Roma community) is
later on turned into pronominal inclusiveness (the pronoun “I” assigns the speak-
er into the in-group of the Roma community).
1. ”The school is for free because Roma have limited access to education! Roma
are not working because they are discriminated when they try to get a job! (...)”
(Natalia Duminica, Jan. 8, 2014)
2. ”I am Roma from Republic of Moldova and I see that our government does
insignificant actions to integrate Roma (...).” (Natalia Duminica, Jan. 9, 2014)
At the level of the macro-group, the most active legitimator of the Roma
community is Ruth (Barnett) and as the network analysis (Figure 1) showed,
she was the main strong component who interacted with the highest number
of online participants. In her comments she activates the personal authority
category emphasizing her status as a UK speaker and writer challenging ste-
reotypes, prejudices, and human rights. Using the argumentative scheme of
part-whole relationship, Ruth makes a plea for two topics: Roma community
members’ willingness to be integrated (Extract 3) and bonding with this com-
munity members (Extract 4).

88
3. ”Please tell me as all the Roma and Travellers I have met or talked with WANT to
be accepted as part of society! Do you live on a different planet????” (Ruth, Jan. 8,
2014)
4. ”Try getting to know some of the Roma, Nikos, I mean really becoming friends.
(...)” (Ruth, Jan. 8, 2014)
At the level of the mezzo-group (members of the MS countries where the
Roma community is present), the most powerful legitimation through mem-
bership comes from a delegitimator. Borislav Valkov (a Bulgarian), a strong
delegitimating vertex in the network analysis (see Figure 1), also uses the per-
sonal authority category through a part-whole argumentative scheme. But un-
like Ruth who pleads for an integration relationship between part (Roma com-
munity members) and whole (society, EU), Borislav Valkov uses the part-whole
exclusion argumentative scheme. His appreciative note is oriented towards a
part of this community (his positive experience with Roma co-workers, Extract
5). Within his comment he uses his co-workers as indirect discursive instances
of personal authority. Vested with credibility gained through education, his
Roma co-workers indirectly mention a breach within the cohesion of the eth-
nic community: not all parts (‘other gypsies’) are accepted within the Roma
in-group (the whole).
5. ”And finally I had gypsy co-workers and I am OK with them. I can see how jobs and
work atmosphere change individuals and they are talking about other gypsy(and
their lifestyle) with disgust. (Borislav Valkov, Jan. 8, 2014)
The authority of tradition is used to legitimate Roma persons as a long-last-
ing ethnic group in Europe. The causal scheme oriented towards the past helps
to construct a positive presentation of the Roma community and to justify its
craftsmanship and longevity (Extract 6). This emphasizing of their good things
is achieved by means of word selection (nouns related to their musical tradi-
tion, Extract 7).
6. ”Many craftsmen, skilled people. Don’t push them, don’t sell them lies.” (Radu
Micu, Jan. 8, 2014)
7. ”The Roma are Europeans and in most cases they are also EU citizens. They
have been living among us for centuries. People forget their influence and con-
tribution in European culture and heritage, like our music for example. In Spain,
Greece, Hungary and Romania their music has been adding to these countries’
heritage for centuries now. What would Spain be without a flamenco, a music
that the gypsies gave their soul into? “ (Christos, Jan. 10, 2014)
The delegitimation of the Roma community through membership and posi-
tion is mainly framed around the topic ‘problems with inclusion’. This topic is
related explicitly to Roma people through the category of personal authority
and implicitly to national and EU organizations through the category of expert
authority.

89
 The personal authority category is used by members of the mezzo group
(EU citizens who live in countries where this ethnic community reaches a high
number of persons). The emphasis on their bad things is conveyed through the
strategy of mythopoesis (narratives) and polarization. The personal experience
as justification makes storytelling a powerful argumentative scheme: ‘they do
not belong in our country because I was bullied and because they are actually
perceived as victims’. Borislav Valkov’s negative position (Extract 8) towards
the Roma community as a whole (the pronoun ‘their’) illustrates this type of
delegitimating:
8. ”I had faced their “friendship” as result I almost quit school because of bulling
and my pleas for aid by school authorities are like your thoughts: they are vic-
tims in society, so cut ‘em some slack)!” (Borislav Valkov, Jan 8, 2014)
It is interesting to observe that Borislav Valkov (a Bulgarian) employs a po-
sition shift in (de)legitimating the Roma community through membership. He
actually legitimates members of the Roma in-group (‘his co-workers’, see Ex-
tract 5), but he delegitimates the Roma micro-group as a whole, assigning them
the ‘fake’ social position of victims. Borislav Valkov’s implicit suggestion of a
reversal of victim roles between the ethnic community members and the major-
ity members is explicitly rendered by Alexandru Paladoiu (a Romanian). He
uses comparative polarization between the native population and the Gypsy
community:
9. “In Romania the gypsy (roma) community have more rights than the native popu-
lation, who is discriminated ?” (Alexandru Paladoiu, Jan. 8, 2014)
Alexandru Paladoiu’s discursive delegitimating position may coincide with
what Veronika Kalmus (2003: 676) identifies as “endangered majority” (the em-
powered nation presenting itself as threatened by a dominant ethnic group).
In Extract 9, this argumentative position is emphasized by a rhetorical ques-
tion which implies the following proposition: Romanians have less rights than
Roma persons.
The analysis of the EU citizens’ comments showed that national and EU
organizations are another important actor whose delegitimation through
membership and position should be taken into account. Members of the mac-
ro-group (EU countries where Roma community is not a sensitive issue) del-
egitimate their expert position by using a causal argumentative scheme. The
de-emphasizing of their good things (EU funds for Roma persons) is rendered
through word selection of negative terms (‘failure’). Extract 10 presents the EC
fund fraud at the local level as the cause of the failure of the Roma social inclu-
sion:
10. Hence, why punish EU member states, since the Roma problem is rather a
massive EC fund fraud problem to start with. …. Overall, EU funding for Roma
social inclusion is a failure. (Karel Van Isacker, Jan. 9, 2014)

90
 Indeed, enough money wasted on them. Even people on the field acknowl-
edge the EC funding was a disaster with most money left behind in non-Roma
(read NGOs set up by local politicians) pockets or in the pockets of Roma leaders.
(Karel Van Isacker, March 19, 2014)
A member of the mezzo-group (a Bulgarian) employs the expert authority
category by making reference to Western countries as experts. In Extract 11,
this discursive position is emphasized by a sarcastic polarization between East-
ern countries and Western countries:
11. The West is very worried about the rights of the roma, so I suggest they take all of
them there! You are better people then us, take them! Hypocrits! (Ana Georgieva,
Jan. 8, 2014)

B. (De)legitimation through Goals, Activities, Resources

The ethnic in-group’s way of living has been used as the starting point of the
argumentative scheme both for legitimating and delegitimating the Roma per-
sons’ social practices. In both instances ‘obstacles to their inclusion’ constitute the
most pervasive topic. The legitimators of the Roma communities’ activities enact
an instrumental rationalization of diversity and resistance to inclusion through
the proposition ‘Roma people do not want to integrate because they are a nomadic
tribe’. The interesting aspect of the legitimating of Roma’s integration as a clear
danger to their way of living and being is the type of online legitimators. Cath-
erine Benning (Extract 12) and Borislav Valkov (Extract 13) play a dual role: they
legitimate the existential activities of this community but they delegitimate the
Roma persons’ particular activities.
12. They enjoy being free to wander. Freedom is the essence of their well being and
they feel life in one place without that option to up and move on ‘anytime’
is akin to imprisonment. They are a nomadic tribe. (Catherine Benning, Jan. 8,
2014)
13. People don’t realize that majority of them refuse to integrate out of sheer fear
that they will not exist! But MUST we tolerate criminals and social care abusers so
they can keep their livestyle/culture? (Borislav Valkov, Jan. 8, 2014)
Borislav Valkov’s rhetorical question (Extract 13) encompasses the dilemma
beyond this debate: an ethnic group’s activities framed either as cultural differ-
ences or as societal dangers. This latter type of framing triggers a delegitimating
of their way of being through an instrumental rationalization of intolerance. A
juxtaposition of their unaccepted activities is the discursive strategy used by del-
egitimators:
14. Look they create human traffic, pickpocket groups and etc. If we want to help them
then we have to show them that such a life is intolerable! (Borislav Valkov, Jan.
8, 2014)

91
15. (… ) they steal, they kill old people for money, they torment us all! (Ana Georgieva,
Jan. 8, 2014)
(De)legitimating the Roma community’s access to social resources brings
forth two important aspects of the obstacles to inclusion: on the one hand, the
benefits and drawbacks of education and on the other hand, a reversal ‘victim-
agent’ polarization.
Education is the most pervasive word used in framing a viable solution to
Roma people’s social inclusion. Legitimators emphasize the priority to include
the Roma children into the education system by selecting the words (‘laptops’,
‘projects’, ‘English’, ‘literarcy’) that belong to this semantic field:
16. The laptops can only be used for educational purposes and will teach young
Roma children from the ghettos the benefit of working together on projects,
perhaps a bit of English and general computer literacy. (Milen, Jan. 8, 2014)
Delegitimators agree that education might be a solution to social inclusion
but they embed it within a larger context and they add extreme solutions (Ex-
tract 17) which brought up heated comments. It is the case of Borislav Valkov’s
proposition: ‘To take Roma kids away from their parents is a way of social in-
clusion’. This proposition presupposes the following polarization: Roma parents
are bad versus Roma children may turn to be good. He assigns responsibility to the
Roma parents and provides a drastic solution for their children.
17. (…) take the children out of their families if their families cannot give them a social
inclusion! These children are not wrong but what they learn from their parents is
wrong! (Borislav Valkov, Jan. 8, 2014)
The take away children is not something I said lightly because I had seen how
children are stoped from educating and SOLD into mariage! Tell me how can par-
ents who sell their children be treated? (Borislav Valkov, Jan. 8, 2014)
Whereas the access to free education of Roma children seems to be accepted
by both legitimators and delegitimators, their access to other social resources
(housing, welfare) is highly contested. The main proposition used by delegiti-
mators for this latter type of access is the following: ‘Roma community refuse
to have the same duties as the majority population’. The argumentative scheme
of polarized comparison between the ethnic minority’s lack of duties and the
majority’s fulfillment of duties brings forth again the issue of ‘endangered ma-
jority’ (see A.). In their comments, the delegitimators emphasize a reversal ‘vic-
tim-agent’ polarization (Extract 18): the proposition ‘The Roma community is
discriminated’ is shifted into ‘The dominant group (native Romanians or Bul-
garians) is discriminated’.
18. We pay their electrisity, from the taxes, they do not pay taxes! I am discriminated,
not them! (Ana Georgieva, Jan. 8, 2014)
EU funds for the Roma community is another significant resource that is
mentioned in the EU citizens’ comments. The description of the solicharity

92
 phenomenon (Extract 19) is used by delegitimators through a polarization be-
tween Western countries and Eastern countries.
19. The EU should restrict dole, sorry solidarity payments to those countries that have
treated the Roma so badly historically eg Bulgaria, Czech, Romania, Slovakia,
Hungary etc. BTW, don’t cite EU legislation to me as if I should agree to it – I,
like ALL UK citizens have never voted to be a member of the EU and I like
many UK citizens want to stop paying SOLICHARITY to countries like yours. (Tar-
quin, Jan. 14, 2014)
The legitimators agree with delegitimators upon the EU shortcomings and
the way in which the EU funds are distributed. Their argumentative causal
scheme also takes a form of polarization but this time the pair is formed of rich
countries versus poor countries. The cause of this discrepancy is actually main-
tained by rich countries because an ethnic group will always constitute the best
entity to be blamed in the self-presentation of a rich country as a victim.
20. The EU has a problem of serious ‘dry rot’ in its foundations – capitalism! The
ever-widening gap between the greedy rich individuals, companies and countries
one the one hand and the poorer individuals and countries the rich prey upon is
the root of most EU problems. The rich, of course, like to have a vulnerable group
– Roma and Travellers – for the poor to vent their anger against instead of turning on
them (the rich). (Ruth, Jan. 8, 2014)

C. (De)legitimation through Norms and Values

The main topic of this type of (de)legitimation focuses on the subjective restric-
tions to integration of the Roma community under the form of moralizing state-
ments. The meaning of the positive self-presentation and of the negative other-
presentation was discursively achieved by the implicit ‘good versus evil’ polariza-
tion. At the level of the lexicon, the moral delegitimation is more pervasive and
it is achieved by means of evaluative adjectives and/or nouns which qualify the
other’s practices as evil. The juxtaposition of negative evaluative adjectives em-
phasizes a moral delegitimation of the Roma community and of the EU organiza-
tions or rich MS countries. The delegitimators use emotionally loaded adjectives
which refer either to the Roma persons’ decaying physical condition (Extract 21)
or to the MS countries’ exploitative authorial intention (Extract 22).
21. (…) it is simply that people do not like being around dirty, messy beggars who
show no respect for the culture, property of those whose areas they move into.
(Ericbana, Jan. 18, 2014)
22. The hypocrites are the greedy preying rich who exploit ‘the poor’ and like the
poor to have vulnerable minorities, like the Roma … (Ruth, Jan. 8, 2014)
Analogy through positive or negative comparisons is used to express moral
(de)legitimation. The most striking comparison is that between the Roma com-

93
 munity members and the Jews. The legitimators of the Roma community use
this type of intertextual reference for two purposes: to legitimate the Gypsies as
victims just as Jews were the victims of the Nazis (Extract 23) and to delegiti-
mate a solution proposed by delegitimators (to take away the Roma children
from their families - Extract 23 or to assimilate the community into the domi-
nant culture - Extract 24).
23. Taking children from their rightful parents and raising them outside their
rightful culture is an element of genocide – the destruction in part or whole of
a people and their culture . (…) The Nazis took their own citizens children, plus
Aryan looking children from other countries – including quite a few Jews, and
raised them in top Nazi families and sent them to special Napoli schools to brainwash
them. (Ruth, Jan. 8, 2014)
24. That is what happened to the Jews in China – they were revered and welcomed
and they ‘disappeared’ into the community. (Ruth, Jan. 8, 2014)
The comparison between the Roma people and the Jews obviously refers to a
sensitive and very controversial historical context and Borislav Valkov’s extreme
solution clearly emphasizes the representation of the EU and the MS countries as
dominant groups with a colonial mentality.

III. Conclusion
The analysis of the online debate on the Roma community integration revealed
two significant aspects:
a. (a) the online interaction among the legitimators and delegitimators of the
Roma community (RQ2) was barely characterized by a two-way communi-
cation. The supporters and opponents of this ethnic community preferred
to simply add their comments to a discursive seed thread launched by a
EU citizen who did not reply. The network analysis showed that despite
the higher visibility of delegitimators (RQ1), the most interactional node
belonged to the legitimators’ group and the unidirectional interaction was
rather among the supporters and opponents of this ethnic community. An-
other significant finding of the network analysis of ‘Debating Europe’ plat-
form revealed that EU policymakers or experts are not directly involved in
the online debate alongside with EU citizens.
b. (b) the legitimators’ and delegitimators’ discourses about the Roma com-
munity include a number of differences and resemblances in the use of
(de)legitimation structures and discursive strategies.
All three (de)legitimation structures (membership & position; goals, activities
& resources; norms & values) are used by both the supporters and opponents of
the Roma community (RQ3). At the same time a resemblance of some discursive
strategies is noticed in the discourses of the both parties involved. The main dif-

94
ference lies in the way in which the legitimators and delegitimators discursively
framed these structures and strategies (RQ4).
Personal authority and authority of tradition are the discursive strategies pro-
vided in the (de)legitimation structure of membership and position. This ethnic
community members as legitimators emphasize their experience as educated
Roma persons through pronoun inclusiveness by setting themselves as examples
of personal authority. This type of discursive strategy is also used by delegitima-
tors but this time the personal authority is combined with mythopoesis. The sto-
rytelling instances of the majority members being bullied by the Roma persons
are powerful discursive strategies because these personal examples serve as jus-
tification for the delegitimators’ lack of acceptance the Roma community. In their
positive other-presentation, the legitimators use thematical elements of the dis-
course of tolerance. The causal argument schemes are oriented towards the past
and they include intertextual reference to the historical and cultural context of the
Roma community. The authority of tradition (craftsmanship and music) is mostly
mentioned by the proponents of this ethnic community and they make a plea for
cultural diversity. But tradition is also used by delegitimators as a causal argu-
ment scheme in their discourse of intolerance. Unlike the legitimators who use the
discursive strategy of tradition to legitimate the Roma membership, the delegiti-
mators link tradition to downplay the Roma people’s way of living. Within this
delegitimation structure through the strategy of tradition, they emphasize the bad
aspects of Roma people’s customs and the negative consequences of their social
practices. Andrey Kovatchev, the Bulgarian MEP, interviewed by the ‘Debating
Europe’ platform moderators, also uses tradition as the causal factor of Roma peo-
ple’s lack of integration. He admits that ‘not all traditions are good traditions’ and
he rejects this ethnic community’s isolated way of living and the Roma members’
blind acceptance of some family tradition which does not comply with the EU val-
ues. Thus tradition seems to have been a common discursive strategy used both
by the legitimators and delegitimators of the Roma community. The difference lies
at the level of interpretation: the legitimators associate tradition to the discourse of
tolerance whereas the delegitimators link tradition to the discourse of difference
and intolerance.
Instrumental rationalization is the discursive strategy used in both the legiti-
mation and delegitimation structure of goals, activities and resources. As men-
tioned above, social practices of this ethnic community constitute the starting
point of the comment exchanges between the supporters and opponents of this
community. Although instrumental rationalization of their activities is the com-
mon discursive strategy used by both parties involved, the difference lies in the
framing aspect: whereas the legitimators frame the Roma group’s social practices
as cultural diversity (they are a nomadic tribe), the delegitimators frame their ac-
tivities as societal dangers. The most interesting aspect of this online debate is that

95
Andrey Kovatchev, the Bulgarian MEP and the author of a report on the EU Strat-
egy on Roma Inclusion, also supports the delegitimators’ discursive framing. As
mentioned above, he rejects the Roma community’s traditional way of living and
he makes a plea for a mentality change.
In order for this change to take place, resources should be reconsidered. Free
education of Roma children was mentioned both by legitimators and delegitima-
tors but the opponents associate this educational resource to an extreme solution
(taking away the Roma kids away from their parents) which is highly condemned
by the legitimators who use the intertextual reference of the Nazis’ genocide to
label such action.
The other resources (welfare, housing, EU funds) mentioned in their comments
revealed two discursive positions of the legitimators and delegitimators: discrimi-
nated majority versus privileged minority, and rich/ Western EU countries versus
poor/ Eastern EU countries. The first discursive position plays a significant part
in the negative other-presentation, especially when the debate focuses on ethnic
inclusion. The issue of ‘endangered majority’ (Romanians, Bulgarians etc.) was
emphasized by delegitimators through a reversal ‘victim-agent’ polarization (the
dominant group is discriminated because the ethnic group does not fulfill its so-
cial duties). EU funds for the Roma community is another significant resource that
is mentioned in the EU citizens’ comments. Delegitimators and legitimators agree
on a misuse of these funds. But whereas the opponents brought into discussion
the solicharity phenomenon through a polarization between Western countries
and Eastern countries, the proponents of the Roma community inclusion empha-
size the polarization between rich countries and poor countries. The legitimators
argue that this discrepancy is maintained by the rich Western countries because
they may use the ethnic group as a scapegoat in their praising self-presentation.
(De)legitimation through norms and values is actually implicit in all the other
structures of (de)legitimation: membership, position, goals, activities or resources.
The comments upon the Roma community’s way of living and activities reveals a
covert ‘good versus evil’ polarization. The descriptions of the Roma persons’ so-
cial practices (“they steal, they kill old people for money, they torment us all” - Extract 15
or “they do not pay taxes” - Extract 18) implicitly qualify such activities as antisocial
and at the same time provide a negative evaluation of the members belonging to
the Roma community. This last type of (de)legitimation through norms and values
was used both by supporters and opponents. The discursive difference was at the
level of strategies provided for the overt negative or positive other-presentation.
Whereas the delegitimators selected negative evaluative adjectives to emphasize
the Roma persons’ bad features and practices, the legitimators used analogy to
create a meaning potential of victimhood achieved through a mental transfer from
the Jews’ past oppressive experiences unto the Roma community’s present way of
being treated in the European Union.

96
 Is the Roma community’s inclusion in Europe possible? The analysis of the EU
citizens’ online comments shows that a new interpretative context of interethnic
relations with Roma community members is needed. Both legitimators and del-
egitimators agree that this context is highly dependent on activities which include
educational practices targeted towards Roma children. The difference between the
two sides lies in the means through which these educational practices are achieved:
the legitimators make a plea for personal authority (Roma educated persons to
set an example for other community members) whereas the delegitimators try to
change the authority of a tradition (to take away the Roma children from their illit-
erate parents). Despite this discrepancy of solutions for the same end (education)
and despite the lack of a greater interaction between the participants in this online
debate, I consider that the solutions and problems expressed in the discursive (de)
legitimation of the Roma community suggest a high interest of EU citizens in the
issue of Roma inclusion in Europe and their willingness to change the majority’s
and the minority’s mentality towards this ethnic community.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for
Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-
TE-2014-4-0599.

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98
 The Role of Media
in Structuring the Social Representations
of Romanian Immigrants in Germany

Ileana ROTARU
Associate Professor, PhD
University “Eftimie Murgu” of Reşiţa
Department of Theology and Social Science
Email: i.rotaru@uem.ro

Abstract: The present article investigates the role played by mass-media

in structuring the public discourse regarding the adaptive efforts of the
Romanian immigrants in the German cultural space in the European
Union and their relation to the host country. The problem of the immi-
grants from South-East Europe has become one of the main topics of the
public discourse. The paper argues that the Romanians’ migration to
Germany has certain specific embedded features based on their cultural
and historical past and, secondly, on economic motives. The article iden-
tifies the German media’s social representation of the Romanian immi-
grants, in the context of the European cultural identity.

Keywords: mass-media, public discourse, Romanian immigrants, Ger-

many, social representation.

1. The context
After the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the
citizens’ desire to be free in these countries was manifested by a long process of
migration, which signifies the strong valorisation given to the democratic regimes
of the Western European countries, the high living standard, and the access to an
elevated culture (especially the educational system). The sociologic surveys (ac-

Journal of Media Research,

Vol. 9 Issue991(24) / 2016, pp. 99-120
cording to the Information Centre of the European Commission Delegation in Ro-
mania) achieved during the process of accession of these countries to the space of
the European Union, indicated extremely high pro-European values. In Romania
they reached values between 80-95% showing the Romanians’ desire to be inte-
grated in the EU and their belief in the improvement of their standard of living.
These values were based on a strong valorisation of the social-political, economic
and cultural West European space.
Romania’s and Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union in 2007, in the sec-
ond wave of former Communist countries, has represented a reached goal for
most of the citizens of these two states. From the point of view of the social analy-
sis, this accession had a major stake because it represented the reward of over 50
years of accumulated frustrations especially regarding the freedom of circulation
and the individual’s possibility to improve their standard of living.
In this context, we can distinguish two major waves of the migration processes
from Eastern to Western Europe (including from the theoretical point of view the
North-American area: the USA and Canada and also the Australian continent:
Australia and New Zealand).
The first wave of social migration was manifested during the period 1990-2008.
The destination countries of the Romanian citizens were especially those where
Latin languages were spoken (as an element of cultural identity and a support-
ing factor in the social adaptation and integration): France, Spain, Portugal, Italy,
(French) Canada. Likewise, we also underline the linguistic element, but not as
an identity factor but only as accessibility (the easiness to learn and speak) the
following countries were aimed: the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain.
The economic motivation was the basis of the migration towards some countries
in Northern Europe and Germany. In this first phase, the migration to Germany,
had as particularity, besides the economic and ethnical reasons, meaning the go-
ing back of Germans to their motherland, family reunion. From the regional prox-
imity perspective, the migration of Romanian citizens was also manifested in such
countries as Greece and Cyprus (Otovescu, 2012).
We can characterise this migration wave with a prevailing affective feature
outlined on the one hand by the possibility of circulation freedom and on the other
hand by the access to the western living standard.
The economic crisis, which started in 2008, brought in a major change in the
orientation of the migration process. Starting with this period, the foundation of
migration really had an economic characteristic: the salary as a possibility of in-
creasing the standard of living. Unfortunately, the economic crisis has especially
hit the countries in Southern Europe which were host-countries of the Romanian
immigrants, a fact which determined a re-orientation of the social-economic mi-
gration towards the countries which succeeded to manage the economic crisis ef-
ficiently (Germany and Great Britain).

100
 The new migration wave has certain distinct social-professional characteristics:
this is formed by people with a higher level of education (university studies), from
social-professional liberal categories (especially doctors, engineers, computer
scientists, teachers). The economic crisis, which also affected Romania, caused a
severe diminution of the salaries of these social-professional categories and the
standard of living that was not correlated to their level of professional training.
That, together with the dissatisfaction of the Romanian political class has deter-
mined the said social-professional category to join the migration wave. We can as-
sume that if the first wave was formed generally by people with a mid-level edu-
cation, from the category of workers and farmers, the second wave was formed by
people from the middle class with higher education.
At the same time, a difference between the two migration waves is also mani-
fested at the level of the desire to settle: with most people from the first wave, the
salaries earned in the host country got invested in their mother country (where
the other members of the family remained), showing a desire to come back, those
from the second wave are characterised by the desire of permanent settlement in
the host country (Otovescu, 2012).
Likewise, the liberalisation of the workforce market for the Romanian and
Bulgarian citizens starting with 1 January 2014 has caused a series of fears and
debates in some member states of the European Union (especially Great Britain).
These debates have benefited from a promotion in the public space through the
agency of mass-media. In this sense, we consider that in the migration process,
mass-media plays an essential role in structuring social representations of immi-
grants in the host country, in the formation and keeping their cultural identity
and the formation or the enhancement of European citizens’ attitudes (the relation
host-immigrant, we - the others) (Popescu, 2008).

2. Current state of research

The problem of immigrants from South-East Europe has become one of the
main themes in the public discourses in the West European public space. It was
amplified especially in the liberalisation process of workforce by lifting the restric-
tions for the European citizens from Romania and Bulgaria, starting with 1 Janu-
ary 2014. By the agency of media, this situation brought about an increase of the
xenophobic level, certain racial attitudes and there were recorded even some vio-
lent incidents against the immigrants. These negative connotations were amplified
by the mass media, especially the island press (Great Britain) which has raised a
series of debates regarding the possible negative consequences of the workforce
liberalisation for Romanians and Bulgarians, menace of negatively interfering
with the way of life, of the loss of jobs and the increase of the unemployment in the
context of the perpetuation of the economic crisis. Some researchers (Tryandafyl-

101
lidou, 2000) by the analysis carried on „the others” proves that the experience of
some Southern European countries (Greece, Italy and Spain), which changed from
emigrant countries to host countries, did not help the governments of these states
to manage the social-political and economic problems which the immigrants wave
from Europe (but also from outside it) have raised after 1990.
A particular situation regarding the intra-European migration is represented
by Germany. The analysis achieved from the historical and social-cultural point of
view (Dietz, 1999) shows that after the Second World War, the successive immi-
grant waves had a strong affective weight. These waves were substantiated by a po-
litical decision regarding the readmission of German ethnic people (Aussiedler) from
countries from the former Soviet Union and Central and South-Eastern Europe, in-
tending to relocate in their homeland or to reunite with their families. In contrast to
the migration to other countries in Western and Southern Europe, Germany played
a special role. The main reasons were especially of an ethno-national origin, less
of an economic one; the political decision underpinned the migration process (the
governmental assistance for migration, 1993 law - the right to return). These ele-
ments encouraged migration during the communist period, but after the collapse of
communism, the migration process experienced a drastic decrease of the number of
immigrants with the introduction of the language test (1996, 1999) for ethnic Ger-
mans (Aussiedler) as a proof of their affiliation to the German community. The new
migration wave would manifest towards Germany after 1 January 2014 having this
time a very powerful economic connotation under the conditions when, due to the
fact that the economic crisis massively hit the south of Europe and it caused a reori-
entation towards the centre of Europe which was less affected. From this point of
view we can state that there are only scientific interpretations of this social phenom-
enon, there are no profound or recent studies. Likewise, the problems of the immi-
gration of Romanian citizens within the European Union, towards Germany, after
Romania’s accession to the European Union, was less analysed, with the exception
of researches which regarded the diaspora or the analysis of statistical data within
Romania (Otovescu, 2012). Having in view the understanding of the wider perspec-
tive, highlighting the history of the migration trend, E. Honekopp, researcher at The
Research Institute of the Federal Employment Agency (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt
und Berufsforschung), achieves a detailed analysis comparing the different migra-
tion trends of the workforce towards Germany from Central and Eastern Europe
based on the statistical data relevant until 1996. These data offer a wider picture to
frame the specificity of migration from Romania to Germany, as compared to other
countries in the region (for example, Poland).
According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, there are 454,000
people from Bulgaria and Romania living in Germany in 2014. The number of Bul-
garian nationals living in Germany almost quadrupled from 2004 to 2013 (+275

102
percent). The number of Romanian nationals rose to 265 percent, too. A further
increase was observed over the first few months of 2014. By the end of April 2014
there were 159,000 Bulgarians and 295,000 Romanians living in Germany. (Han-
ganu, Humpert, Kohls, 2014). How many of those are Roma is not documented.
The research regarding the problem of social migration within European Union
or the social-cultural European space is fragmentary and atomized by the punc-
tual studies on a certain topic or on a certain group of immigrants (Tryandafyl-
lidou, 2000; Otovescu, 2012.) This refers especially to local problems and consists
especially of statistical data interpretations provided by national organisations or
European institutes. These studies do not present a more ample vision having in
view the profound understanding of social-cognitive, economic and politic mech-
anisms that have determined the contemporary migration waves as well as a psy-
cho-sociologic understanding of the historic context of the European space. Conse-
quently, the above-mentioned studies have an increased punctual and individual
value but from the point of view of the present research, we have to identify and
explain the main reasons of the migration process and the role of mass-media in
the assumption and amplification of the immigrant’s social representations and
keeping the cultural identity of the European immigrant.

3. Theoretical framework
The mass-media represents the main vector by which the immigrants’ social
representations and their cultural identity are structured and formed. Conse-
quently, there are two theoretical concepts that I will operate within the present
research: that of social representations and that of cultural identity.
Furthermore, for a working definition I will adopt the definition provided by
the OECD (2007), an immigrant is “a person of foreign nationality who enters the
permanently resident population either from outside the country or by changing
from a temporary to a permanent status in the country” (OECD 2007, 37). From
the intra-EU immigrants’ perspective, it is particularly this mobility that needs to
be emphasised.
The main theoretical keystone of the present paper is based on the Social Rep-
resentation Theory (SRT) regarding the analysis of the way in which the relation-
ship national-immigrant is structured, based on the political-public discourse on
the migration process reflected by means of mass-media.
This study seeks to combine social psychological theories that concentrate on
the social-symbolic nature of knowledge theory like the Social Representation
Theory (SRT) with a sociological viewpoint that examines group relations and
collective identity formation within a specific historical context. According to the
SRT (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), it is assumed that all individuals in Western mod-
ern societies strive for a positive self-identity and, consequently for positive group

103
identifications. The SRT points to social representations as a form of social knowl-
edge that people use to make sense of social reality and to ascertain their position
in relation to situations, events and objects of communication that concern them
(Jodelet, 1991; Moscovici, 1976).
The SRT thus links cognitive elements with symbolic relations in society. This
is the place where mass-media interferes as the main vehicle of information and of
social construction positivation. Jean-Claude Abric (1994) explains the social rep-
resentation as knowledge form, adding to it that, at the same time, it is a product
and process of the mental activity by which an individual or a group reconstitutes
reality and rendering it meaningful. Abric develops (1984), in the theory of the
central node, a theoretical model that distinguishes between the central and the
peripheral elements of a social representation, from the point of view of the stabil-
ity, the changing of representations and their relationship to reality. The dominant
features of the central node are: - it is determined by a series of historical, sociolog-
ical and ideological conditions, with a charge of collective memory; it establishes
the homogeneity of the group as a common basis and collectively conveyed by so-
cial representations; it is the most stable element, coherent and resilient to change,
thus ensuring the continuity and permanence of the representation. Hence, the
central node constitutes the keystone which organises both the representation and
its meaning. The peripheral system is complementary to the central system and it
allows anchoring the representation in the actual reality. The peripheral elements
enjoy a great flexibility, as they are the interface between the central node and re-
ality, acting as an objectifying function. Information is retained, selected and eval-
uated in the peripheral zone. In that context it also detains a function of protecting
the central signification of the representation, but, at the same time, it also allows
the integration of the subject’s own history, personal experiences in elaborating
social representations.
This perspective is useful when analysing the discourse on immigration in the
context of cultural identity and European cultural identity because it highlights
the fact that social representations are not merely cognitive schemes but involve
the symbolic structuring of society and, hence, the representation of different
groups (and individuals as members of these groups) and their relational posi-
tioning within society. This theory is pertinent to the analysis of immigration me-
dia discourse because it points to the socially shared nature of knowledge and its
symbolic functions in society. Nonetheless, this theory too, needs to be embedded
with the specific social- historical elements that organise social and political reality
in a given society.
In this theoretical framework of social psychology, we will use Elizabeth Noell-
Neumann’s spiral of silence theory (1984) of mass communication in order to ana-
lyse the role of the media in structuring the public opinion towards immigrants.

104
The communication theory of media effects may be synthesized as it follows:
a. people’s reactions to the opinion climate model behaviour and lead to a
stronger or weaker public manifestation, due to the fact that individuals
are endowed with a special sense, namely that of detecting the opinion
climate. In this context, the public opinion becomes both a pressure source
and a factor of creating or maintaining social cohesion;
b. mass media supports and promotes the dominating opinion trend and
people tend to join it, to publicly and actively manifest about it. By con-
trast, the others who share different or contrary opinions tend to be silent
due to the fear of not becoming unpopular, marginalized or reprobated.
In the second register, I will reach the cultural identity problems. The argu-
ments for this choice are to be explained by using the concept of cultural identity,
as process in a permanent change (Kim Y.Y, 1988, 2007) and the new concept of
inter-cultural identity theorized by Y.Y. Kim (2007, 1), as a counterpart and exten-
sion of cultural identity “which highlights the phenomenon of changing the iden-
tity beyond the parameters of conventional monolithic concept of cultural iden-
tity” (Corbu, 2010,126). One person can spring into a wider culture or into several
cultures and import, adjust and change his/hers cultural experiences by processes
of acculturation and de-culturation.
In this context, the concept of cultural identity is seen as process of a self-ad-
justing as a sensitive skin that can react and change according to the new cultural
environment. Corbu (2010, 127) explains that when people move for a while in
another culture, the cultural identity does not “recognize” familiar patterns, ste-
reotypes and rules, norms and it causes an adaptive effort. The adaptive effort
represents the process of adopting some new cultural patterns in order to facilitate
the individual’s integration in the new society. In some cases, the adaptive effort
has two ways back processes when the individual needs to readapt into his origi-
nal cultural environment after spending some time in a foreign culture or to per-
manent adopt the new culture as his/hers own as becoming an active member of
the new adoptive culture. The process is flexible and continuous until the person
finds his/hers equilibrium from emotional, cognitive and social perspective. These
situations matched the cases of Romanian immigrants in such countries as Italy
(Otovescu, 2012; Popescu, 2008), and Spain (Marcu, 2012). From the point of view
of the analysed migration process, within the European Union, in the German mi-
gration space characterised by a powerful ethno-national motivation (as we have
analysed earlier - Aussiedler), the problem of cultural identity raises some ques-
tions regarding the integration/assimilation or active participation to the creation
of a new identity: the European cultural identity. The powerful positive valorisa-
tion of the German cultural space leads to keeping the German cultural identity
even in the case of a possible coming back to the original cultural environment.

105
 4. Research Methodology
The present research consists in the image analysis carried out by monitoring
the German publication Der Spiegel (online English version) between 1 March
2007 - 6 May 2014. Twenty five articles were analysed. The articles were randomly
selected, using the search engine of the publication for the content unit: “Roma-
nian immigrants”.
The image analysis was exclusively carried out on the basis of the data fur-
nished by the analysed articles. We passed through the following stages: selection
of articles, analysis and interpretation of data based on the identification of three
dimensions of analysis with the set of image indices subsequent to each dimen-
sion, establishing the Romanian immigrant’s image profile in the German public
space starting from the selection of the central and peripheral elements of the so-
cial representation. I. Chiciudean şi B. Halic (2001, 122-123) make the distinction
between induced image, i.e. the image intentionally created by the actor under
analysis as the transmitter, and the transmitted image created by other sources
than the actor under analysis. We mention that with this research we are dealing
with a transmitted image that may be more or less favourable to the actor or more
or less in conformity with the interests and the social reality of the actor under
analysis. The full image analysis comprises all available sources in all media of
reference for a period in time where the social actor under analysis is active. For
obvious reasons pertaining to the difficulty of such an approach from the point
of view of the available resources, we retained as given restrictive elements: type
of publication, period in time and the environment of reference (German space).
For that reason, we ascertain that the full interpretation of the image profile is ex-
haustive, taking into consideration only the stable variables offered by the image
indices. To reduce possible major errors of interpretation, we opted for using an
image profile based on a synchronous system of image indices that would dimin-
ish the errors of quantification and evaluation. The system of image indices was
underpinned by the content of the articles under scrutiny. To establish the system
of indices, we marked the significance of the references made, based on the mean-
ing in the context, on the content of the message, and further on we checked their
frequency. Only in some situations, we only mapped the frequency of a certain
unit of content (i. e. immigrant), but that was explained with each of the indices.
Frequency was calculated based on the content of the message (unit of content)
while not based on the mechanical recording of occurrences of a certain word, that
could be redundant, in the articles. We created a system of image indices, keeping
the pattern furnished by the theory of the central node. Hence, each type of given
information was quantified for each of the image indices, respectively sub-indices.
Meanwhile, we used a simple three-point scale to grasp the positivity degree of
the content of the transmitted information. The role of this scaling is to offer a

106
transmitted image profile (preponderantly positive, neutral or negative) that re-
sulted when indexing the information for each of the image indices and when cal-
culating the percentage weight in the total sum of references. The image profile
of the Romanian immigrant in the German space is realised on the analysis of the
frequency of the image indices. In the articles mentioned, we monitored:
−−attention paid to Romanian immigrants;
−−register in which the information/events related to Romanian immigrants
is rendered.
The two objectives were operationalised such as:
−−Frequency of references to events/information involving Romanians, in-
cluding the word Romanian;
−−register of the media communication from the point of view of the impact
of the transmitted message: Positive register – the journalist has favourable
attitude to the actor; neutral register – the article contains the information
per se; negative register – the journalist makes use of stereotypes when
presenting irrelevant affirmations from the point of view of the informa-
tion presented (i. e. mentioning the Roma, when bringing such informa-
tion does not contribute in terms of novelty or added value).

5. Data analysis and interpretation

Following the process of monitorisation, we developed a system of image indi-
ces with three main dimensions. These dimensions constitute the three elements
of the central node of the image profile underpinning the adjacent elements. The
consequential adjacent elements of the image indices are to be found in the next
three explanatory dimensions.
The political economic dimension comprises the following set of indices:
−−European citizenship – the coefficient of image implies aspects linked to:
The category of second-class citizenship of the Eastern Europe countries
(mainly Romania and Bulgaria, but also other countries in the East), the
accession of the states from the former communist block to the European
Union;
−−European funds – we measured the references to the way in which Euro-
pean funds were used in the Eastern European Member States, the aid for
the states in this area, the efficiency of these funds;
−−European commissioners – we took into consideration the reaction of the
European commissioners regarding the issue of migration, and also the
references to the activity of the Romanian commissioners at the European
Commission;
−−the right to work – on the one hand, it refers to a human right, to a value of
the European construction, and, on the other hand, it refers to the breach

107
 of this right for a part of the citizens of the Member States, more precisely
to the discussions triggered by the liberalisation of the labour market.
−−the Schengen area/the freedom of movement – implying the same dichoto-
mic types of references similar to the right to work: Breach of the freedom
of movement of the citizens of Romanian or Bulgarian provenance (even
their fingerprinting), and, on the other hand, the references reflect on the
issue of the EU’s fundamental rights;
−−Justice/corruption – we recorded aspects pertaining to the system of justice
in Romania, asa characteristic of its political and social development;
−−Economic monitoring – we recorded a reference in the context of the acces-
sion to the area of free movement;
−−Expulsion from the European Union – referring to: Expulsion procedures
of the Romanian citizens of Roma ethnicity in some of the Member States
(France and Italy), introduction of such procedures in other Member States
as well; a form of threatening/punishing citizens of Romanian and Bulgari-
an provenance under the conditions of infringing the laws of the host state;
−−Officials – we recorded the references to the way in which the performance
of the Romanian officials was related, on the occasion of bilateral diplo-
matic visits;
−−EU employment/unemployment policies – this sub-index includes aspects
relating to the term of “benefits tourism” (British version) or “poverty mi-
gration” (German version), references to the Hertz IV German system and
the way in which these policies are applied in the host countries and ben-
eficial to the immigrants;
−−EU policies regarding the system of social insurance – focussing on the
references to the policies of the type of welfare state, the quality of the in-
surance services and social assistance, to the role of the immigrants in con-
solidating/weakening of the said system;
−−Roma integration policies – at this position we recorded references at the
macro-social level on the Roma minority, an EU-wide debating topic.
−−From the point of view of the statistical analysis of the relative weight of
the frequency of each image coefficient, the data are synthetically present-
ed in Graph 1.
Of the total of 169 references recorded for this dimension, we notice that the
relative weight is negative of 41%. The indices where we recorded neutral refer-
ences are: The Schengen area/free movement and economic monitoring. The high-
est percentage of positive references in noticed for the indices: European commis-
sioners and right to work.

108
 Graph 1. System of indices for the political-economic dimension

Graph 2. Relative weight of positive, neutral and negative references

for the political-economic dimension

From the point of view of the second element of analysis, respectively the style
of the journalistic tone from the perspective of the transmitted message, the results
show a balanced tone of the related events, even if negative references were pre-
dominant.
The second dimension focussed on the image indices that showed the social-
historic side of the process of immigration, as we considered this dimension to be
essential for highlighting an image profile, as real as possible, the argument also
relying on the aforementioned studies on the eastern emigration of the German
ethnics to the German area.
For this dimension, we identified the following image indices:
−−Ethnicity – we focussed on elements pertaining to the cultural, historical
nature and traditions; we also introduced references to discrimination and
stereotypes. As it can be noticed in Graph 3, the preponderantly negative
positioning demonstrates the minimal relevance of the belonging of the

109
 Romanian immigrants to the German minority in the present socio-economic
context, being one of the elements which confirms the theory of the migra-
tory wave based on economic reasons and less on historic considerations also
linked to tradition. In the media under analysis, that is perceived as a negative
aspect;
−−Multiculturalism – this image index quantifies references such as: Accepting
diversity, inter-ethnical or emigrant/host relationships, festivals, ceremonies,
holidays;
−−Political migration – we took into consideration messages linked to the process
of emigration solely based on political or ethnical considerations (discrimina-
tion in the country of origin, political refugees);
−−German speakers – this index also tries to identify the assimilated cultural
identity of the Romanian immigrants in the German cultural space. Speaking
German is an index both for belonging to the German ethnicity and also as a
sine qua non job or German citizenship opportunity criterion. And this index
confirms the theory of the migratory wave based on economic considerations
because it registers negative values, comparatively higher than the positive
ones. These results show that today’s Romanian immigrant in the German
space is not German speaking and they also demonstrate a certain difficulty
in learning it.
−−Xenophobia – this index quantifies the clear references to this term, we did
not carried out a content analysis having this term as an analysis unit. Conse-
quently, the references are preponderantly positive or neutral as the message
is not centred on the content on the xenophobic character of the message.

Graph 3. The system of indices for the socio-historical dimension

For this dimension, we registered 53 references of the total number of articles.

Most of the references are quantified under the political migration index (18) and
German speakers (12). Both indices have preponderantly negative values.

110
 The socio-historical dimension is characterised by a high percentage of nega-
tive references (51%), even if it was composed of small number of image indices,
as compared to the other two dimensions. As we have previously noted, when ex-
plaining the process of operationalising the contents of the image indices, we may
stress the strong economic motivation of the new wave of Romanian emigrants to
the German space, a motivation caused by the context of the economic crisis and
by the powerful positioning of the German economy in the Romanians’ social rep-
resentations of Germany. The low value of the references for the multicultural and
also the ethnical indices support that idea.

Graph 4. Relative weight of positive, neutral and negative references

for the socio-historical dimension

We may consider the style of the journalistic tone to be characterised by a

pondered balance, despite the preponderance of the references with a negative
content. For this dimension, we did not notice stylistic excesses, an excessive and
pointless use of adjectives, of the dichotomy us/them or self/others, as well as of
the reflexive verbs (Fairclough, 2003).
The third dimension under the image analysis was centred upon the human
nature of the process of migration of the Romanians to Germany. This dimen-
sion enjoyed the largest number of references and, consequently, had the greatest
weight in the image profile of the Romanian emigrant. This dimension was at the
basis of the following set of image indices (Graph 5):
−−Violence – this index registered situations where there were presented acts
of trafficking in persons, criminality, prostitution, theft. We analysed the
acts when the Romanians were presented as aggressors as negative refer-
ences, when they were victims, as positive references, and neutral when
they were not involved. That is the index which quantified a high score of
negative reports (24 out of 25);
−−Roma persons – for this index we calculated the references to the Roma in
the context of the articles on Romanian immigrants. We obtained 33 refe-
rences of the total of articles, and, of these, the weight of the negative ref-
erences showed a high score of 66.66%. In the 25 articles we analysed, we
recorded a number of 5 references to the Roma minority in the titles of the
articles.

111
−−Camps – we registered references to the way of dwelling in some urban areas.
The references focussed on the illegal camps or the type of community specific
to the Roma ethnics.
−−Immigrant – our intention was to quantify the occurrences of the term immi-
grant, the analysis of the frequency of the references evinced a major negative
connotation associated to this term (66.66%) without any positive reference,
here immigrant follows the classic definition of the term, i. e. the person that
reached the country of destination, in our case Germany;
−−Beggars – with this index again there is a high score of references with a nega-
tive connotation (9 out of 10 items).
−−Homeless – focussed on the references related to persons without a dwelling
and drifting. We recorded a reference in the title of an article. Furthermore, the
references are preponderantly negative;
−−Seasonal jobs – we observed the signification for temporary, poorly paid and
low-skilled jobs (donkey work). With this index, we found a number of 18 ref-
erences and 72% of them were negative.
−−Unemployment – with this index we focussed on failing to find a permanent
or a long term job, a legal work (contract of employment). The values recorded
with this index are also preponderantly negative (75%) under the conditions
when the number of references is almost double compared with the previous
index that was related to the same issue (32 references).
−−Living conditions in Germany – we quantified references presenting the liv-
ing conditions of the Romanian immigrants in Germany: misery due to abu-
sive (sometimes) occupation of abandoned buildings, precarious conditions,
without basic facilities (running water, electricity, heating), noise pollution. We
analysed a number of 17 references in total, with a percentage of 82% negative
references;
−−Living conditions in Romania – we quantified a large number of references to
the way of life of the Romanians in the country of origin in order to explain the
reasons behind the process of emigration. The living conditions were presented
as characterised by misery, poverty, primitivism hitting a high level of negative
associations 93%. We did not find any positive references with this index.
−−Migration – references to this index were made to show the benefit and the
quality of the German social insurance system, on the one hand, and, on the
other, the references highlighted the economic reason of the process of migra-
tion (poverty migration, tourism migration) and the destabilisation of thee insur-
ance system because of the number of immigrants. Therefore, the references
related to this index even if slightly negative in tendency (56%), they denote
the duality of the opinions regarding this issue, as we found a relatively large
number of positive references (31%). Moreover, we seem to find a state of bal-
ance with this index, yet presenting the risk of deterioration;

112
−−Romania’s depopulation – it is a present index in our image analysis and we
recorded references to Romania’s demographic situation, a dire consequence
of the process of migration; to the visibly improved economic situation of the
families left behind in the country of origin (financially supported by the mon-
ey sent by the members of the families working in Germany). It is an index
with a negative tendency too, but it is somehow balanced by the sum of the
positive references equal to the negative ones (9);
−−Hope for a better life – it is one of the few image indices that reached a positive
score of the references, which shows a high degree of trust and a standing mo-
tivation to continue the efforts of establishment of the Romanian immigrants in
Germany. We could assume that it is an index for a continue positivisation of
the social representation of the German state and people, in general, in Roma-
nians’ collective social representations, irrespective of their ethnicity;
−−The welfare state – we focussed on the references to the welfare state represent-
ed by the German state, under the conditions of presenting the mechanisms of
deceit to obtain social aid from the German state (unemployment allowance,
allowance for the children, family allowance, etc.). The index registered scores
close to the two main tendencies (51% negative, 40% positive) which shows a
division of the formulated opinions and the difficulty of pointing out the fa-
voured tendency. That is the index that registered the second highest score in
terms of frequency of all the references (35 references of the 428 registered in
total for this dimension);
−−Adapting to the German way of life – this index quantified references to the ac-
cess of Romanian immigrants to the educational and health systems, to public
transport services, housing, cultural life, etc. We notice a slight negative ten-
dency, which denotes the reality of a consistent effort to adapt, but both the
positive and the neutral references show a balanced degree of successful adap-
tive effort;
−−Drugs/alcohol – we verified if this index represents a characteristic of Roma-
nian immigrants. We registered only two references in all the articles we ana-
lysed for the item alcohol, one was positive and one was negative. Consequent-
ly, this index is not relevant for contributing to the image profile, hence it does
not characterise the social representation.
−−The relation of neighbourhood – this index is to show the reaction of the Ger-
man citizens to their immigrating Romanian neighbours. The references meas-
ured did not register manifest neighbourly relations, most of them indicate a
major problem (66% of the references are negative). When correlating the data
of this index with those reflecting the immigrants’ living conditions in Germa-
ny, we notice that the latter is a cause of the manifestation of the negative ten-
dency we find in the relations of neighbourhood;

113
−−Relations with the authorities – here the index shows the relation the Romanian
immigrants have with the German authorities in terms of schools, hospitals,
public authorities, including the NGOs with the scope covering the situation of
the immigrants. The relation is characterised by a balanced weight of negative,
positive and neutral references.
−−Birth rate – this is one of the few indices showing a positive tendency of the
references to Romanian immigrants, which demonstrates a positive perception
of the references both to the rate itself and to the benefits of this rate for the de-
mographic growth of the population in Germany.
−−Manners – we quantified the references to the basic elements of good conduct.
This is one of the few indices that did not register any negative reference;
−−Education – this index quantifies elements referring to: The level of education of
Romanian immigrants, schooling (any level), interest in education. This index
registered most of the references (49), and almost 49% of them are positive. It is
the only index showing a positive tendency of the image profile of the Romani-
an immigrant in the German space. Most of the negative references we analysed
appeared in the context of the materials on Roma people.

Graph 5. The system of indices for the human dimension

114
 −−Working people – we recorded the quality referring to Romanian immi-
grants, this also registered a positive tendency;
−−Belief in God – we recorded six references for this index showing a consist-
ent positive tendency (90%). We can assert that the Romanian immigrant
in the German space is characterised by a strong positive connotation in
relation to their belief in God.
The style of the journalistic tone is characterised by moderation and balance.
This dimension was formed with the largest number of image indices (23), and
their negative weight was evidently negative.

Graph 6. Relative weight of positive, neutral and negative references for the human dimension

In order to draw up the image profile according to the central node, we took
into consideration the references of the total number of references that clustered
around the image indices more obviously (see Table 1).
Tabel 1. Total distribution of the references on the three levels of analysis
References References References
Size Total
Positive (+) Neutral (=) Negative (-)
Political-economic 47 53 69 169
Social-historical 14 12 27 53
Human 118 59 251 428
Total 179 124 347 650

Therefore, the image profile of the Romanian immigrant in the German cul-
tural space was drawn up starting from the image indices that best marked in
the context of the analysed articles. We managed to highlight such indices that
represent constitutive elements of the central node of the social representation,
also having adjacent interface elements. For any analysed dimension, we took into
consideration the image indices with a high degree of relevance, significant for de-
fining an image profile as real as possible. Thus, for the political-economic dimen-
sion, we selected three indices: EU policies on unemployment/employment, right
to work, EU policies on social insurance. For the social-historical dimension, the
most significant index was the one referring to political migration. For the third di-

115
mension, we selected the following indices that were present in over 25 references,
in a decreasing order: education, welfare state, Roma people, unemployment, liv-
ing conditions in Romania, violence (Graph 7). Therefore, the social representation
in the analysed social media appear as such: Romanian immigrants are educated,
dispose of a high level of professional training, have the right to work in Germany
(and any other Member State), they are strongly lured into migration (in terms of
EU policies, wages, social insurance) and are attracted by the better living condi-
tions ensured by the welfare policies of the German state.
We have to point out that we noticed a strong association of the Roma people
with the immigrant of Romanian nationality (and/or Bulgarian) which indicates a
negative tendency of the image of the Romanian immigrant in the German space.
Moreover, there was a high frequency of the overlapping of the negative char-
acteristics found in the structure of the articles on Roma people. In other words,
the image of the Romanian immigrant is mixed up with the image of the Roma
people, the differences being minor or nonexistent. At the secondary level of
analysis, this overlapping focuses on peripheral elements of the image of the Ro-
manian immigrant so that we could assert that Romanians, in a socially defined
representation, are seen as: violent Roma (begging, stealing, trafficking persons);
poor, living in poverty and miserable conditions; migrating for social aid, escap-
ing discrimination and poverty in their countries of origin; cheating the German
state to get social aid; lacking education or a high level of professional training;
difficult to adapt to the German way of life; having a high birth rate. This profile
was defined starting from references recorded when searching articles having the
Romanian immigrant as the major actor. Therefore, we could notice a high degree
of manifestation of the Roma negative stereotype – Romanian immigrant as it is
assumed in the image presented in the content of the articles.

Graph 7. Structure of the image of the Romanian immigrant in the German media

116
 6. Conclusions and further discussions
The image profile of the Romanian immigrant in the German media (the media
we analysed) is predominantly negative, with a high degree of overlapping the
one of the Roma. In this context we appreciate that the social representation of
the Romanian immigrant is predominantly negative. This conclusion has a major
relevance in two directions at least: the journalistic style was considered balanced
generally, for each of the three dimensions we analysed; the social representation
of the Roma minority continues to register negative connotations, and those reflect
upon other nationalities as well (Romanians, Bulgarians); that kind of social repre-
sentation continues to be present in other media (social media, TV, various types
of printed press/publications) triggering distortions and elements of xenophobia
(not only against East-European immigrants, in general, but also other types of
immigrants, from other parts of the world). Possible further research based on
profound methods of research on the Roma minority in Germany, may bring sup-
plementary information on this topic. At the moment, media transmits and, even
more, they amplify that opinion, dominant in the German (and international) pub-
lic space, especially the virtual one. The image of the Romanian immigrant is nega-
tive and mixed up with the one of the Roma minority, as seen above. The opinions
contradicting the negative assertions are silent, and they are to be found only in
the commentaries of the readers, yet not in the feature articles. The public pres-
sure becomes strong, and the fear to be excluded and unpopular is growing (for
example, for the attitude of the Romanian immigrants of the first waves, of those
of German descent or of those with high level of education) and they cannot avoid
being a subject to beat down on. Therefore, the cultural identity of the Romanians
is in jeopardy as well under the existing conditions, the European cultural identity
is challenged considerably.
In that context, we can recommend actions and strategies to improve the image
of the Romanian immigrants correlated with different media. Supported by the
theory of the spiral of silence, that goal could be attained by increasing the number
of presentations of the Romanian immigrants’ positive actions in the German me-
dia, so that to bring a salutary change in the climate of opinion.
The relatively low rate of the indices focussing on the cultural historical dimen-
sion demonstrates the economic motivation of the last wave of Eastern European
migrants. We also notice a positive trend of the German way of life and of the liv-
ing conditions in Germany, which we consider to have significantly contributed to
the election of the President of Romania, of a German descent and of a religious
denomination different from the Orthodox religion of the majority of the Roma-
nians. These assertions are supported by the negative references centred on the
living conditions in Romania and on the high level of expectancy for a better life of
the Romanian immigrant in Germany. We consider it a form of transfer of the im-

117
age from the outside in, that was noticeable at the attitudinal level (attitude being
defined as a behavioural expression of opinion) by the casting of votes. Obviously,
further research may complete and elaborate at this level of the research.
From the methodological point of view, the image analyses presupposes a cer-
tain degree of subjectivity when interpreting data, recording references and build-
ing a system of image indices and sub-indices. However, it has the benefit of the
researcher’s scientific probity, as this method proves to be useful and largely used
when it focuses on identifying an image profile of a social actor using one or sev-
eral sources, for a certain period in time or for a panel research. In the frontier do-
main of the communication sciences (involving sociology and social psychology),
the use of this quantitative and qualitative method, at the same time, may generate
interesting or even relevant results for scientific investigation.
As stated in the Research Report of Federal Office for Migration and Refugees
(2014,2013) most immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, countries which joined
the EU in 2007, choose to leave their home country for economic reasons, primar-
ily for the less attractive professional opportunities and lower wages in the EU
countries. Since 2014, the principle of the free movement of workers within the
EU has also applied in full to Bulgarian and Romanian nationals, with the result
that they can travel to Germany to look for work without any restrictions. The
main reason of migration to Germany remains economic, while the ethnic Ger-
man re-settlers remain on a lower level (the minimum level was achieved in 2012
comparative with the ascending trend since 1950). We still have not statistical data
about the precise number of Roma people that also immigrated to Germany.
In the context of the Romanian migration to the Western EU countries, and of
the migration as a continuous process raises the question of a common super-na-
tional cultural identity which is perceived most often as the desirable ideal of the
European project. The main issue still remains and asks for answers: are the EU
citizens ready to integrate and receive the Eastern-European citizens, including the
Roma ethnic group, regardless of their country of origin? Is the Roma culture part
of the EU cultural identity? Is European culture prepared to pass over the waves
of immigrants and to transfer and to adapt to the new and different cultures of the
immigrants? There are two directions which can be identified when discussing the
European identity, the pessimist current which is based on the widespread euro-
scepticism (and criticism) of the widening process which remains “preoccupied
by the apparent absence of a European public sphere” (Trandafoiu, 2006, 91) and
the optimistic current which discusses the construction of the European identity
as a continuous process whose existence is proved by diverse phenomena such
as migration, the media covering of different European questions, integration and
humanitarian values of accepting and helping. The concept of cultural identity is
provocative and more in vogue in the contemporary social context.

118
 The essential question still is if “the European cultural identity” exists or it is
only a theoretical structure, which can explain the adaptive effort in the frame-
work of the migration process within the European Union. From the perspective
of cultural identity as a system, I argue the idea that it is still premature to talk
about a proper European cultural identity, but we can find the germs of such a
concept. We can interpret the current EU cultural identity in the post-modern per-
spective and that of pragmatics of communication theory (Watzlawick, Beavin
Bavelas, Jakson, 1967) and we support the idea that nowadays, the European cul-
tural identity is still like a harlequin costume, a virtual theoretical concept, meant
to happen, to become reality. As the matter of diversity is still a problem of the
socio-psychology theory of the SRT on accepting the other and treating them as
human beings. I argue that despite the powerful economic reasons of the contem-
porary migration process, the migration of the poor, the xenophobic discourses
within the public sphere must be avoided as Europe encountered viral and sensi-
tive facts during recent history.
In this context, there is an obvious need to find ways to construct and rein-
force the European cultural identity in its way of becoming reality. One of the key
ways by which this will be achievable is cultural-mediatic communication, as an
attempt to establish powerful inter-national connections and to find adaptive pat-
terns which can finally homogenize a unique European identity.

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 Review

Sandu FRUNZĂ
Advertising Constructs Reality
Bucureşti, Tritonic, 2014

Sandu Frunză is a well-known expert in religious

studies, communication, media and ethics. At the
core of one of his most recent books lies the relation
between religious thought, mythical thinking and
consumerism and his analysis focuses on the sacred
and advertising. As stated in his book, entitled Adver-
tising constructs reality (Bucharest: Tritonic, 2014), Pro-
fessor Frunză`s intention is to shed light upon the im�-
portance of advertising in our daily life, understand-
ing advertising as a means for human beings to rediscover themselves and to find
harmony with the surrounding world. This is one of the many books written by
Sandu Frunză on the views of the postmodern human being on concepts such as
reality, the sacred, and history. Amongst other books written by the same author
one will find “God and the Holocaust”, “Ethical Reconstruction of Public Space
through Rethinking of the Relationship among Philosophy, Religion and Ideol-
ogy”, „Religious Fundamentalism and the Conflict of Ideologies” and “Advertis-
ing and Administration under the Pressure of Ethics”. These books serve as good
academic guides for his students aspiring to receive a degree in the Department of
Communication, Public Relations and Advertising at the Babes-Bolyai University
in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where he is currently teaching.
“Advertising constructs reality” can be quite a difficult read for those who are
unfamiliar with even basic concepts in communication sciences and philosophy.
Yet it is a substantial work that captures and explains notions that are crucial
in understanding the field of advertising. I will therefore try to review some of
the main ideas that are explained and developed in the book, the aim of which

Journal of Media Research,

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Vol. 9 Issue 1(24) / 2016, pp. 121-125
is to better understand the role of advertising in influencing our daily life. In the
first chapter, the author presents advertising as being the last standing bastion
for ”symbolic and ritualistic behaviors”, where a so-called “microcosm” can be
created. What he is referring to is the ability of a concentrated story to become a
much larger one, with great significance and a variety of meanings; he states this
is possible especially in the case of advertising videos. In the same first chapter
he refers to the work of other authors, such as M. Paraschivescu and her critical
appraisal of Mirea Eliade`s literature concerning similar subjects like reality and
sacred space and time. Professor Sandu Frunză also writes about the ”Western”
human being and his incapacity of understanding both personal and universal
history. The author argues that the Western human being is lost on his path to-
wards rediscovering himself and does not see that personal history is in direct and
strong connection with all human history. The postmodern human being is lost
in his daily routine and cannot overcome the fear of rediscovering life. Professor
Frunză also writes about the incapacity of the “postmodern Western human be-
ing” to escape religion. He presents a way out of this crisis by having the Western
and non-Western civilizations agree on the ”cognitive value of symbols” and ac-
cepting religion pluralism. One of the ideas that the author presents is the fact that
the myth is a concept that is not understood and, as Eliade presents, the myth is a
way of directing the human beings to their real selves. The myth is seen as a alter-
native as a initiation to that and not as a fairytale.
Professor Sandu Frunză focuses more on this idea in the following part of his
book, where he states what we believe to be a fascinating idea, i.e. the fact that
advertising uses something which can be approximated as “the passion for initia-
tion”, which he argues is ”inherent to human soul”. Here, he mentions a specific
kind of initiation: “A profane initiation, the messenger of which is advertising”
and that relies on new elements of culture. Advertising is presented as “an effort
for direction in culture as any initiation plans to be. It reflects and permanently
nourishes the symbolic dimension of consumer culture. In a world in which spiri-
tual values are pushed to a subsidiary level, this new culture proposes investing
this spiritual dimension into our relationship with things”. His conclusion is that
advertising is able to shape the individual`s way of being and acting and that ad-
vertising is an instrument for constructing reality. The human being is also pre-
sented in this chapter as being bivalent and scared of new experiences, mainly
because of being permanently followed by the idea of the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ as being a new start. In this chapter, the author also specifies that
the media and the fast evolution of communication plays a major role in the life of
human beings.
In the second chapter, entitled “Seduction and advertising”, Professor Sandu
Frunză explains the complexity of ”seduction” as a concept and presents it as not

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having only an intimate meaning but also as being the instrument that is ”indis-
pensable to the advertising communication, propaganda and biopolitics”. He pro-
poses to strip seduction from its negative connotations. The concept thus resulted
is the art that presented in the book signed by Mark Jeffereis and entitled “The art
of business seduction”. In this book, the author states that initiation is resumed
in one sentence: “Listen, watch, anticipate, react”. Throughout the same chapter,
the author brings about the idea of the seducer being seduced, explaining that
“seduction is a communication act in which each participant enriches the other’s
world and at the same time his/her own”. In what concerns concepts such as se-
duction, stereotypes and mythology, he also presents the recipe for being a suc-
cessful politician as consisting in adaptability on the road to success. The seducer
being seduced can be applied to products too. The author claims that “products
become the object of seduction and at the same time a seducing object”. Later on,
when writing about “abundance as original seduction”, the author quotes Jean
Baudrillard`s statement, who wrote that the consumer society did not produce
new myths because “it is a society with no other myth than itself”. This comes as a
help in better understanding the place of advertising in the consumer society.
In the next chapter, entitled “Fetishism, Commodity and Advertising”, Profes-
sor Sandu Frunză tries to explain the very important role of the fetishism in adver-
tising, but strips it again of the meanings that do not fit this context, leaving the
term with the meaning of exaggerate desire or a special seduction form. Here he
talks about overestimating a product or being attached to things above what we
can consider to be the rational boundaries. He also classifies them in two distinct
categories, pathological and natural. In this chapter, he quotes many authors to
help us understand the complexity of fetishism and in order to make it easier for
us to understand the differences between fetishism and idolatry and how the two
develop. He refers to the literature of both Carmen Bernard and Serge Gruzinski.
The author observes how “the advertising creation starts from the representation
of objects in the manner of fetishes”. Another interesting theory that follows this
statement is related to the fact that advertising brings a great variety of objects in
the visual culture based on cultural representations “that favor both the commu-
nication of pre-constituted messages and the creation of the possibility for new
types of associations in the watchers’ minds”.
The fourth chapter is entitled “Taboo, interdictions and advertising”. The term
”taboo”, which has its roots in the religious domain, is attributed to things that
can become as such trough ritualisation. Another idea that is largely developed
in the book is the fact that taboos are omnipresent; they exist in any culture and
are based mainly on interdictions related to the sacredness. In advertising, the ele-
ment of taboo is used very often but it is used with a certain level of subtlety so it
will no embarrass the audience in any way. The taboo factor makes the product be

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presented as a thing that will satisfy the innocent pleasures or the needs of a lesser
popularity.
The author continues with a description of connections between taboos and
fetishism in advertising, sustaining that the taboo shares the character of the secret
fascination of the fetish. The importance of using taboos in advertising should not
be neglected. Professor Frunză stresses that “the taboo transgression in the com-
municational process is realized by using the advertising language to redefine cor-
porality. In this process, the importance of advertisement in the public discourse
is primary, because it functions as a source of information, as a social guide, as an
instrument that can be used by women, but especially by teenagers, in the devel-
opment of their own corporality”.
The fact that advertising has a major impact on the lives of the audience makes
it mandatory to define a set of rules for its use. In this light, any advertising has
to obey a certain set of regulations and limits. The main two objects of the rule are
the exposure of human body and the use of subliminal stimuli in advertising. The
chapter ends with a discussion about the postmodern totem, which is a “very pre-
sent element in the existence of the postmodern individual”. As professor Frunză
states, despite the fact that the word is difficult to define, it can be understood
as rebuilding the “inter subjective connection between man, the world of living
creatures, the world of objects, and nature in a communicational process that in-
troduces them in the consumerist culture”.
If in the previous chapters, the author discussed about the marketing and ad-
vertising of goods and services, in the next chapter, entitled “Political advertis-
ing and the rediscovery of inter-subjectivity in the public space”, he switches to
a rather different domain, i.e. political advertising. The main difference is the fact
that political advertising is based on different rules, set by political science and
political memory, additional to what is known to be the basic advertising rules.
Symbols and myths contribute to building these differences. The other elements
that are discussed here are the influence of the media and also the “special state of
the relation between the media, religion and ideology, between ideological shap-
ing and political action”.
In the final chapter, entitled “Final thoughts: the return of authenticity”, pro-
fessor Sandu Frunză reviews and brings back to debate some of the concepts that
he explained earlier in the book, such as the advertising as an instrument of re-
gaining authenticity. Storing an entire imaginary universe, which allows for the
sacred to manifest itself in the life of the postmodern man, “advertising supports
the human being in its self quest through reaching harmony with the surrounding
things”. Among these ideas he claims that communication plays the most impor-
tant role in the life of the postmodern human being and that indeed advertising
constructs reality.

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 Concluding, we believe that the book is a very well structured one with con-
vincing examples, bringing its central ideas closer to one’s own realities. It can
serve as a good support for information in what concerns the way advertising
works, its connection with religion, myths and symbols. It is beyond any doubt
that Sandu Frunză has yet again managed to brilliantly reflect the life of the post-
modern human being in what he portrays to be a fascinating relation with the
”phenomenon” of advertising.

Reviewed by
Otavia Cristina BORŞ
MA in Political Communication
Department of Communication, PR and Advertising
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania.
Email: octaviacristina.bors@gmail.com

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