Romanian online media heading towards a fight paradigm: A qualitative analysis [articol]

Abstract

A study we conducted in 2018 revealed that Romanian digital media is migrating towards catastrophism and fight paradigm, as far as its content is concerned. We made a quantitative analysis of almost a half a million headlines published in the first months of 2018 that showed the dominance of fight paradigm and catastrophic headlines versus common, oldschool sensationalistic ones, appealing to excitement. We concluded that this tendency towards fight and catastrophism is a specific kind of sensationalism, that could either reflect the inner conflicts and tensions of the Romanian nowadays society or/and function as clickbait tactics to generate more views. The present paper is a follow-up to the above-mentioned study that has three main purposes: a) to observe and analyze the tendencies in digital media after one year; b) to see which areas of the society are more frequently presented as scandalous and dramatic by the media; and c) to see if there is a connection between this tendency and social and political events.