Ridicule, humour and anti-Roma racism in Romanian television news: a multimodal critical discourse analysis

Research shows that the public image of Roma on television reinforces existing prejudice and stereotypes in relation to illiteracy, criminality, primitiveness, or refusal to comply with societal norms and values. Scholars have drawn attention to the various forms of racism, both overt and covert, we find in media and political discourse.  Yet, one aspect that is less explored is the role of humor and ridicule in communicating anti-Roma racism. In this article, I conduct a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of two news clips aired by one of the leading audio-visual stations in Romania. I draw attention to the use of humor and ridicule on public television as discursive strategies to belittle or conceal anti-Roma racism. I argue that such representations­—where buffoonery, bad taste, cultural incompetence, and arrogance are highlighted—go beyond simple entertainment and cheap laughs but reinforce the inferior and marginalised status that Romani people have held for centuries on Romanian territories

Using humor to disguise racism in television news: the case of the Roma

It has been argued that more research is needed on the role of humor in the expression of racism. One reason is that, in the ‘post racial’ society, overt racism has become publicly unacceptable and, therefore, tends to appear in more concealed forms. In this paper, as part of a larger project on media representations of the Roma, we look at the role of humor in a Romanian television news clip reporting on the financial rewards of begging. We draw on the critical scholarship in humor research and carry out a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a news report selected from a larger corpus. We argue that through humor a recontextualisation of the Roma’s situation takes place, transforming their actual situation of poverty and social marginalisation into a humorous account of cultural failure, incompetence, stupidity and calculated money grabbing. We show that humor is one way by which culture becomes represented as embodied by ethnic minorities.</p

Racism is not just hate speech: Ethnonationalist victimhood in YouTube comments about the Roma during Covid-19

Research shows that racism and xenophobia soared during the Covid-19 pandemic and this was certainly the case with the Roma in Romania. In this article, using critical discourse analysis, we analyse comments left below a television news clip posted on YouTube early in the crisis. This gives us valuable access to the way racism and xenophobia are linguistically expressed in social media, particularly in this Romanian context. It yields insights into how more overt forms of racism can sit alongside others which are less so, all united by a sense of shared embittered victimhood on behalf of Romanian citizens. We show how this takes place as the affordances of social media allow for a collective expression of frustration and mobilisation, reflecting on how social media may increase exposure to more extreme forms of racism. </p

Racism toward the Roma through the affordances of Facebook: bonding, laughter and spite

This article carries out a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of a Romanian Facebook page where comments are made in response to a shared news-clip showing a Roma wedding which clearly invites ridicule. It has been documented that there are well-established discourses representing the Roma as criminal, uneducated, dirty, immoral, and as resisting assimilation into wider society. This Facebook page offers the opportunity to explore which discourses are used in 1500 posts to represent the Roma. We show that the affordances of Facebook open-up the mixing of humor, venting of frustration, extreme racism and sexual violence as those posting entertain each other, create bonds and overtly call out the Roma and others who are believed to be part of a conspiracy against ordinary Romanians. We argue that these newer patterns of representing the Roma are related to the rise of extreme right-wing populist ideology across Europe and beyond. An ideology where direct, simple and violent solutions are required. </p

A critical multimodal analysis of the Romanian press coverage of camp evictions and deportations of the Roma migrants from France

In this article, we carry out a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of a sample from a larger corpus of Romanian news articles that covered the controversial camp evictions and repatriation of Romanian Roma migrants from France that began in 2010 and continue to the time of writing in 2017. These French government policies have been highly criticized both within France and by international political and aid organizations. However, the analysis shows how these brutal, anti-humanitarian events became recontextualized in the Romanian Press to represent the French government’s actions as peaceful and consensual. In addition, the demonization of the Roma in the press serves as a strategy to continuously disassociate them from their Romanian counterparts. While there is a long history of discrimination against the Roma in Romania, these particular recontextualizations can be understood in the context of the Romanian government’s need to gloss over its failure to comply with the Schengen accession requirements and acquire full European Union (EU) membership

How television news disguises its racist representations: The case of Romanian <i>Antena 1</i> reporting on the Roma

Research shows that news media around the world tend to represent ethnic minorities in ways which nurture distorted views and invite negative attitudes. Scholars have also emphasised that, in contemporary societies, a political climate has emerged which has made overt racism unacceptable and social taboos leading to racist statements are increasingly being managed and disguised in order to avoid direct accusations. In this paper we use Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to carry out an in-depth analysis of a Romanian television news report—selected from a larger corpus—which addressed the situation of the Roma migrants in Norway. We show how this medium, with editing techniques, voice-overs, sound effects and captions, has its own subtleties for communicating racism in ways that are less obvious at a casual viewing. The case we analyse reports on a Norwegian/EU project to build a factory in Romania, so that Roma migrants can return home to work rather than live and beg on the streets of Oslo

‘It’s still them’: concealed racism against Roma in Romanian television news

Research shows that news media around the world carry negative representations of ethnic minorities which incite violence, hatred or lead to more marginalisation and social exclusion [Bhatia, M., Poynting, S., & Tufail, W. (2018). Media, crime and racism. Springer; Elias, A., Mansouri, F., & Paradies, Y. (2021). Media, public discourse and racism. In A. Elias, F. Mansouri, & Y. Paradies (Eds.), Racism in Australia today (pp. 211–240). Palgrave Macmillan]. It is also the case that overt racism has become less tolerated in society and, therefore, racist discourses now tend to take more subtle forms, often disguised as reasonable concerns about threats to national culture, economic burdens or disruptions of social order [Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield]. This is very much the case regarding the Roma. Yet, less research has been carried out on the way that the affordances of television – juxtaposition of images, captions, sound and voice-overs, editing, and resequencing – may have very specific ways to conceal racism. In this paper, using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we examine the representation of the Roma in a Romanian television news report, in the case of a highly mundane story – a failure to pay electricity bills. We show how television news with its affordances can camouflage racism, and distract from the extreme poverty and social exclusion that Romani people experience in contemporary Europe.</p

Romaphobia in the UK Right-Wing Press: racist and populist discourse during the Brexit referendum

This article investigates contemporary expressions of racism toward Roma in the context of growing populism in the UK. We focus on how and why Romaphobia becomes widespread in times of socio-political crises, especially during the 2016 referendum when the UK voted to leave the European Union. Drawing on content analysis and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we provide an in-depth account of how Roma migrants have been represented in two British newspapers during the 2016 so-called “Brexit” Referendum campaign and subsequent vote. The textual and visual analysis demonstrates how racist tropes about Roma identity and culture are embedded into populist rhetoric, often taking subtle forms of expression, yet simultaneously manage to avoid accusations of racism. We argue that the scapegoating and demonisation of Roma migrants in the media contributed to shaping negative attitudes towards Eastern European immigrants and by proxy, to the EU. This plays out in a context of rising nativism and populism where Roma communities come to embody the perceived ills of the European integration project and are regarded as a threat to the fabric of the British nation. We draw attention to the danger of these representations which condemn an already vulnerable community to further socio-economic exclusion

Romaphobia in Romanian press: The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian migrants in the European Union

The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens in the EU, in January 2014, encountered much resistance both in European political discourse and the media, as these migrants became demonised and presented as social and economic threats. In this article, we show how the Romanian press dealt with such discriminatory discourses against the Romanian migrants. We conduct a thorough Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of news items published in Romanian press, prior to the lifting of work restrictions, and we argue that the Roma emerged as the perfect scapegoats that could explain the deviant and unruly behaviours ascribed by some western media to ‘Romanians’. We also show how racism toward the Roma, referred here as Romaphobia, invokes non-racial practices and instead builds on a reverse victimhood narrative. Such discourses relate in a broader sense to well-established discursive practices in Romanian context but also to the political climate across Europe which is marked by increased intolerance toward the Roma. It is the mixture of stereotypical discourses and populist rhetoric that makes racism towards the Roma appear naturalised and increasingly more difficult to challenge