Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations Revista Românã De Comunicare ºi Relaþii Publice

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Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations Revista Românã de Comunicare ºi Relaþii Publice

Vol. 17, no. 2 (35) / July 2015 / July (35) 2 no. 17, Vol. Volume 17, no. 2 (35) / July 2015

NUPSPA College of Communication ISSN 1454-8100 and Public Relations Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations Public and Communication of Journal Romanian Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 1

ROMANIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

Volume 17, no. 2 (35) / July 2015

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Scientific Committee • Delia BALABAN (Babeº-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) • Alina BÂRGÃOANU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Camelia BECIU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Lee B. BECKER (University of Georgia, US) • Felix BEHLING (University of Essex, UK) • Hanoch BEN-YAMI (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary) • Diana CISMARU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Nicoleta CORBU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Alina HALILIUC (Denison University, US) • Kathy HAUGHT (Rider University, US) • Dragoº ILIESCU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania; TestCentral) • Loredana IVAN (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Adrian LESENCIUC (Air Force Academy “Henri Coanda”, Brasov, Romania) • Mira MOSHE (Ariel University Center of Samaria, Israel) • Sorin NASTASIA (Southern Illinois University, US) • Nicolas PELISSIER (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France) • Dana POPESCU-JOURDY (University of Lyon 2, France) • Remus PRICOPIE (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Dan STÃNESCU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Panayiota TSATSOU (Swansea University, UK) • Anca VELICU (Institute of Sociology, Romanian Academy) • Tudor VLAD (University of Georgia, US) • David WEBERMAN (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary) • Alexandra ZBUCHEA (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania)

Editorial Board Paul Dobrescu (editor in chief) Elena Negrea-Busuioc (editor) Cristian Lupeanu (layout)

Editor College of Communication and Public Relations – NUPSPA 6 Povernei St., Sector 1, Bucharest Tel.: 201 318 0889; Fax: 021 318 0882 [email protected]; www.journalofcommunication.ro

The Journal is published three times a year. The journal has been indexed by ProQuest CSA, EBSCO Publishing, CEEOL, DOAJ, Cabell’s Directory, Index Copernicus and Genamics Journal Seek. This journal is recognized by CNCSIS and included in the B+ category (www.cncsis.ro).

The titles of the articles have been translated into Romanian by the publisher.

ISSN 1454-8100 Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 3

Contents

Investigating the History of Communism Mãlina CIOCEA, Alexandru CÂRLAN Prosthetic memory and post-memory: cultural encounters with the past in designing a museum /7 Alexandra ZBUCHEA, Loredana IVAN Painting Shades of Gray: How to Communicate the History of Communism in Museums /21

Varia Valeriu FRUNZARU, Mãdãlina BOÞAN Social Networking Websites Usage and Life Satisfaction: A Study of Materialist Values Shared by Facebook Users /43 Bianca-Florentina CHEREGI The discursive construction of Romanian immigration in the British media: Digitized press vs. television documentaries /53

Book reviews Saiona STOIAN Review of Cultures of Mediatization by Andreas Hepp, Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2012, 180 pages / 77 Nicoleta CORBU Review of The Emotions Industry, edited by Mira Moshe, New York: Nova Publishers, 2014, 265 pages / 81

Call for papers /83 Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 4 Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 5

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Mãlina CIOCEA* Alexandru CÂRLAN**

Prosthetic memory and post-memory: cultural encounters with the past in designing a museum

Abstract

This paper1 investigates the sources of representations on the communist period and the type of engagement with the past in an experiential museum, in the context of the National Network of Romanian Muse- ums’ project for a laboratory-museum of Romanian Communism. Our analysis of focus-groups in October-November 2012 explores the public’s expectations in terms of museum experience and engagement with objects and the potential of an experiential museum to facilitate deliberation about the past. We use the conceptual framework of recent studies on postmemory (Hirsch, 2008) and prosthetic memory (Landsberg, 2004, 2009) to focus on ways of building the experiential archive needed to produce prosthetic memory. We consider that such an analysis is relevant for two interconnected problems: the bidirectional relationship between a projected museum of communism and a prospective public, and the methodological insights available for investigating this relation. With regard to the first problem, this paper makes a case for treating museums as a memory device rather than a lieu de memoire and analyses the role of the museum in relation to cultural memory. With regard to the second problem, it offers an example of conducting research on prospective publics which departs from traditional marketing approaches, adopting theoretical insights and analytical categories from specific conceptualizations in the field of memory studies. Keywords: postmemory, prosthetic memory, remembrance practices, laboratory-museum of Communism

Introduction

This paper investigates the sources of representations on the communist period and the type of engagement with the past in an experiential museum, in the context of the National Network of Romanian Museums’ project for a laboratory-museum of Romanian Commu- nism. Immediately after the fall of communism in 1989 in Romania, “museums were chal- lenged to reinvent themselves, to renounce the blasé museum and become antidote-museums” (Bãdicã, 2010, p. 283). In other words, they had to reframe their production and management of significances of Communism. In the process, many of them seem to have preserved the fundamental idea behind “father-museums”, that their mission was to teach their public about the truth. Against this background, the National Network developed the idea of a laboratory-

* National University of Political Studies and Public Relations, [email protected]. ** National University of Political Studies and Public Relations, [email protected]. 1 This paper is the result of research developed in the project Mediere ºi mediatizare în memoria cine- maticã a comunismului românesc [Mediation and Mediatization in the Cinematic Memory of Romanian Communism] of the Laboratory Communication, Discourse, Public Issues (CODIPO) of the Centre for Re- search in Communication, Faculty of Communication and Public Relations, NUPSPA. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 8

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museum, a fluid concept going against traditional museological practice and allowing negotiation of the meaning of the period. “The laboratory-museum is […] not a temple (it does not propose or attempt to fixate a narrative for our recent history), but a place that welcomes experimentation and takes a grassroots approach towards building an institution that takes seriously its potential audience. The laboratory-museum does not attempt to transform our recent history in a museum object but aims to facilitate a process of coming to terms with this sensitive time in our past” (presentation text by Viviana Iacob, initiator of the project). The result of such a design will be a museum without a permanent exhibition, whose ownership will be claimed by no particular cultural institution. This enterprise is not an isolated voice in the Romanian public sphere. There is vivid debate on the relationship between coming to terms with the Communist past and the integra- tion of this experience in collective memory as a salient element of cultural identity. A map of discourses on this topic would highlight the polyphony of voices, an array of remembrance agents, overlapping images and symbols, a plurality of mechanisms and strategies for pro- moting various perspectives on Communism. There are, for instance, official institutional discourses (see Tismãneanu Report, the publications of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and Memory of the Romanian Exile, the online photo collection of Com- munism), allegedly private discourses (Nicolae Ceauºescu’s blog, web page and Facebook account), cinematic enterprises (such as Tales from the Golden Age, Mungiu et al., 2009, Nicolae Ceauºescu’s Autobiography, Andrei Ujicã, 2010, The Great Communist Robbery, Alexandru Solomon, 2012). These competing discourses meet in various media contexts (televised debates, press files, citizen journalism), where they negotiate versions and meanings of Com- munist experience in terms of historical relevance, moral responsibility and identitarian significance. We take these discourses as competing inputs for building the collective memory (Halbwachs, 1992) about Romanian communism, although they circulate in different contexts and have distinct publics.

The museum as a memory dispositif

In the context of the project for a laboratory-museum of Communism, we intend to investigate the role of the museum in building the cultural memory of this period and the politics of memory in the cultural sphere. We start from Gillian Rose’s approach to discourse analysis in visual methodologies (Rose, 2001) to further differentiate between two directions in investigating how a museum’s discourse impacts upon the process of building cultural memory: one dealing with sources of representation, narratives proposed for the past and intertextuality, i.e. with discursive formations and their productivity, and one dealing with institutional practices, technologies of display, issues of power and regimes of truth generating a particular engagement with the past in a museum. Although requiring different focal points in analysis (i.e. text and intertextuality vs. display technologies and engagement with the object), both directions stem from Michel Foucault and both can be subsumed to the wider approach of dispositif analysis. In relation to cultural memory, Laura Basu considers that “Dispositif analysis allows us to examine the wide range of phenomena and their relations that constitute a cultural memory, without being stalled by debates as to what is and is not a ‘text’. It would mean identifying the constituent elements within a given dispositif, the relations between them, and the subject positions they bring about.” (Basu, 2011, p. 35). Her approach identifies three Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 9

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main elements of memorial dispositifs: medial, temporal and political. This categorization allows the analyst to emphasize the different workings of various media in building and shaping memories (the medial element). It also points to the revolutionary changes in temporality brought about with the shifts from the ‘pre-modernity’ to ‘modernity’ to ‘postmodernity’, shifts that have changed the shape and structure of memory (the temporal element). Finally, it shows how cultural memory preserves the store of knowledge from which a group derives an awareness of its unity and uniqueness, inevitably generating forms of inclusion and exclusion involved with identity (the political element). In relation to the political dimension of cultural memory, reference frameworks and interpretation schemata are needed to give knowledge about the past a common meaning for a community. Public memory builds on institutions and monuments (which are, essentially, semantic instruments that translate significances), but also on public discourses, since modern collective memory is social (a theoretical tradition stemming from Halbwachs). In this respect, we can take cultural memory as “an externalization and objectivation of memory, which is individual and communicative” (Jan Assmann, 2010, p. 122). The contemporary interest in memory practices and devices may be taken to stem from an anxiety of contemporary culture about forgetting. Various explanations have been proposed for this memory crisis, among which the technological advancement and mediatization, which have accelerated the obsolescence of artifacts and cultural experiences alike. Paradox- ically, media as instruments of remembering have been blamed for the memory amnesia of present times, because of the commodification and spectacularization of history, which might trigger the banalization of historical events. In this respect, Adorno’s argument that commodification equals forgetting can be further developed to explain memory crisis through the creation of distance from historical events. In Halbwach’s view of a live, collective consensual memory, storage devices are not necessary; it is mediation that invites the development of remembrance strategies and practices. In this context, what German philosopher Hermann Lübbe called ‘musealization’ in the early 80s (strategies of memorialization not restricted to museums) is an attempt to fixate cultural identity for the modern individual. Andreas Huyssen draws on Lübbe to understand musealization as a compensatory device for the “transformation of temporality in our lives” (Huyssen, 2011, p. 432), with the observation that cultural traditions are themselves affected by the same processes of change. History museums are places where public memory is built as a symbolic and political resource both through exhibits and deliberation on the meanings of history. The significance of political events becomes visible through categorization and their “consequentiality in and for the social and ideological context” in which they are invoked (Tileagã, 2008, p. 359). The per- formative dimension of remembrance (Jasinski, 2001, p. 356) proposed by a history museum builds significance in the same way as rituals and ceremonies, for instance, and is partly responsible for the non-hegemonic character of public memory (because both the objects and the agents of remembrance are submitted to debate and critical discussion). Forms of social activism can develop from this debate, and this ties in with the mission that history museums have assumed in time: to investigate historical evolutions and ideological representations of events. In the case of a museum of Communism, the management of these representations has to take into account several constraints: first, it needs to address the issue of its past as an instrument of official propaganda during Communism (Bãdicã, 2010, p. 275); second, it has to reflect competing discourses about the Communist experience in the Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 10

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public sphere; third, to stimulate dialogue among various such discourses. The social memory of Communism is to be found in conflicting, “lay” and scientific interpretive frameworks alike (Tileagã, 2012a). Essentially, history museums present an elitist version of the communist past, a fact which is also true of public political discourse (Tileagã, 2012b). On the other hand, studies on people’s attitudes toward Communism show an array of perspectives which vary widely with age, level of education and social status (see IICMER report, 2012). The museum as a storage device against forgetting is an artificial construction in that it introduces categories, chronology and causal interdependence where there is little or none. This recreation of history is, however, constitutive of remembrance as discourse about the past, in much the same way representation of reality is constitutively different from reality. “[O]ur contemporary memory crisis with its attendant rash of commemorative acts may be based less on the production of synthetic memories that the migration of history into advertising and the nostalgia industry seems to affect and more on the paradoxical assumptions embedded within the methodology of curatorship and the ideology of the collection” (Boyer, 2011, p. 379). In the light of these theoretical considerations, the project of a museum of Communism seems to be confined to two extremes: one would be to adopt a stance similar to Adorno’s formula “coming to terms with the past”, and admit that such a museum assumes a specific mission (the truth about Communism), a certain epistemological authority and ideological role, which would encourage a museum concept along the very lines criticized by Boyer. But such a project, normatively oriented, might collide with the expectations of a younger generation, for whom issues of guilt and responsibility, crucial to Adorno’s argument, might not be at stake. The other extreme would be the contemporary experiential museum, focused on prosthetic re-living (as conceptualized by Alison Landsberg), with no claim for epistemological or ideological authority, proposing an affectionate and even entertaining engagement with the past, and favoring a decidedly deliberative stance, where the visitor freely negotiates the meaning of history throughout the museum experience. The risk of such a project, at odds with a traditional view of the museum, would be the dissolution of any unitary meaning of history and the perceived “trivialization” of the experiences of previous generations. Both options can assume the mission of the antidote museum (Bãdicã, 2010) and both can propose an exhibiting regime of an elitist or broad appeal. The success of any of them is dependent on assumptions about how the public connects with the previous generation and what kind of place they allow for museums in this process. The analytical framework for investigating the relationship between the young generation (probably disconnected from the past) and previous generations is developed in the following section.

Post-memory and prosthetic memory: two approaches to generational gap in memory studies

Two concepts describing the mediations at stake in the progress from communicative memory to cultural memory are particularly apt for understanding how young generations can appropriate the past into their memories. Although different in scope, explicative power and theoretical rooting, both concepts investigate the works of memory within a generational gap and the dynamics between private and public forms of memory. The differences in understanding the interplay between memory and identity in these two approaches render them as valuable starting points in the elaboration of a museum project. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 11

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The concept of postmemory is a very important analytical contribution proposed by Mar- ianne Hirsch in the field of holocaust studies (2001, 2008). The concept describes specifically the bridging of a generational gap between the “generation before”, those who experienced cultural or collective trauma, and the “generation after” or “the second generation”, who “remember only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up” (Hirsch, 2008, p. 107). According to Hirsch, characteristic of this type of remembering is that “these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory’s connection to the past is thus not actually mediated by recall, but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with such overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s consciousness, is to risk having one’s own stories and experiences displaced, even evacuated, by those of a previous generation. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present. This is (…) the experience of postmemory and the process of its generation.” (Hirsch, 2008, p. 107) The consequence of such a relation between past and present is the maintenance and perpetuation of a living connection between generations, which fosters group identity and defines relations with out- group. In this context, photography has a key role – and in particular family photographs, since “as a medium of postmemory clarifies the connection between familial and affiliative postmemory and the mechanisms by which public archives and institutions have been able both to reembody and to reindividualize “cultural/archival” memory.” (Hirsch, 2008, p. 115). In this sense, the indexical quality of photography makes it a central piece of a museum’s dispositif, linking representations and forms of engagement with processes of identity formation. Hirsch recognizes the multiple problematic aspects of her approach. Whether postmemory is limited to the “intimate embodied space of the family” or can extend to more distant observers and participants outside the frame of intergenerational exchange, remains undecid- ed. Associated with this aspect is the confinement of postmemory only to victims of trauma – which although plausible, doesn’t necessarily exclude the possibility that bystanders and perpetrators could take part in this structure of intergenerational transmission of trauma. She remains optimistic about the inclusive possibilities of post-memory, although some prerequisites are still implicit in this engagement with postmemorial processes: “Postmemorial work (…) strives to reactivate and reembody more distant social/national and archival/cultural memorial structures by reinvesting them with resonant individual and familial forms of mediation and aesthetic expression. Thus less-directly affected participants can become engaged in the generation of postmemory, which can thus persist even after all participants and even their familial descendants are gone.” (Hirsch, 2008, p. 111) It’s unclear, in this fragment, what are the prerequisites for postmemorial work to be effective, and its limits in relation to total strangers, but certain criteria of belonging seem to be required in order to be part of postmemorial processes: a symbolic belonging to the group of victims or a connection with the events. Different questions arise when the concept of postmemory is exported from holocaust studies in other fields, such as post-communism, where the dynamics of memory produce a mode of remembering totally impossible in the original framework: that of nostalgic remembering. Such a conceptual relocation might be risky since “postmemory is not a movement, method, or idea; (…) [but] a structure of inter- and trans-generational transmission of traumatic knowledge and experience. It is a consequence of traumatic recall but (unlike post- traumatic stress disorder) at a generational remove” (Hirsch, 2008, p. 106), Yet, while at odds Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 12

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with the traumatic experience, nostalgic remembering seems to share with postmemory the affectionate register, the imaginative investment, projection, and creation of memories, the multiple mediations that produce affiliation between generations and reinforce a sense of con- tinuity within community’s identity. Alison Landsberg defines prosthetic memories as particular forms of public cultural memory (the memory of a past that has not been directly experienced) that “emerge at the inter- face between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as a movie theater or museum. In this moment of contact, an experience occurs through which a person sutures him or herself into a larger historical narrative. In this process, the person does not simply learn about the past intellectually, but takes on a more personal, deeply felt memory of a past event through which he or she did not live in the traditional sense.” (Lands- berg, 2009, p. 222) The domain of this concept comprises the situations when “links between parents and children, and most significantly, between individual persons and community – kinship ties – were broken, and alternative methods for transmission and dissemination of memories were required.” (Landsberg, 2004, p. 2) Landsberg’s approach is circumscribed in a mediological perspective: prosthetic memory is a particular case of “prosthetic extensions”, a concept McLuhan takes over from E.T. Hall to describe the functioning of communication technologies. The term is not inherently positive or negative. Invoking Krackauer and Benjamin, Landsberg puts forth the argument that despite their inauthenticity, prosthetic memories are personal memories, since they result from engaged and experientially oriented encounters with the mass media’s various technologies of memory. These confrontations are sensorial and the negotiation of meaning is made by reference not only to the artistic object itself (which takes part in this negotiation with its own indexicality), but with the individual’s prior experiences. Moreover, prosthetic memory targets a public past, not a single individual’s or group’s possession, although its sources can be private. In her works (2004, 2009), Alison Landsberg claims that such prosthetic memories allow for a new radical politics of empathy. Drawing on a phenomenologi- cal account, she discusses empathy in contrast to sympathy, concluding that, “unlike sympathy, empathy does not depend on a ‘natural’ affinity or some kind of essential underlying connection between the two subjects. Empathy, in this account, is a way of understanding the other without having actually undergone the other’s experiences. Empathy recognizes the alterity of identification and the necessity of negotiating distances and is therefore essential to any ethical relation to the other” (Landsberg, 2004, p. 24). In this approach, empathy is not only aimed at understanding the other, but a way of “inhabiting other people’s memories as other people’s memories and thereby respecting and recognizing difference” (Landsberg, 2004, p. 24). Opposing Halbwachs’ view, Landsberg shows that in contrast with collective memory, which serves to reinforce and naturalize a group’s identity, prosthetic memories are not the property of a single group, but allow collective horizons of experience, since the pasts that prosthetic memories open up are available to individuals across racial or ethnic lines, across cleavages between victims and perpetrators. In summary, prosthetic memories are not natural or authentic, but are personal, because they suppose a mediated experience of the event, they are incorporated, just like an artificial limb, are interchangeable in their quality of goods for symbolic consumption, and build not only subjectivities, but mediated collective identi- fications, opening the way towards the construction of counterhegemonic public spheres. They are also an argument that “affective power might be mobilized to have a similar kind of political potential as conceptual power” (Landsberg, 2004, p. 4). Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 13

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These two approaches to memory share significant features, but also differ relevantly. They both target a generational rupture and propose ways of reconnecting with one group’s identity. They both have a marked mediated character (family photographs, in the case of post-memory, media fictions and experiential museums in the case of post-memory), and propose a type of engagement with the past, which is mainly affective and sensorial. But postmemory is part of the private sphere symbolized by the family photograph, while prosthetic memory has “the commodified nature of mass cultural representations that makes them so widely available to people who live in different places and hail from different backgrounds, races, and classes, and that (…) precludes them from being the private property of a particular group”. (Landsberg, 2009, p. 222). While in postmemory the implicit finality (working as an organizing principle) is represented by reconciliation within an already constituted group (by coming to terms with a traumatic past), prosthetic memories, as implicit finality, transcend group identities towards new forms of solidarity. We consider this to be the case due to the relationship with identity that is characteristic of each of the two forms of memory: while post-memory results in a consolidation of group identity (by means of traumatic re-living, through sympathy and multiple mediations of familial artifacts), prosthetic memories lead to a progressive, cosmopolitan politics, based on empathy. Ultimately, the essential difference between the two approaches can be better understood if one conceptualizes this memorial transmissions as a communication process and focuses on the position of the receiver in this process: in the case of post-memory, the receiver is included from the very beginning, she is already a part of the community whose identity is reinforced through processes of remembering, while in the case of prosthetic memory, the receiver is allegedly an outsider who is to be included, through empathy, in a community that doesn’t necessary precede the process of prosthetic remembering, but is constituted through it. In our view, the two concepts can be conceived as the extremes of a scale describing the possible approaches to conceptualizing a re-appropriation of the past by the generation after, and can be systematically linked with the design of a museum as a memory device.

Empirical Research

Taking the museum as a memory device, we attempt to investigate how remembrance is produced through engagement with objects/artifacts in the museum and to discuss the potential of an experiential museum to facilitate deliberation about the past. To this end, we conducted four focus groups in Bucharest, Iaºi and Sibiu in October-No- vember 2012. The participants were relatively cosmopolitan, educated, with rich museum experience. We selected people in the 20-29 age group, because they do not have significant personal experiences about Communism and, at the same time, they are one of the main target groups of the future laboratory-museum of Communism. The focus group in Iaºi was conducted at the National Museum Complex Moldova on the youngest participants (mean age 19), with background education in humanities and arts. In Sibiu the focus group took place at the National Museum Complex ASTRA; the participants were older (mean age 24) and had various backgrounds, from humanities to economic studies. In Bucharest the focus groups took place in a neutral setting, with people aged 20-29, from various educational backgrounds. All participants in the focus-groups visit exhibitions/museums 2-4 times a year, which places Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 14

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them higher than the national average; participants in Bucharest are the most active visitors in museums (they request an audioguide, touch the objects when given the possibility, etc.). We started our investigation from the following research questions: 1. What type of experiential engagement in a museum is likely to generate the public’s empathy towards the otherness of the past? This question seeks to investigate the public’s expectations in terms of museum experience and engagement with objects, in order to find out whether museum experience is compatible with a model of prosthetic memory. 2. How can an experiential museum facilitate deliberation about the past? There is a two- way dynamics between present and past in the process of deliberation: from an (undisputed/known) past towards an evaluation of the museum concept or from the recognition of the concept towards a re-evaluation of the visitors’ personal understanding of the communist period. Our previous research (Ciocea, Cârlan, 2013) suggests that the younger generation are more likely to adopt a fallible position in respect with the past and, as a consequence, more willing to reevaluate their representation of the past as a result of interaction with mediated memories. The older generation tend to take their own unmediated memories of Communism as a point of reference for evaluating the truthfulness of the mediated memories in the present. For the purpose of this study, we will investigate how the museum experience is evaluated in relation with a personal experiential archive (Landsberg) and general public knowledge of the period. Finally, we want to see which direction is the more salient: from the past to the present or the other way round?

a. Experiential engagement In the case of the first research question, the relevant section in the focus group guide comprised questions about museum experience in general and prominent memories of museum visits, and allowed respondents to highlight desirable changes in museum design, for a positive overall experience. One question in particular asked participants to imagine an interaction with an artifact in a museum, to allow us to understand possible cognitive/affective engagement. Direct engagement with the object, sensorial experience, and elicitation of empathy are characteristic of prosthetic remembrance, which is enabled by a fluid, non-normative museum concept. However, this can only aim at fragmented knowledge of the past. Many of our respondents had rich cosmopolitan experiences with modern museums, and consequently projected a museum with modern installations and hands-on interactions with exhibits. However, there seems to be an implicit understanding that museums back home would hardly encourage modern installations or sensorial experiences. Asked to imagine how he would interact with an interesting exhibit, one respondent said: “The traditional please do not touch. It is quite a paradox that the museum offers authentic objects and the possibility for direct contact with relics from various epochs, but at the same time there is this restric- tion – eyes only.” (FG4, B3) Not all participants equate direct interaction with artifacts with a better understanding of the period; the novelty of the museum experience does not necessarily amount to increased knowledge or empathy towards the people who lived through those times. See, for instance, an empathic experience versus a skeptical one: “Apart from history, that particular museum [The Holocaust Museum in Berlin] shows brilliant ideas that make you feel what the Jews have felt throughout history (…) I loved the intimacy (…) I had the feeling that I managed to un- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 15

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derstand what some people felt at a certain time – which is very important, or so it seems to me. They managed to transport you back into that state” (FG1, R., italics added)/[What would you include in the museum?] “I would look for various objects from that time in factories. Furniture bearing a registration number … But [separate objects] cannot create an image in the museum about everyday life back then. Plus, it does not seem normal to me to bring everything back 20 years before, because things have evolved and we cannot live in the past.” (FG3, F.) The first respondent points to empathy as a means of building knowledge about the period. The employment of categories of affect in the answer to the questions How did people who lived back then experience the period? What was it like to live at that time? points to the relational and empathic disposition towards the past experience that is central to the concept of prosthetic memory. The second respondent highlights one of the risks of prosthetic remembrance, encouraging nostalgia, seen by some analysts as a distortion of the meanings of the past. We also have respondents that approach the museum experience cognitively. For instance, to the questions What is this museum about? What are the relevant facts about the field?, one of them said: “That was a museum you learned something from … They had various installations that explained how the water erodes the rocks and you could play with the tap to see the water run. And they had this other installation that simulated an earthquake in Japan in the ’70s. They made everything so that you could understand, they did not just give you the information. And there were children everywhere.” (FG1, I.) Many participants would choose banal, obsolete objects for the museum (soda makers, pi- oneers’ cravats, wedding pictures, cars, queues in front of delis). One participant said: “for instance, I could find out a lot [about Communism] from antique fairs where they sell insignia, books about the party […] Each tells a story: look, this is the money they used back then! […][T]he book from 1982 [with the dedication] ‘from your party comrade’” (FG2, A.) This choice of experiencing and engaging with objects is indicative of this potential public’s preference for modern museum experiences. On the other hand, those who insist on the educational mission of the museum would rather include objects indicative of trauma: objects bearing the official insignia, documentaries, witness reports, pictures from the revolution and collectivization, prisons. In general, preference for banal objects and everyday life points to an experiential engagement of empathetic nature and personal involvement in the reconstruction of the meaning of the objects displayed. Some participants, however, point to the limits of personal experience: the museum should contain “the truth about communism. Something that should change that poor perception I have. I still associate communism with those huge queues, with the fact that we could not leave unless we had written permission, with the fact that you could only find chocolate and sweets in Bucharest, that I had to say Father Frost, not Santa Claus, that we could not play carols” (FG 3, W.). The comments received about museum experience and interaction with objects are consistent with the findings from the first stage of our research. Using questionnaires to investigate the potential public of a laboratory-museum of communism, Zbuchea and Ivan (2014) were able to identify two types of visitors. Those who are selective visitors have an interest in specific exhibits, are less appreciative of interactive experiences, return to revisit the exhibition and participate in the museum’s educational programs. The broad-image visitors are interested in interactivity and overall experience of the museum visit: they take advantage of all facilities offered by the museum (they read all the labels, use the audio-guide and the touchscreens, and are interested in the documentaries). An evaluation such as the following is illustrative of a selective visitor: “I like museums that have large open spaces and the ex- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 16

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hibits are not cluttered and I can walk around and see something which attracts my attention. And leave the museum with the remembrance of a new artist I did not know about. And then search information about him. I do not seek to find out everything in the museum about that person. I can find out something, an anecdote, something to raise my interest – but I will not have the information forced upon me. I prefer to leave [the museum] with some sort of curiosity” (FG1, K.). On the other hand, participant I. speaks about a certain museum in Roma- nia in terms of broad-image: a museum “which I think has segments that are really interesting for foreigners, who are given something to see; but it also has study and reading rooms, spaces for events or which present current affairs. And it is these rooms that bring people back to the museum constantly” (FG1, I.). Although it is difficult to equate broad-image visitors’ experience with prosthetic remembrance, it is true that such a visitor is quite likely to engage empathetically with the past at a sensorial level. On the other hand, both selective and broad-image visitors can challenge a museum’s attempt at ideological authority and can engage in deliberations about the meaning of the historical period presented in the museum.

b. Deliberation in the museum Our second research question sought to understand how an experiential museum can facilitate deliberation about the past. How do respondents evaluate the role of the museum? Is the museum experience evaluated in relation with a personal experiential archive or the general public knowledge of the period? We also wanted to see whether respondents are eager to reevaluate their representation of the past. In our grid, we investigated: the participants’ interest for Communism, the way they project the potential public of the museum, the exhibits that should be included in the museum. We also wanted to find out which themes about the period are most salient in the public sphere, which are the actors participating in the debate and which are the most significant symbolic resources on the meaning of Communism. In the participants’ opinion, current perceptions about Communism are fragmented and authority sources, dispersed (“There is a lot of talk because nothing is known. Each has a piece of the puzzle, but there is no bigger picture” – FG1, I. One (young) respondent point- ed to message overload in the public sphere: “We are saturated with communism. People do not even know their genealogy and they are requested to know history” (FG4, T.) Except recent cinematography (especially Tales from the Golden Age), the symbolic resources of remembrance are stereotypes and, sometimes, individual experience. Family or group resources (indicative of post-memory) and official memory (textbooks, school curric- ula) are not often invoked in the interaction. Narratives of personal experiences are naturally rare (given the age of participants) and the experiential archives tend to be nostalgic and cliché-ridden (probably because what is re- membered is early childhood): “my first reaction is rejection. I am from Târgu-Jiu and I associate communism with the image of shops that were always empty. On the shelves you could probably find a loaf of bread, a bottle of cooking oil and a packet of flour. I adored going to Bucharest because you could find sweets there and I always returned with supplies. The second thing that I remember is whispering, rather than talking out loud, the fact that the local police came to my door because grandfather taught me Christmas carols, but I also remember people’s elation when the Revolutions started” (FG3, D.). Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 17

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In one instance, a participant introduced a “validity hierarchy” in personal versus official archives: the media and the school “might appear a less risky source than the stories told by grandparents. Well, live experiences are good as well, but there is always the risk we might run into unjustified nostalgia.” (FG1, I) For participants, it is the significant absences, rather than the recurrent representations about the period, that are most relevant for attributing a meaning of the period: “important information is left in the dark, such as, what was happen- ing then […] to people who ended up in prison, or to those who wanted to go abroad, or what happened to the information that reached us, how filtered it was” (FG4, W). We can notice that the participants are open towards forms of prosthetic memory, rather than postmemory. The previous generation’s experiences seem to have been accidentally con- veyed to the generation after. In one particular instance, in the focus group with younger respondents (mean age 19), participants expressed an interest in the period that we could attribute to nostalgic remembrance, which does not stem from personal or parental memories, but probably from media culture (Moderator: Do you have a curiosity about that period? F1: Of course, it was fascinating! – FG4). On the other hand, there is tension between these authority sources (F: It was better in Ceauºescu’s tine! Everybody says so!/B3: How old were you in 1989? You were not even born!/F: No, I was not./B: I do not know what to say …as F. said, everybody feels it was better in the past. Each generation believes this.” Few participants invoke traumatic experiences of close family; the rare personal insights are either nostalgic, or detached: “I remember a lot, but I am now at peace, I have no trauma from the past” (FG1, M); (Moderator: Who would be interested in the museum? “my parents’ generation and older people who are not at peace with themselves, have not fought all their battles and then I see them living that present, rather than this one” (FG1, I.). This fragmentation and lack of imaginative investment have led to a cognitive approach to the role of the museum in the debate on Communism: the projected museum should correct false representations and teach the young people and the foreigners about the true meaning: “I believe that a growing number of people […] no longer have any fixed point about the period and as a consequence they have no interest in it” (FG1, I.). When asked who should establish a museum of Communism, participants invoke the argument of authority: “somebody who could do something objective. For instance, just like nowadays they summon various commissions, they could form a commission of people who lived back then or who were part of ruling classes, but also of people our age, who could build a more commercial side to this museum, because this is needed as well. Maybe at the price of slight misrepresentation, for commercial purposes” (FG3, M.) Many respondents take a critical distance towards the role of the museum as a facilitator of understanding, rising, in part, from distrust in any attempt at fixing the meaning of the period, and, on the other, from the fluid, non-normative concept behind the projected museum (Moderator: Who would be interested in the museum? “Nostalgic people, although the people who lived back then might not be very interested. The middle-aged people would visit it because they would be curious to see symbols their parents talked about. Adolescents would be curios, but not very interested, it is not something specific to their age, maybe later they grow aware that they learned about communism in history classes. I know there was an op- tional subject on the history of communism in high-school, some years ago. So, at one moment, there were attempts at presenting facts … Yet these are somebody’s subjective opinions, if we talk from historians’ perspective, because eventually history is made by historians – FG3, B). Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 18

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On the other hand, the museum still has a lot of legitimacy as a facilitator of engagement with the past and as a depository of the truth. In participants’ opinion, coming to terms with the past is only possible if the truth is revealed: “I would invite everyone at the museum, because a museum works with exact data, and because this is an unclear period, everything must be in good order, and this depends on custodians, who need to be very well prepared and research the topic” (FG4, M.). In this case, the relationship with the past is mediated by knowledge and presentation of facts: “we do not have an opinion, we have just taken over other people’s opinions. If you see, you will have an opinion yourself” (FG4, M.). A fluid concept would work best when it is difficult to fix the meaning of the period:“I believe that all of those who added a little something in time should now come together for this museum […] Each knows a piece […] And something might come out of this. And every three years, you should make another museum” – FG1, M.). Paradoxically, although the participants turn to those who have experienced Communism directly to get informed about the past, there is tension between the implicit trust in the knowledge resources and distrust in the validity of their experience/interpretation: “[…] [O]nly those who lived through both times can make a comparison. We can only imagine. There is a difference between imagining and living” (FG4, A.) Our analysis confirms the findings of Zbuchea and Ivan (2015), that expectations of museum goers vary widely: from interest in micro-phenomena (such as the daily lives of people in Communism) especially in younger people who did not experience the period directly, to macro-phenomena (deriving meaning from the systemic effects of Communism on Ro- manian society). We can attribute this latter interest to the high level of education of people who participated in the focus, but also to their expectation that the museum should educate the public.

Concluding remarks

To conclude, we can notice a paradoxical attitude of participants in the focus groups: they want a modern, non-normative reception experience (encapsulated in the systematic preference for an experiential museum, a desire for affective engagement with the past and emotional identification through the museum), but have a “traditional” perspective on the mission of the museum, expressed in a cognitive register: a museum should show what the period was like, should document the past, serve as evidence, correct perspectives, educate and teach. In other words, the museum experience anticipated or desired by the public can be understood in terms of prosthetic memory, but the aims of such a project (the design of laboratory-museum) are not assumed in all its radicalism (no final version about the past, no institutional ownership). We may interpret this paradox not necessarily as an inconsistency in the public, but as a reflection of the visitors’ reticence to clearly differentiate between sensorial and affective areas of memory, on the one hand, and cognitive areas, on the other, a problematic dichotomy promoted by the theories of mediated memory and post-memory. There is indeed a risk that an over-emphasis on experientiality might in fact block deliberation, because it does not encourage the critical distance required for the visitor’s objectified evaluation. Moreover, the absence of a permanent exhibition, as envisaged by the museum’s project, means a lack of official perspective on the communist period, by the institutional infrastructure that governs Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 19

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the museum. Aside from the clash with the traditional view of the museum revealed by focus groups, such a shortcoming is problematic for two reasons: because it pushes the final stage of the process of “coming to terms with the past” towards an indefinite resolution and, furthermore, helps maintain the status quo of the official perspective on communist history, encapsulated, for instance, in Tismãneanu Report. A different conclusion regards the productivity of approaches stemming from memory studies and cultural analysis to understand and initiate research about museum experience and museum publics, a trend of research which typically follows a rather instrumental, marketing-oriented approach. In this regard, the relevant differences in relation to group identity and cultural memory, emphasized by the comparative analysis of postmemory and prosthetic memory, allow operationalizable insights for the research of museums’ design and museums’ publics, going beyond the instrumental approach specific to marketing research.

References

1. Assmann, J. (2010). Globalization, Universalism, and the Erosion of Cultural Memory. In A. Assmann, & S. Conrad. (Eds.). Memory in a global age: discourses, practices and trajectories. Houndmills, Bas- ingstoke (pp. 121-137). UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 2. Bãdicã, S. (2010). Same exhibitions, different labels? Romanian national museums and the fall of communism. In S.J Knell., P.Aronsson, A.Amundsen. (Eds.). National Museums. New Studies from Around the World (pp.272-289). London: Routledge. 3. Basu, L. (2011). Memory dispositifs and national identities: The case of Ned Kelly. Memory Studies, 4(1), 33-41. 4. Boyer, M. C. (2011). The city of collective memory: its historical imagery and architectural entertain- ments. In J. K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi & D. Levy. (Eds.). The collective memory reader (pp. 378- 381). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5. Cârlan, I. A., Ciocea, M. (2013). Mémoire prothétique du communisme. Le film L’Autobiographie de Nicolae Ceauºescu de Andrei Ujicã et sa réception dans les médias. In I. Drãgan, J.F. Tétu, P. ªtefãnes- cu, N. Pélissier, L. Idjeraoui-Ravez, L. (Eds.). Traces, Mémoire et Communication (pp. 69-80). Bucureºti: Editura Universitãþii din Bucureºti. 6. Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 7. Hirsch, M. (2001). Surviving images: Holocaust photographs and the work of postmemory. The Yale Journal of Criticism. 14(1), 5-37. 8. Hirsch, M. (2008). The generation of postmemory. Poetics Today, 29(1), 103-128. 9. Huyssen, A. (2011). Present pasts: Media, politics, amnesia. In J. K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi & D. Levy. (Eds.). The collective memory reader (pp. 430-436). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10. Iacob, V. (2012). The laboratory-museum: Explorations for a museum of the communist period in Ro- mania. Retrieved May, 15, 2015, from http://www.europeanmuseumacademy.eu/4/upload/1_the_labora- tory_museum.pdf. 11. IICCMER (2012). Atitudini ºi opinii despre regimul comunist din România. Sondaj de opinie publicã. Retrieved May, 15, 2015, from http://www.iiccr.ro/pdf/ro/sondaj/raport_iiccmer.pdf. 12. Jasinsky, J. (2001). Memory. In J. Jasinsky. (ed.). Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contempo- rary Rhetorical Studies (pp. 355-363). London, New Delhi: Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications. 13. Landsberg, A. (2003). Prosthetic Memory: The Ethics and Politics of Memory in an Age of Mass Cul- ture. In P. Grainge. (ed.). Memory and Popular Film (pp. 144-161). Manchester: Manchester Universi- ty Press. 14. Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 20

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15. Landsberg, A. (2009). Memory, empathy, and the politics of identification. International Journal of Pol- itics, Culture and Society, IJPS, 22 (2), 221-229. 16. Presidential Commission for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in Romania (Tismãneanu Report). (2007). Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in Roma- nia. Humanitas, 2007. 17. Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. Sage. 18. Tileagã, C. (2008). What is a revolution? National commemoration, collective memory and managing authenticity in the representation of a political event. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 359-382. 19. Tileagã, C. (2012a). Communism and the meaning of social memory: towards a critical-interpretive approach. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science. 46(4), 475-492. 20. Tileagã, C. (2012b). Communism in retrospect: The rhetoric of historical representation and writing the collective memory of recent past. Memory Studies. 10(4), 462-478. 21. Zbuchea, A., and Ivan, L. (2014). Le public d’un musée du communisme et l’intérêt des visiteurs pour la période communiste. In Proceedings of the French-Romanian colloque: Actualité scientifique en communication des organisations: questionner les nouveaux enjeux, problématiques et pratiques, forthcoming. 22. Zbuchea, A., and Ivan, L. (2015). Painting Shades of Gray: How to Communicate the History of Com- munism in Museums. This issue. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 21

Alexandra ZBUCHEA* Loredana IVAN**

Painting Shades of Gray: How to Communicate the History of Communism in Museums

Abstract

Communication of sciences / arts lies at the core of a museum public activity. It is a special type of communication, meant to make the collections and the domain of the expertise of the museum accessible to a wide public in order to fulfill the special culural and social role that museums have in the contemporary society. This can not be achieved without the cooperation of visitors, as well as the museum stakeholders. For fruitful relationships, museums have to design their activity and public offer taking into account the characteristics as well as the interests of various segments of its audience. The present paper discusses the prereq- uisits for a succesful museum exhibition. Special attention is given to designing an effective exhibition on the history of communism. By investigating the profile of the potential visitors for such an exhibition, the paper draws a framework to be considered when designing it. The discussion is timely, since in the last few years there are discussions and initiatives related with the establishement of a museum of communism. Keywords: communicating history, museums, history of communism, communism exhibition, Romania

Introduction

Museums are constantly communicating with various segments of the public: to their visitors, to the scientists interested in their collections, to various stakeholders. Museums differentiate themselves from other organizations by making purposeful-communication with their visitors their main purpose. Any museum communicates primarily to educate the public in relation with its collections and its domain of interest, to engage the public into debating cultural values, in order to achieve its specific mission. Compared to other organizations, the communication processes in a museum are not primarily associated to public relations and marketing communication strategies, but with the reason of being of the museum. The means used to communicate are also different. Museums communicate mainly through their collections presented in exhibitions, as well as in the context of their public programs – especially the educational ones. The contemporary museum is a storryteller engaged into a stimulating dialogue with its publics, as well as a socio-culturally involved entity. Organizational communication in the classical sense of an organizational system, specific networks and strategies designed to support the managerial (and marketing) processes of that organization also exist in a museum.

* Department of Management, National University of Political Studies and Public Relations, alexan- [email protected]. ** Department of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Relations, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 22

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The present paper investigates how the communication strategy of a museum can be op- timized, considering the mission of the museum and its visitors. In other words, several issues are under scrutiny: What is the framework that a museum has to consider when designing its main communication strategies (refering to transmitting the cultural values associated with its collections)? How are the visitors approached in order to better achieve the mission of a museum? What are the prerequisites of a successful museum communication? Since the theme investigated is of high complexity, therefore we concentrate our analysis only on history museums, particularity on history exhibitions dedicated to communism. The recent discussions on how to present communism in museums, as well as the debates around a museum of communism (see Zbuchea & Ivan, 2014 for the various opinions expressed in the debate and for references) offer us the relevant framework and makes our investigation of actual interest for Romanian society. Our investigation identifies the points of reference that should be considered by a history exhibition on communism, proposed in Romania, in order to successfully communicate this sensitive subject.

The role of museums in contemporary society

Nowadays museums have a very active role in society, as the definition of the Internation- al Council of Museums underlines: A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment (icom.museum). Maybe this approach is too general, therefore specialists in the field of museum studies have elaborated on various specific aspects: a museum is a cultural animator (Gob & Drouguet, 2004, pp.50-51), is a space for socio-cultural dialogue, for debate and social engagement, of community development, a museum supports its communities, as well as a place of socio-cultural inclusion (Kavanagh, 1990, p.71; Karp et al., 1992; Ross, 2004; Crooke, 2007; Watson, 2007; Coffee, 2008; Simon, 2010). Increasingly the economic impact of museums is researched. As museums attract tourists (AECOM, 2013, p.54; Pes, 2014), they contribute to the revitalizing of cities and they make regions more appealing for investments (AECOM, 2013, p.56). Their contribution to the sustainable development is officially recognized and encouraged in the Eu- ropean Union (EU, 2014). The educational role of any museum nowadays lies at the core of all these aspects. Edu- cation is not any more considered under a narrow perspective of ”learning”, of informing the public and making visitors remember various facts in relation with museum’s collections or their associated domains. Learning in museums in not any more about knowing about sciences and arts, but about understanding and correlating the acquired information with the evolutions in contemporary society. It this context, museum have democratized, they are no longer places for elites but are of relevance for the wider public. The specific museum-related educational processes could be very diverse and with significant impact, both at individual and social level, both in the context of private interaction with a museum and in the context of educational system (Garcia, 2012). Hooper-Greenhill (2007, pp.44-62) identifies the following categories of outcomes of museum education: knowledge and understanding, skills, attitudes and values, enjoyment - inspiration - creativity, and activity behavior and development. In such a context, museums developed their educational offer, Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 23

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as well as the variety of public programs proposed to various segments of their audience. The contemporary museum does not primarily take into account its collections when developing its public activity, but the ”clients” – visitors as well as stakeholders. The contemporary museum is a visitor-centered museum (Ballantyne & Uzzell, 2011; Opriº, 2008, p.105). Muse- ums have become active and complex socio-cultural centers (Zbuchea, 2014, p.31). The public perceptions of museums changed accordingly. A study developed in Australia in 2005, shows that the most common views on the role of museums are: places for historical reflection, places of learning from the past to better cope with the future, and social activism (Cameron, 2005, pp.220-223). These evolutions also determined the diversification of museum discourses and instruments used to educate and communicate the collections to the audience. Among others, the internet offers nowadays a flexible support for interactive communication platforms therefore special educational websites and applications addressing teachers, families, youngsters or other segments of the public could be designed by museums to more effectively reach their publics. We can notice a professional dynamism in the museums world, considering the evaluation of their status and their complex role in society. What are the factors leading to this dynamism? On the one hand, the increased professionalization in the domain, including the search for meaningful and relevant activity, is an aspect to be considered as a drive for change. On the other hand, the external pressures are also to be considered. For instance, Ballantyne and Uzzell (2011) consider that an important influencer of the recent evolutions concerning museums is the decline of public funding, which in turn determined museum to look for alternative resources. Some other factors should also be considered, such as the change of expectations of the wider public as well as public perceptions regarding museums. Statistics show a rather low interest in museums, all over the world, therefore museums are obliged to be innovative, flexible and dynamic, to redesign themselves to be more appealing and effective in their public activity. At the same time, the public perceptions of museums changed accordingly. A study developed in Australia in 2005, shows that the most common views on the role of museums are: places for historical reflection, places of learning from the past to better cope with the future, and social activism (Cameron, 2005, pp.220-223). These evolutions occurred in other societies too. Therefore, museums that would remain only factual and would not evolve according with their visitors expectations and needs risk to be neglected and for- gotten by the public. One indicator of the success of museums is their attendance figure. Considering the evolutions in modern society, as well as the impact of the internet, museums could reach their target audience online, too, and impact even those who are not visiting them. Nevertheless, for most museums, visitors are the main public to be considered. Museums still primarily communicate with those visiting them or participating in their public programs, and have few communication strategies for non-visitors or the online public. Data generally shows an increase in the attendance of museums in the United States (AAM, 2010; AECOM, 2013, p.54) and in the most famous museums around the world (AECOM, 2013; Pes & Sharpe, 2013, 2014). Nevertheless, the data in the European Union reflecting the global situation of museums show a decrease in general interest between 2007 and 2013 (EU, 2013, p.8). In 2007 58% of the respondents declared they had not visited any museum in the past 12 months, while the same figure for 2013 was 62%. The numbers differ from country to country. In general, northern countries register higher attendance figures, the top being Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK (EU, 2013, p.17). In these countries, more than 10% of the population declare they have visited museums at least 5 times a year. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 24

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The appeal of museums depends on the profile of their collections. Art museums world- wide seem to be the most interesting for the general public (AECOM, 2013). Visitation is also influenced by the entrance fees, as well as by their blockbuster offer. Considering the specific interest in Romania, the picture is gloomier. According with recent European statistics, Romanians are the less interested in museums and the most exigent when evaluating the museum offer in their residence place (EC, 2013, p.26). 77% of the Ro- manians do not visit any museum in an entire year (EU, 2013, p.17). In many instances, they are ”brought” to museums in organized (school) groups (CCCDC, 2010). The Barometers of Cultural Consume (CCCDC 2006, 2010) show a general low interest in museums in Roma- nia, but a thin general increase is noted in 2012-2013 (www.insse.ro). The profile of the Ro- manian museum-goer is: highly educated, having elevated interest in the cultural offer of museums, less influenced by the facilities and additional opportunities offered by museums, interested in other cultural activities too (CCCDC, 2006, 2009, 2010; Zbuchea & Ivan, 2014). It is difficlt to explain the general lack of interest in museums in Romania. The only available data show that Romanian claim that they are not visiting museums because of lack of time, or because the offer is not diverse and of poor quality (EC, 2013, pp.5, 26). We consider that the low frequency of visitation could be related to an unappealing perception of museums in general, to the financial difficulties that Romanian museums are facing since the fall of communism (Bãdicã, 2010a, p.275), and also to the changing role of museums in the Ro- manian society – especially of history museums. Before 1989 history museums have been used as instruments of the official propaganda (Bãdicã, 2010a, pp. 275-279). Their role was not to represent history or to investigate historical evolutions, but to impose a certain vision on history, to support the nationalist ideology falsifying the historical memory (Ciugureanu, 2011). Reframing history in museums is a very difficult and controversial topic, not just in Ro- mania, but also in other former communist countries. The old perspective on how history should be presented in museums is still observable in many museums (Ciugureanu, 2011). The most common ”solution” of museums with dealing with the historical changes after the second world war is to ignore them, even if the generally agreed discource is anti-communist (Bãdicã, 2010a, p.276; Apor, 2011, pp.570-571). Communism and, especially, anti-communism still have a role in the political life in Eastern Europe (Mark, 2010), therefore discussing communism (in museums) as objectively as possible would be of interest for the wider public. Still, the process is difficult, considering the way Romanians relate themselves to communism (see further our research), as well as various individual and institutional (including political) legacies of communism (Pop-Eleches & Tucher, 2010; Stoica, 2012).

How museums communicate history

A proper strategy of science communication would lead to a successful museum / exhibition (Filippouliti, 2010). In addition to the approaches to be considered in this context, when planning a history exhibition some other issues should be considered. For instance, history is related to memory and communities that have produced a certain heritage (Kavanagh, 1990; Ciugureanu, 2011), therefore more personal reflection would be connected to the museum discourse and would influence its reception, compared to other science exhibitions. Gavanagh (1990, p.61) draws attention on the ability of history exhibitions to touch the visitor personally. A rewarding experience in a history museum might be attained if curators Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 25

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are concerned with qualitative aspects of knowledge transmited, rather than with quantitative ones, ensuring a meaningful exhibition (Gavanagh, 1990, p.72). The aim would be to stimulate and promote discussions rather than control the discourse (Gavanagh, 1990, p.153). There- fore, it is important to have in mind not just the collections, but also the visitors when designing an exhibition. Even more, Smith (2014) argues that taking into account only an educational fraework when designing an exhibition is not enough since visitors also engage emotionally and generate personal meanings of the perceived exhibits. The actual impact of an exhibition is not just a matter of its design, but also of its reception. Since collections are extremely vast, the selection of the artefacts presented in a exhibition is extremely important to have an effective exhibition. Several criterias would be considered (Gavanagh, 1990, p.74) as well as a model to investigate the material objects in the collections (Elliot et al., 1994; Pearce, 1994). The result is a multi-faced interpretation of the heritage, and it has more to do with the present and future, rather than with the past (Tilley, 1994). Thefore, another important issue museums have to consider is the profile(s) of its visitor(s). Not just the general public is interested in a history exhibition, but also professionals/experts in history: teachers, reaserchers, academics etc. All these categories are at the same time stakeholders of the museum, therefore it can not ignore them. The larger public itself has different levels of knowledge and interest in history and each visitors is looking differently at an exhibition. To better develop a succesful history exhibition in this context, one has to consider the specific historical reasoning for each segment of the audience. Van Boxtel and van Drie (2004) propose a model for historical reasoning that might be useful in better designing a history exhibition, in shaping a more appropriate communication approach. Their model contents six components: a proposal of a claim and supporting it with argumentation, organizing information, use of sources, use of historical concepts, asking historical questions, and con- textualization. The study of van Boxel and van Drie on how novices and experts in history approach historical information shows that both categories are using both chronological and spatial frames, both connect new information with what they consider to be significant historical knowledge they already posses. Experts in history discuss more presented phenomena, investigate anternatives, and contextualize on the level of specific occurrences. Other factors influencing the actual impact on the public of an exhibition is how interactive it is, as well as the personal agendas of visitors or their dispossition (Rennie et al., 2010). By nature people are subjective, and therefore decode an exhibition in a large number of ways. Each museum experience is unique in its way. By exhibition planning and design, curators seek to structure the visitors experiences in order not only to attract them, but also to obtain a deeper outcome through transformative experiemce (Beghetto, 2014). Therefore, understanding how visitors experience an exhibition is extremely important.

The focal point of a museum (exhibition): the visitor

Museums have evolved together with the society, constantly changing their role and the way they relate to their audience. The contemporary museum is a visitor-centered museum (Ballantyne & Uzzell, 2011). This approach is effective not only in increasing the numner of visitors, but also in ensuring its high impact and the reach of its specific mission. Museums are continuously trying to attract new visitors or to increase the frecquency of the visitation. The larger the number of visitors, the greater the chance museum has to reach Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 26

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its mission. Therefore convincing those who have never visited museums to enter the museum is an important aspect of the marketing and communication strategies. In order to be succesful in this endeavor, a museum has to understand why people avoid visiting it. When considering the Romanians who are not interested in museums, the most recent data shows that most of them claim the museum offer is not varied enough and of low quality, but also a significant part of them – of 22% - have no interest in any of the museum offer (EU, 2013, p.26). Again we stress that through adecquate offer, as well as proper marketing and communication strategies Romanian museums could change this opinion for the benefit of the museum but also of those persons. In order to better design the museum offers and exhibitions, the museum has to understand visitors and their pattern of visitation. The motives to visit or to participate in museums programs could be important points of reference when designing and communicating the museum offer (Zbuchea, 2014, pp.35-36). An effective design of an exhibition does not take into account only conservation and esthetic aspects, but also the characteristics of visitors and the way they behave during their visit. A study developed in Bucharest by Zbuchea and Ivan (2014) shows that there are two main patterns of visitation when considering frequent museum visitors: selective and broad-image visitors. The first type of visitors are highly-educated. These visitors are interested in only some sections of the museum, are not very keen in using the new technologies available in museum and they take part in the educational programs of museums. The second type tries to learn as much as possible when visiting, therefore they read the labels, they use the multi-media and other available equipment in the exhibition. Visitor (and nonvisitor) research (Kawashima, 1999; Baril, 2001; Kelly, 2004; Griffin et al., 2005; Hooper-Greenhill, 2006; Zbuchea & Ivan, 2008; Wallace, 2010; Dawson & Jensen, 2011) is essential to adecquately design the museum offer. This is important to achieve the museum mission, since through its offer a museum transmits the infomation about its collections and its domain of expertise, thus educating the public or getting them involved in cultural social. The exhibitions and public programs are not only the main elements of the museum activity that justify its public existence, but also the principal communication tool between museum and society (Menezes de Carvalho, 2013, pp.77-78). Menezes de Carvalho argues that museums design and transmit their specific discourse using exhibitions, thus narrating their representation of the world and engaging visitors, transmitting values and cultural ideas. Exhibitions are not any more only spaces to present collections, they propose exibits-related activities, they challenge visitors to interact with the cultural heritage / science, they involve willing visitors in debates and stimulate them to take position if the case. In order to be more effective in this context, exhibitions should be designed considering how visitors learn, perceive and process information, how they socialize and relate to the proposed topic (Leshchenko, 2013). Modern museums do not just take into consideration what they know about their visitors, they also actively involve visitors in developing exhibitions (Zbuchea, 2014, p.63) and em- power visitors in all museum activities (Duarde Candido et al., 2013, pp.54-57). Visitor studies are also revelant in the context of designing and evaluation of museum offers (Zbuchea, 2014, pp.70-72). Part of the aims of these studies is to evaluate the level of interest, as well as of knowledge regarding the theme proposed by an exhibition. For instance, if a person is not interested in what happened during communism, s/he would not visit such an exhibition unless it also makes reference to a topic of interest for her/him. Lets suppose somebody is not at all interested in communism but s/he is interested in fashion and cooking. Therefore, s/he might visit with great interest an exhibition presenting these topics in times of communism. The success of an exhibition on communism does not depend only on the level of in- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 27

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terest in the topic, but also on the level of specific knowledge somebody already posseses. If a visitor does not find new and interesting information, s/he would negatively perceive that exhibition and probably would recommend to others not to visit it.

The memory of communism in Romanian society

In the past few years, the reflections on the communist part of the Romanian history have been stimulated by discussions about the establishment of a museum of communism and the increase of temporary exhibitions dedicated to various aspects of the Romanian history during communism (Cristea, Radu-Bucurenci, 2007; Zbuchea & Ivan, 2014). Still, not even history museums propose a coherent and extended discourse on the period, some of them almost ignoring the evolutions after the Second World War (Bãdicã, 2010a, p.283; 2010c, p.85). It has been already mentioned that fresh and more visible interest in communism, as political, economic and social experience, is manifest throughout Eastern Europe (Apor, 2011). A main promoter of a museum dedicated to communism in Romania has been, for the past few years, the National Network of Museums of Romania (NNMR). NNMR is not the only organization with such a project. The Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism has been involved in the development of several museums in former peniten- tiaries used during communism to inprison political oponents and exhibitions dedicated to the history of communism (http://www.iiccr.ro). The interest of an important part of the intelec- tual and political elites in Romania in such a museum is also proved by various debates in media in the last years, especially stimulated by the official damnation of communism (see Zbuchea & Ivan, 2014). NNMR proposes a project based on the design of Viviana Iacob (2012) which proposes a dynamic exhibition, a laboratory-museum, a place for open discussions around the exhibits, a place of experimentation involving the audience, aiming to facilitate the understanding of the complex social and economic aspects during communism, as well as aiming to come to terms with some sensitive issues that still torment the Romanian society (Iacob, 2012). The latter aspect is extremely important, since it influences the social and political life of present-day Romania by shaping mentalities and attitudes such as the belief that the state is responsible for ensuring jobs for all the citizens, or nostalgia for the communist era. Data show a relatively high level of nostalgia in Romanian society (IRES, 2010; IICCMER 2010, 2011, 2012, Iacob, 2012) or maybe just an embelishment of the past as a reaction to the in- satisfacttions related to the present (Abraham, 2011). The level of nostalgia is measured by the mentioned studies as the number of persons who consider that during communism the life standard was higher. The number of nostalgics has increased in Romania between 1991 and 2004 from 26.3% to almost 45% (Rusu, 2013, p.49). The positive rememberance of communism, shared by part of society, is in opposition with most of the museum-discourse refering to that historical period (Bãdicã, 2010a, p.276). Therefore, part of the public would not be willing to accept the previously described approach of museums. Museums and their exhibitions must be more flexible and open to dialogigue when addressing communism. Bãdicã (2010b, p.97) observes a shift in the approaches adopted lately in the studies on communism, being more objectives and detached compared to the previous studies that were more ”black- and-white”. Tileaga (2012b) also draws the attention on the necessity of a flexibile and including discourse related to communism, observing that in the Romanian society mainly an Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 28

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elite-political discourse is to be heard. He also stresses that there is no ”ultimate story” when thinking about communism, and that the creation of a meaningful social memory of communism is necessary in order to fight political manipulation and ignorance (Tileaga, 2012a). These issues do not make the task of a museum / exhibition on communism easier, but give it more responsibility. Several studies on the attitude of the Romanian society towards communism were developed by the Institute for Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (www.iiccr.ro). The latest available research, shows that less than half of the Romanians consider that the fall of communism has been beneficial (IICCMER, 2012, p.47). Those considering that the fall of communism has had negative impact on Romania (38%) live mainly in (poor) rural areas and are older adults. They are less likely to be visitors of a museum or exhibition, still they represent an important segment of the population and could influence their families. A potential interest in communism is suggested by the opinions of the respondents refering to the ”distance” of the present society from the communist past: especially 40+ years old adults living in urban areas consider that Romania did not detach itself from its communist past (11%) or did detach itself but only in a small degree (40%) (IICCMER, 20112, pp.50-52). Therefore, communism is, for part of the Romanian society, a matter that is still connected with present-day realities. It suggests that it could be of interest for many Romanians to know more and to understand more about coomunism. Interest in understanding communist times might be also high, when considering that only a quarter of Romanians consider that communism was ”a bad idea” (IICMMER, 2011, p. 2). Most of the population considers that communism was ”a good idea, wrongly implemented”. The figures vary from study to study, but the levels registered are between 68% (IRES, 2010) and 43% (IICCMER, 2011, p.2). Nostalgia and frequent regrets of large segments of population regarding communism have been registered. Some indicators of these feelings are the following data: 18% of the population considers that communism was a good idea, well implemented (IICCMER, 2011, p.2), 38% believes that the instalment of the communism regime after WW2 was positive (IICCMER, 2011, p.5) even if most of them consider that it was imposed by outside forces (IICCMER, 2010, p.5), 37% of the population regrets the fall of communism (IRES, 2010), 41% would vote with Nicolae Ceauºescu as president (IRES, 2010), and 63% considers that the life standard was higher before the fall of communism compared to present times (IRES, 2010). All the studies show that the regret associated with communist times and positive evaluations are to be found amongst older adults, living in (poor) rural areas. Therefore, the way people see communism is directly related with the level of satisfaction with their present life. Probably the same factors influence similar nostalgia to be found in all former communist countries (Tileaga, 2012b). Young people see communism differently. They apreciate to a higher degree the contemporary social and political situations and are stereotipical when describing communism (Pe- tre, 2012, p.282). Some stereotypical views regarding comunist times are found also in the study of Ciocea and Cârlan (2015). Young people associate communism with a certain human type: authoritarian, not flexible, old-fasioned (Petre, 2012, pp.278-280). Their opinions seem to be strong, most of them being shaped by the educational system, but also through family socialization (Petre, 2012, p.285). Nevertheless, the study of Ciocea and Cârlan (2015) suggests that the family experiences are not so influencial. This may be also related to the fact that young people do not tend to engage too much in conversations about communism with members of their family (IICCMER, 2011, p.34) or even less with friends (IICCMER, 2011, p.38). An experiment conducted by Stanciugelu, Þãranu and Rusu (2013) suggests that Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 29

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the young generation does not evaluate the cultural heritage associated with communism differently from the one associated with other historical eras. Therefore social and ideological tensions found amongst older generations when discussing communism are not present amongst those born after the fall of the communist regime in Romania. 13% of Romanians consider that pupils should not learn at all about communism, especially the younger generation (IICCMER, 2011, pp.27-29). Therefore the risk of failing to gain interest with a communist-related exhibition could be high amongst the young people, especially if the visiting experience is presented from an educational perspective. On the other hand, the study of Ciocea and Cârlan (2015) suggests that young (museum-goer) Romanians see museums in a ”traditional” way, expecting them to educate. The study of Pop-Eleches and Tucher (2010) investigates some patterns of thinking – mainly regarding the views on politics and evolutions in society – in former communist countries, compared to ”capitalist” countries. It confirms that the impact of communism is not mainly related with having personal experiences of the period or with the length of living under communism (Pop-Eleches & Tucher, 2010, p.25). The same study suggests that the ideological preferences of the population in Eastern-Europe evolve continously (pp.25-26), therefore they will pose constant challenges to a museum discourse on communism that could hardly avoid the ideological framework. The memory of communism and private discussions on the topic are also factors influencing the interest in communism: 18% of the respondents talk about communism often and very often with their family, while 17% talk mostly with friends. About 40% of the Romani- ans never talk about communism on their social networks (IICCMER, 2011, p.33). The study previously done by IRES (2010) presents a different figure for the frequency of the discussions within family group - 69%. The differences could be explained by the time span between the two studies, as well as by the way questions were asked. Older persons (aged over 40 years old) consider communism to be a topic of discussions more than other age-groups (IICCMER, 2011, p.34). Romanians do not consider themselves very informed regarding communism times (IIC- CMER, 2011, p.13), therefore a proper communication strategy could stimulate them to visit a museum / exhibition dedicated to various aspects of communism. There is a strong correlation between age and the level of information. The younger the respondent, the less informed s/he declares to be (IICMER, 2011, p.14). Those living in rural areas are also less informed (IICMER, 2011, p.14). The main sources of information considered by the larger public are: mass media (especially in the case of men and older adults), followed at great distance by the educational system and family (IICCMER, 2011, pp.8-11). The Romanian public would prefer to acquire knowledge of the communist period mainly through TV and radio shows, closely followed by documentaries (IICCMER, 2011, p.16). We stress that young persons did not mention mass media, as well as documentaries as much as adult population, prefering artistic films and school-related classes (IICCMER, 2011, p.19). Museums are not singled out in the questionnaire, therefore we do not know how interesting they would be considered by the wider public compaired with the other communication channels. Another element that suggests a potential interest for an exhibition / museum covering communism is that Romanians generally consider that pupils and students are poorly or extremely poorly informed (79%) about this topic, but it is important and very important (52%) for them to have proper knowledge on some issues regarding comunist period (IICCMER, 2011, pp.20-26). Therefore, adults with families might encourage their children to visit exhibitions dedicated to communism. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 30

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The interest in communism might be also fueled by a bipolar view at the lever of society regarding the impact of communism on the present-day society. 21% of the population considers that it has had a positive impact, while 29% is convinced of the contrary (IICCMER, 2011, 45). This debate could be exploited both when designing an exhibition on communism, and when communicating it.

Public perception on a communism museum – a survey

Method We conducted a sociological survey based on questionnaire using field operators. Data were collected from a non-probabilistic quota sample (N = 219) in Bucureºti (N = 66), Iaºi (N = 72), and Sibiu (N = 81). Taking into account the fact that cultural consumption is vey much dependent on education, we selected respondents, in all three cities, using education as a main criterium: 1/3 secondary education (high school completed) and 1/3 tertiary education (university degree) and 1/3 (post-university degree). The questionnaire was structured on the following issues: 1) Respondents’ opinions regarding how a exhibition on communism should look like; 2) Their interest in finding more information about communist period in Romania; 3) Respondents’ general view on the communist time; 4) The perceived role of an exhibition about communism in Romania.

Results Our research sample is well balanced on sex and the level of education (see Table 1). We selected mainly participants with high level of education in our sample (66.5% of the participants have university and post-university degree) and people bellow 36 years of age (59.6%) because previous research studies on museum visitors in Romania showed that those interested in visiting museums and with high frequency of visitation are young and college graduated. Table 1 presents sample structure on all three variables considered for quota sampling as well as significant differences on age subgroups (t (217) =29.31, p< .001) and education sub-groups (t (215) =32.75, p< .001). Table 1. Sample structure. % (N) M (SD) Total Women 54.3 (119) Sex _ 219 Men 45.7 (100) 19-24 years of age 27.1 (59) 25-30 years of age 18.3 (40) 2.79 (1.40) aAge 31-36 years of age 14.2 (31) t(217) =29.31 219 p< .001 37-55 years of age 28.9 (63) +55 years of age 11.5 (26) Highschool completed 34.0 (75) 2.76 (1.23) bLevel of education University degree 35.0(75) t(215) =32.75 219 p< .001 Post-university degree 31.5 (69) Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 31

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We got also a significant age difference in our sample between men and women (M= 34.41 – for women; M= 38.55 – for men; t (216) = - 2.11, p = .03) and we consider this aspect significant in our further analysis. When we asked respondents to rate their frequency of museum visitation, we got higher percentage compared to previous studies on national representative samples, described above: 41% of respondents declared they usually visit “between 2 and 4 museums in year time”; 11% declared they usually visit between “5 and 10 museums in a year”. Previous research studies conducted on national representative samples of adult population in Romania show that one third of population practically has never visited museums, whereas our research (on a sample of higher and medium educated adults) found a significant lower percentage (10%) for those who declared they usually do not visit museums. The differences between data recorded in our sample and those on the national sample could be explained by 1) the fact that our research has an over represented sample in terms of higher education, because we basically selected people who are potential visitors, taking into account the socio-demographic profile of the typical museums visitor (young, educated, from the urban area); 2) the fact that we conducted the research in three urban localities (Bucharest, Iaºi, Sibiu) that have establish a tradition in museum development. Therefore we can not generalize out findings at the national level.

How should a communism museum look like? The participants associated a communism museum with categories that describe social and economic situation of that period. They perceive a communism museum as a place that depicts “Romanian relationships with other countries (81.3%), “economic situation” (77.1%) and “political evolution” (75.3%) at that time. They associate a communism museum with “individual life stories” (61.6 %) and “daily life activities” or “cultural life” (approximately 62%) to a lesser extend. Generally speaking, our respondents expressed high interests in seeing all the above mentioned categories in a communism museum (above 50% for each category). However, their agreement with an association between communism museum and macro-phenomena is higher: they perceive such a museum as dedicated to reveal the country’s social and economic situation at that time. We did not find any gender or age differences regarding respondents’ perceptions on how a communism museum should look like. Still we found differences in terms of education level: people having college degrees appreciate more than those with high school degrees the fact that a communism museum could present “information about communism resistance” (F (df = 4, 211) = 3.04, p = .01). Similarly, those who frequently attend museums are more interested in finding information about “daily life in communism” F (df = 4, 211) = 4.06 p < .01), compared with those who have a lower visitation frequency. Also, respondents from Bucharest seem to be more interested in finding “information about communism resistance” in a dedicated museum than those from Iaºi and Sibiu.

Who is more interested in finding information about the communist period Participants were asked about their level of interest in the Romanian history in general and in the history during communism time, in particular. Table 2 presents data about those who declare they are “extremely interested”. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 32

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Table 2. Interest in the communist period crosstab with age. Extremely interested in […] 19-24 years 25-30 years 31-36 years 37-55 years 55+ years history, in general 20.3% 10% 22.6% 23.8% 40% Romanian history in communist times 23.7% 5.0% 12.9% 28.6% 40%

The group of the respondents aged 55+ showed the most interest both in the history in general and in the communist history in Romania. Still this age group is underrepresented in our sample and we know from previous studies that they have lower visitation frequency of museums in general. One must note that respondents aged 55+ were adults during communism and they seem to be also an age group more interested in rediscovering that stage of their life. A moderate interest in history and Romanian communist history is found in the age group 37- 55 and also among 19-24 years of age group (20 to 24% “extremely interested”). We found no correlation between participants’ age and their interest in the communist history. Our data rather suggests three groups of persons: 1) the group above 55 years of age that has high interest in communist history; 2) people 19-24 years of age and those 31-55 years of age – showing a relatively moderate interest in finding more about that period; 3) the 20-30 years of age group, showing low interest in history and communist history in particular. There was no difference between the level of education when participants expressed their interest in the Romanian history and the communist history in Romania. Still men from our sample expressed more interest than women (t (217) = -1.98, p= .04) for communist history and history in general. We did not find any interaction effect between gender and age when analyzing respondents’ level of interest in communist history, neither in their perceptions on how much they know about the Romanian history after 1945. Nevertheless, men seem to be more interested in finding things about that period and they appreciated, to a higher extend compare to women, that they know a lot “about the Romanian history after 1945” (t (216) = -1.80, p= .07) and that they “remember a lot about the communist period” (t (213) = -3.54, p< .001). In sum, particularly men, aged 55+ and also those 19-24 and 35-55 years of age are interested to visit a communism museum in Romania. When adding the fact that gererally speaking people +55 have a low frequency of visition of museums in general and that the visitation behavior correlates with the level of education, a more nuanced profile of visitor emerges: young (19-24 or 35-55 years of age) mediul or high educated visitors, mostly men.

Respondents’ perception on events during communist time in Romania Age shaped also respondents’ perception on events that happened during communism in Romania. The main differences are between 55+ years of age group, the group of the respondents aged 19 to 24 years, and respectively 25 to 30 years group. People aged 55 and above tend to consider that “communism brought welfare to the poor” (F (4, 211) = 3.64, p = .007). Those from the 37-55 age group considered to a higher extend that in the communist period “elites have been persecuted” (F (4, 211)= 2.75, p = .02), whereas respondents from the 55 + group are more inclined to estimate that “arts have flourished during communist time” in Romania (F (4, 211)= 2.63, p = .03). People’s perception about events that have happened during communism are significantly different with the level of education: respondents with high school degree perceived to a higher extend thanthose with a university degree that “during communist time things were Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 33

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better than now” (F (4, 209)= 7.03, p< .001); and also that “during 1945-1989 several positive things have happened” (F (4, 208)= 3.96, p< .01) and that ”communism brought pros- perity to poor” (F (4, 208)= 4.11, p< .01). Furthermore, medium educated people considered to a higher extend than high educated people that “arts have flourished under communism” (F (4, 210) = 4.38, p< .01) and that „the entire Romanian population is very familiar with the events that happened during the communist period” (F (4, 209) = 2.93, p< .05). We found different perceptions about the historical developments that occurred in Roma- nia during communism. Generally speaking, medium educated people tend to evaluate more positively that period compared with college graduated respondents. People with a medium level of education are also more certain that events which happened during 1945-1989 are mostly known by the entire population, compared with those higher educated, who expressed a negative view on the communist period in Romania and also considered to a lower extend that events from that period are well known by the general population. As a result, we can talk about two relatively separated groups of people: 1) medium educated individuals - with a rather positive view on the communist period and with a low interest in a communist museum and 2) higher educated people – with a rather negative view on communist time in Romania and willing to know more, potentially interested in what a communist museum could offer.

The perceived role of an exhibition about communism Different perceptions on what happened during communism (on educational and age groups) are followed by differences in the perceived role of a possible communism museum in Romania. Consequently, the perceived role of such institution could be different and the way an exhibition on communism should look like could create rather divergent opinions. Our data shows that medium educated respondents appreciate more than college graduated the fact that “such a museum could offer clarifications and not create controversies“ (F (4, 211) = 6.69, p< .001). The same thing is claimed more by people over 55 years of age (F (4, 213) = 4.00, p< .05), compared with those 25 to 30 years of age. Thus it looks that older and medium educated people are more interested in finding answers and/or certitudes when visiting a communism museum, than to debate or problematize that period. Regarding the items included in an exhibition about communism, college educated people, compared with high-school graduated, expect to see more “resources on propaganda” (F (4, 210) = 2.22, p= .06) and also “personal belongings of regular people” (F (4, 211) = 2.67, p< .05) and resources on opposition towards communism” (F (4, 210) = 2.41, p=.05). We did not find any age differences regarding expectations of what to see in an exhibition about communism. Still we found gender differences on the perceived role of communism museum in the contemporary society: Men expressed more agreement than women with the sentence: “objects made in the communist times do not have any historical value” (t(217) = -2.31, p<.05) and also that “the depiction of the communist period is very dependent on the current political context” (t(212) = -2.35, p<.05). Moreover, men expect more than women to see “official state documents from that time” (t(217) = -1.91, p=.05) in an exhibition about communism. When we link these data with the fact that men have a higher interest in communist history in general, we conclude that a segmentation of communication strategies used by museums in order to attract visitors for an exhibition about communism is needed. Our data suggest that men and women have different expectations regarding the role and the structure of a potential exhibition on communist period in Romania. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 34

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Discussions The current study supports the idea of organizing an exhibition or a museum about the communist period in Romania. More than 50% of the respondents from our sample declared they were sure that they would like to visit such a museum and one third of them already had information about the existence of some museums or collections in Romania that depict the communism history. Our participants consider seeing in a communism museum discussions of macro phenomena of political and social life during that period as very important and to a somewhat lesser degree aspects of everyday life in communism, personal stories or stories about cultural life in that period. Probably Romanian’s perception of a communist museum is related to the importance of showing some clarification about communist events that have given birth to controversies. At least for people above 55 years of age, we can use such an explanation, because they mostly declare that a communism museum should bring more clarification and no controversy. Since a museum of communism would not address locals, but also foreigners, a study aimed at visitors from outside of Romania will be effective in comparing local expectations with foreigners’ expectations when visiting a museum about communist time. Our respondents, particularly those with higher education, expect to see aspects related to resistance to communism in such a museum to a relatively higher degree. The differences between higher educated and medium educated people from our sample in terms of expectations (i.e. particularly high educated preferred to see things about communist resistance in museums) could be explained by the relative distinctive perceptions that the two categories have on the 1945-1989 period in Romania: people with high-school degree tend to have a positive view on the communist time in Romania, whereas those which arehigher educated have a rather negative view. Our data reveal three groups of respondents: those above 55 years of age – very much interested in that period, those 19 to 24 years of age and 31 to 55 years of age with a moderate interest in finding things about communism, and those 20 to 30 years of age having the least some interest in history and also in the communist history in Romania. In our opinion, these three groups emerged due to experiences they have lived as a generation and the socialization process they have gone through in their families. Note that people 55 years of age and above were adults during communist period , whereas the age group 19 to 24 years was born after 1989, having only indirect information about that period. When organizing an exhibition about communism we have to consider the way potential visitors experience museums visitation in general and also the expectations of different social groups. Our research indicates that for young visitors and women the visitation is more a sensorial experience: They tend to touch the objects, to use the audio guide when it is available, to se the touch screens and thus the use of new technologies for these particular groups becomes important and has to be consider in the museum communication strategy, particularly when targeting young visitors. In the case of men, we indentify higher interest in history in general that could shape differently the interaction with a potential communism exhibition. Similar comment is valid for the 55+ group who is more interested in authoritative facts about communism. Our research study identified two types of visitors, distinguished by their level of education and the visitation pattern: 1) one type of visitors includes higher educated people, already having interests in a particular subjects when coming to a museum and who tend to have a selective visitation pattern. This category of people is not that interested in interactivity dur- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 35

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ing visitation, has previous experience with the educational programs conducted in the museum and consequently higher frequency of museums visitation, and also is more focused on particular items from the museum collection. A larger group of the respondents could be integrated in the second category, called here “the broad-image visitor”. Here we talk more about an occasional visitor, with lower frequency of museum visitation, who tries to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the experience of visiting a museum: they use the audio guide, the touch screens, follow the documentary movies inside of the exhibition, try to follow the entire collection and to buy at least one item from the museum shop. We can argue that for this category of people the museum visitation is a “total experience” and they expect the visit to be a unique time that is worth remembering. We limited our sample to those medium and high educated from three urban areas in Ro- mania: Bucharest, Iaºi and Sibiu, therefore or conclusions can not be extended to the whole population. Still this current study is an exploratory research that would help in organizing a museum dedicated to communism and we target mainly the visitors that have higher frequency of visitation compare with the mean on national level. A potential complementary research serving the same purpose is to investigate visitors from abroad and their visitation experiences and expectations towards museums in Romania. Particularly in the cities mentioned here: Bucharest, Iaºi and Sibiu that have increasing number of tourists from abroad in the past few years, a communism exhibition could rise different expectations from local visitor compare with a visitor coming from a different social and cultural background.

Conclusions and Implications

The most important segment of museum communication is associated with their collections and cultural profile. Museums achieve their broad mission of educating the audience and making them understand the particularities of their collections and associated field of interest by a very particular type of communication: through exhibitions, various types of public programs as well as specifically-designed communication channels. When designing this specific communication strategy, a museum has to consider a broad framework. The publics considered are the same as in the case of traditional organizational communication – which is also highly important for the succes of any museum. The main category of the public is formed by visitors, but the number and profile of stakeholders of a museum increased significanly since museums became an active socio-cultural actor in society. Museums have a more complex and socially engaged role in the contemporary times, no lim- iting themselbves anymore to their mission to educating the public even if it still is at the core of any museum activity. One observes that the educational mission of a museum comprises an increasingly important component of engaging the audience into socially- and culturally-relevant discussions and activities. Therfore, the way exhibitions and public programs are approached diversified, as well as the instruments and channels used to communicate museum’s messages. The evolutions in the museum world are related not only with inner developments, but also with the way visitors and museum stakeholders perceive a museum and its role. In this context, the museum publics have become an important factor in designing and ensuring the succes of the museum discourse. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 36

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The prerequisites of a successful museum communication are outward oriented, rather than related with the collections. Of course, the quality and diversity of collections facilitate a more appealing discourse, but having valuable exhibits on display is no longer enough to attract and influence the public, as well as society in its entirety. Investigating the visitors and other stakeholders, as well as involving them in designing the museum offer. In this way a more interesting and relevant exhibition will be proposed, encompassing multiple-voices in the museum discourse. Undersanding how public learn and interact with sciences and arts, as well as taking into account the audience’s level of knowledge and their specific interests could ensure a high impact of the museum offer, both in terms of engagment and of educational outcomes. The points of reference that should be considered by an exhibition on the history of communism, proposed in Romania, in order to successfully communicate this sensitive subject are therefore tightly related with how the public perceives communism, its knowledge and interest in communism. Making an exhibition on communism succesful is difficult considering the debates in the society around the communism legacy, the gap between the discourse offered by most of the exhibitions opened up to now and the public perception and interest in the topic, as well as some more general issues as the significant lack of interest in museums. Investigating the public discourse and the perception of the wider public on comunism, no objective historical perspective can be traced. In the same time, more debates are gener- ated around communism and the voices multiplied. Not only the crimes of communism are in the focus, but also some more mundane aspects, such as every-day life under communism. This would make museum exhibitions more appealing, since part of Romanian society feels that communism is still connected to the present and, therefore, would relate any museum discourse with their lives. Our research shows a complex representation of communism amongst the wider public. It confirms the national surveys previously developed and it reveales some additional aspects, relevant in the context of designing an engaging museum/exhibition on communism. The public states a high interest in a wide variety of topics, both related to macro-history and micro-history. Nevertheless the focus of interest depends on gender, age and education level. It is also relevant to notice that museum goers have different interests compaired to those who are not familiar with museums and who would appreciate more a display on macro-phenomena. Many exhibitions and museums that address communism that have been opened up to now, present various aspects of the resistance to and the crimes of communism. The survey shows that mostly high educated public are interested in these topics. A museum about communism should address a wider public, therefore it should have a balanced choice of themes approached. Considering the overall image exposed by the survey, a museum of communism would be more appealing for the Romanian public, especially if it is placed in Bucharest, if the discourse is mainly addressing economic and political evolutions during communism, permanently relating them with their impact at individual level. Another aspect to be considered when communicating communism in a museum is that Romanians, especially men, consider that they have significant knowledge on and remember a lot about communism. Therefore it would be challenging to design a display that attracts the interests and involves these persons, as well as children and young people who are not so connected. A museum / exhibition on communism should also consider the role that Roma- nians expect such a display to fulfil. Part of the public would like it too be a platform allowing discussions and multi-faced understanding of the commuism times, others have more specific requests such as clarifying and informing on the past events. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 37

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This study, coroborated with the previous research on the perception of communism in Ro- mania, sets a framework of reference for designing not just an appealing and effective museum of communism, but also any communism-related exhibition. Still additional studies would be recommended, to better understand the public, both Romanians and foreigners.

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Valeriu FRUNZARU* Mãdãlina BOÞAN*

Social Networking Websites Usage and Life Satisfaction: A Study of Materialist Values Shared by Facebook Users

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze how materialist values mediate the relationship between time spent on social networking websites (SNW) and overall life satisfaction. Admittedly, younger generations spend more time on SNW compared to older generations, therefore we can anticipate that younger people are more affected by materialism and, consequently, less satisfied with their lives. The conceptual model proposed here was tested on a convenience sample of 390 Romanian adults. Using structural equation modeling, our findings validate the hypothesis that younger people spend more time on SNW; the SNW usage makes them more materialistic and, as a result, less satisfied with life. These findings raise ethical questions regarding the impact of SNW on overall life satisfaction. For example, Facebook, the most popular SNW in Romania, is a virtual social sphere where people become “friends”, give or receive “likes”, are “fans” of something or somebody, etc. Therefore, we argue that Facebook is a symbolical locus for quantitative manifestations of something intimate and private, like feelings or appreci- ations. Such materialist approach to friendship and relationships has a significant negative impact on life satisfaction. Keywords: social networking websites, Facebook, materialist values, life dissatisfaction.

1. Introduction

The usage of SNW in Romania, Facebook in particular, has grown consistently in the past years. In 2014, Facebook has reached 7.2 million Romanians users, more than one third of population (http://www.facebrands.ro/demografice.html). These come mostly from younger generations (70,7% of them are 13 to 34 years). Due to their high social impact, Facebook and SNW, in general, have become widely discussed among academics and business practi- tioners. There are, therefore, many studies dedicated to SNW (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.) and to their social and psychological outcomes (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010; Kosinski et. al.2014; Wang et al., 2015). Nevertheless, prior research has not systematically examined the impact of SNW use on people’s values, particularly on developing materialist values. This issue should be approached taking into consideration that research in the field of materialism (Nickerson et al., 2007; Atay et al., 2010, Otero-López et al., 2010; Sirgy et al., 2012; Sirgy et al., 2013; Baker et al., 2013) has consistently shown that materialists are less happy, in general, than people who display lower interest in materialism.

* National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected] ** National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 44

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Materialism is a multifaceted concept; it has an economic dimension with physical manifestations – people buy products, goods and services –, but it can have a symbolic dimension too which can be easily depicted in the virtual realm of the SNW. Using structural equation modeling, this paper will explore the presence of materialism in the context of social networking sites such as Facebook, and will discuss the impact of materialist values on SNW users’ life satisfaction. Given this, it can be hypothesized that if people spend more time on SNW then they become more materialistic and consequently less satisfied with life in general.

2. The Notion of Materialism

When trying to define values, such as materialistic values, researchers have to take into consideration the risk of ideologisation. Nevertheless a critical approach should be a prereq- uisite when trying to define such complex concepts. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology edited by Marshall (2003), the concept of “materialism” can be defined as the higher importance accorded to sensuous pleasure, to material possessions or psychical comfort. This perspective confers a derogatory connotation to the term, considering that materialist people do not express interest to superior or moral values. A critical approach to this concept belongs to Marx who considers that in a capitalist society people show to much importance to commodities, ignoring the social relations needed for their manufacture (Marx, 1867/1960, vol. I). This is what Marx calls ”commodity fetishism”, and consists of the fact that ”the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race” (Marx, 1867/1960, vol. I, p. 110). About two decades later, Veblen (1889/2009) analyzed the behavior of the rich leisure class in the American society that is characterized by conspicuous consumption as demonstration of wealthy: ”in order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence” (Veblen, 1889/2009, p. 43). Another fine-grained critical approach to materialism belongs to Baudrillard (1970/2005), who considers that we live in an opulent society, where goods and services are easily multiplied; consequently, people are not surrounded by other people, but mostly by objects. Even if these classical critical approaches cannot be ignored, in our investigation we will not give to the terms “materialistic values”, ”materialism”, or “materialistic people” negative connotations. We do not use the concept of materialism as presented in some philosophical theories that explain the ontological reality through the existence of matter. In this paper, materialism is defined as the importance given to material possessions that, in materialistic people’s view, offer happiness and prestige. In our sociological approach, people as members of the society share materialistic values, which are produced by society and not by individuals. Materi- alist values can be found in the consumer society, where people express a higher interest in having instead of being (Fromm, 1976). For example, according to Fromm (1976, p. 23), leisure time, automobiles, television, travel, and sex are the main objects of desire. Belk (1985) was one of the first authors who have developed a scale for materialistic values. His three-dimension scale is composed of indicators that focus more on how materialism influences interpersonal relationships and not solely on the desire to possess things. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 45

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According to Belk (1985), the materialistic scale has subscales to measure possessiveness, non-generosity, and envy. The author considers that possessiveness is the “tendency to retain control or ownership of one’s possession” (Belk, 1985, p. 267). Therefore, this dimension refers only to possession (and not to acquisition), materialistic people being worried that others will take their possessions. “Non-generosity” is the unwillingness to give or to share possessions with others, and “envy” is the desire for others’ possessions, be they objects, experiences and persons. We can see that according to Belk (1985) people who share materialist values express negative feelings towards others when possession is considered. For instance, two sub-indicators of possessiveness from the materialism scale developed by (Belk, 1985) are: “When I travel I like to take a lot of photographs” and “I never discard old pictures or snapshots”. Building on this, we can argue that the photos posted on Facebook - which are central to all Facebook related functions and activities - are not only part of the online management of impressions, but they are also an indicator for possessiveness of things, people or experiences, and, therefore, for materialism. Another widely accepted conceptualization of materialism belongs to Richins and Daw- son (1992). They define materialism as a multifaceted concept, composed of three dimensions: “acquisition centrality”, “acquisition as the pursuit of happiness”, and “possession-defined success”. In accordance with the first dimension, materialistic people place possessions and their acquisition at the center of their lives; consequently, they enjoy spending money on things that are not necessarily neither useful nor practical. The second dimension underlines that people who share materialist values see acquisition and possession of goods as essential to their satisfaction and well-being. They think that they would be happier if they would afford to buy more things. The last dimension underlines that the satisfaction is given by the possession of objects seen as indicators of success. Similar to Veblen’s (1889/2009) analysis of leisure class, Richins and Dawson’s (1992) perspective accentuates that materialistic people like to own things that impress people. In this paper we build on these two researchers’ operationalization of materialism, and define materialism as a higher appreciation of the acquisitions and possessions, perceived as source of happiness and success.

3. SNW and materialism

The Internet is a non-material environment; however, the concept of materialism applies to the virtual realm as well. Some authors argue that “beliefs and practices cannot be described as non-material culture, because they involve assigning cultural meanings to tangible features of digital architecture. It can therefore be said that virtual spaces have material culture” (Lehdonvirta, 2010, p. 5). Others have found materialistic motivations in people’s digital activity (Chang, 2008). The online environment has therefore various materialistic traits which influence the way people interact online and the way they manage their online symbolic representations. In the online environment, consumer goods are increasingly used “to compete for status and recognition, reach for ontological security and self-identity, and seek solutions to problems, real or imagined.” (Lehdonvirta, 2010, p. 884). Based on such theoretical premises, we can argue that SNW are to a large extent a gener- alized form of self-defining and self-expressive online consumption. Users often choose products and brands that are self-relevant and communicate a desired identity. In this way Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 46

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“consumers make their identities tangible, or self-present, by associating themselves with material objects and places.” (Schau & Gilly, 2009, p. 385). With the advent of the Internet, materiality has to be reinterpreted because in the online environment symbols are often not related to physical objects or places. SNW allow their users to present themselves using digital rather than physical referents (Schau & Gilly, 2009). Social networking websites display various dematerialized artifacts that transform the ways in which we represent ourselves and interact with the others. Belk (2013) observes that pictures, music, and collections have all been transformed into dematerialized digital artifacts. Nevertheless, the author questions whether these digital possessions can be integrated to our extended self in the same way as their material counterparts. Other authors underline the blur between material and non-material possessions in the online environment. Lehdon- virta, for instance, argues that “there is no such as thing as completely immaterial consumption” (Lehdonvirta, 2012, p. 22). Frthermore, he emphasizes that virtual goods are as real and able to satisfy desires as material goods. All these perspectives on the nature of virtual possessions are very valuable; however, they do not answer the question of whether the virtual environment is making us more altru- istic and attentive to others’ needs or just more materialistic. Our external identity and inter- nal sense of self, expressed through material and virtual goods, are reconstructed in the context of the online interaction (Belk, 2013). However, it is not clear whether our digital presence is an idealized self-extension or just mere materialistic extension of our physical personae.

4. Materialism and life satisfaction

Previous studies consistently show that materialistic people have a lower level of overall life satisfaction compared to people lower in materialism (Nickerson et al., 2007; Atay et al., 2010; Otero-López et al., 2010; Sirgy et al., 2012; Sirgy et al., 2013; Baker et al., 2013). Nickerson et al. (2007 summarize a large array of studies regarding the consequences of materialism on people. On the one hand, the majority of studies indicate a negative correlation between materialism and agreeableness, self-actualization, self-esteem, educational level, openness to experience, and religious values. On the other hand, numerous studies have shown that there are positive correlations between materialism and narcissism, right-wing authori- tarianism, Machiavellianism, hedonistic values, need for recognition, and importance of security, particularly of financial security. Nickerson et al. (2007) show that materialism, measured as financial aspiration, negatively correlates with overall life satisfaction. There- fore, materialism influences life satisfaction directly and mediated by psychology constructs. Valenzuela et al. (2009) demonstrated in their study that Facebook is related to attitudes and behaviors that enhance individuals’ social capital. These authors have found a positive relationship between intensity of Facebook use and American students’ life satisfaction. While these findings indicate an optimistic scenario about Facebook and its consequences on young adults, various recent studies have found significant negative associations between Facebook and users’ well being. For instance, Kross et al. (2013) have tested how satisfied Facebook users are through an original in-vivo experiment. Their results indicate that Facebook can generate negative shifts on users’ subjective well-being (how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives). The research validates the hypothesis that the more people use Facebook, the more their life satisfaction levels decline over time (Kross et Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 47

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al., 2013). Such findings bring to question Facebook’s potential to provide an effective resource for social interaction. Rather than enhancing life satisfaction and well being, SNW may foster materialism and undermine its users’ general well-being. A different approach belongs to Sirgy, who explains the positive correlation between materialism and life dissatisfaction by the gap between aspirations and reality (Sirgy, 1998; Sir- gy et al., 2012; Sirgy et al., 2013). Sirgy (1998) stresses that materialists are more influenced by affective-based expectations than by cognitive-based ones. The first kind of expectations are ideal standards of living made by comparison with wealthy people that are not part of their family, friends, neighborhood; materialistic people compare themselves with people that are not like them. Based on a survey realized in Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Egypt, Korea, Turkey, and the USA, Sirgy et al. (2012) show that a possible explanation for these fantasy-based expectations is the exposure to advertising that promote consumption and promises for a life full of satisfactions. In more religious countries, materialism can determine life dissatisfaction mediated by stress produced by the incongruence between the desire for acquisitions and possessions of things and the religious moral values (Baker et al., 2013). Thus, life dissatisfaction can be determined directly by materialism and indirectly mediated by religious beliefs: “materialistic values in such cultures are in conflict with religious beliefs and such values tend to create stress that adversely affects one’s well-being” (Baker et al., 2013, p. 559). A nuanced explanation of the relationship between materialism and life satisfaction is given by Richins (2013) who reveals that materialistic people have higher positive emotions before purchase followed by hedonic decline after purchase. The thought of buying thinks makes materialistic people fell better than the same action performed by non-materialistic people, but these emotions last shorter after acquisition for the first group, which in return makes high- materialism consumers less happy than others. These findings are arguments for the idea presented by Dunn et al. (2011), according to whom money does not make us happy because we do not spend it right: “money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don’t” (2011, p. 115). Consequently, the authors suggest that people should buy more small pleasures rather than fewer large ones and that they should spend money on gaining life experiences. To sum up, we can quote Fromm (1976) who considers that “unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even to maximum pleasure” (p. 2). Therefore, materialism defined as an intense desire for acquisition and possessions of things brings a lower level of overall life satisfaction. Considering the aforementioned theories regarding SWN usage and materialism we developed a theoretical model involving the negative relationship between variables “age” and “time spent on SNW”, and the positive relationships between “time spent on SNW”, “materialism”, and “overall life satisfaction (Figure 1). Figure 1. Hypothetical model of the relationship between SWN, materialism, and life satisfaction.

0 - + - Overall life Age SNW Materialism satisfaction

This conceptual model presumes that time spent on SNW stimulates materialistic values that can have a negative impact on users by diminishing their overall life satisfaction. Due to Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 48

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younger people spen more time on SNW (particularly on Facebook), we can suggest that this generation is more affected by possible negative effects of these online social networks.

5. Method

Sample We have conducted a sociological survey based on a convenience sample of Romanians (N = 390). The demographic profile was not consistent with the demographics of the population at large. Among respondents, 57,8% were women, 58% had a college or graduate degree, 71,4% were employed. The respondents’ age was between 14 and 78 (mean= 29,5, S.D.=10.6) and 70% of them were younger than 30 (skewness = 1,62).

Measures The materialist values were measured with a six item-scale developed by Richins (1987), where four items measure “personal materialism” and two items measure “general materialism”. The personal materialism consists in the fact that people desire the acquisition of things and consider that possession of goods would make them happy. The subscale “general materialism” measures how people respond to societal materialism. For example, an item from the first subscale is “I would like to be rich enough to buy everything I want”, and an example from the second subscale is “It’s really true that money can buy happiness”. Therefore, Richins’s scale (1987) measures the importance given to acquisitions and possessions by high-materialism people in the pursuit of happiness. The materialist scale translated into Romanian was reliable and valid. The six item-scale translated and adapted into Romanian had a.62 coefficient alpha and if the item “People place too much emphasis on material things” was deleted, the coefficient alpha increased at 0.77. Because this item was one of the two items that measure general materialism we calculated a single mean score for the scale based on the other five items. To test convergent validity we asked the respondents what their income was during the last month and what monthly income would be sufficient, in order to satisfy their needs. According to Richins and Dawnson (1992, p. 311), “people who desire a lot of possessions will need more money to acquire those possessions and thus are expected to report a higher desired level of income”. In our sample, high-materialism people considered they needed significantly more income compared to those lower in materialism (r=.26, p<.01). Thus, we can consider that the materialist scale has convergent validity. We measured the time that respondents allocate daily to social network websites using an ordinal scale (from “1” – “no time allocated” to “5” – “over 4 hours”). The overall life satisfaction was measured on a Likert 5 point scale (from “1” – “not at all satisfied” to “5” – “very satisfied”). Age was measured with an open-ended question.

6. Results

Findings confirm that younger people spend more time on SNW (see Table 1); therefore, they could be more affected by potential negative effects of the virtual social networks. The Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 49

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correlation between “time spent on SNW” and “materialism” is small but significant (rho=.25, p<.01), which indicates clear support for the hypothesis that SNW are virtual places where people are encouraged to appreciate to a higher extent materialistic manifestations, such as the importance given to the quantity of photos, likes, and comments. The correlation between “materialism” and “overall life satisfaction” indicates that people higher in materialism are less satisfied with life in general (rho=-.17, p<.01). Table 1. Spearman correlations between variables. Age Time spent on SNW Materialism Overall life satisfaction

Age 1.000 -.407** -.094 -.016

Time spent on SNW -.407** 1.000 .246** .005

Materialism -.094 .246** 1.000 -.171**

Overall life satisfaction -.016 .005 -.171** 1.000 Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). To investigate the hypothesized model (Figure 1), we used the EQS program for structural equation modeling and the fit indices show that the model fits the data (χ2(7)=4.28, p=0.23), CFI=.0.99, RMSA=.03). Standardized solutions indicate that time spent on SNW increases the level of materialism, which determines in return a lower level of life satisfaction (Figure 2). Findings show that younger generations are more exposed to this unintended effect of SNW. Figure 2. Observed Path-Analytic Model for the relationship between age, time spent on SNW, materialism, and overall life satisfaction(s).

0 -0.41* 0.25* -0.17* Overall life Age SNW Materialism satisfaction

7. Discussions Using structural equation modeling, our findings show that time spent on SNW determines, meditated by materialism, overall life dissatisfaction. Taking into consideration that usually younger people spend more time on SNW (especially on Facebook in Romania), our data indicate that they could be more affected by virtual social networks than older people. Considering that our findings raise questions regarding the potential negative effects of SNW on users, this study should be continued by a more fine-grained investigation of Romanian Facebook users. Other variables should be taken into account, such as how the users manage the photos on their account, the likes, and the comments, in order to find out how much real life is negatively influenced by the time spent on Facebook. Although there is no direct negative correlation between the duration of Facebook use and general life satisfaction, our findings don’t necessarily indicate an optimistic scenario about Facebook and its consequences on young adults. The variable “materialism” mediates the relationship between SNW usage and life dissatisfaction, indicating that Facebook can generate negative shifts on users’ general life satisfaction. Therefore, our research is in line with other studies, which indicate that the more people use Facebook, the more they become materialistic and, as a consequence, their life satisfaction levels decline. Such findings bring to question Facebook’s potential to provide effective social interaction. Rather than enhancing life satisfaction, SNW seem to foster materialism and dissatisfaction with life in general. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 50

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To sum-up, we can observe that SNW have transformed virtually every aspect of our lives, modifying the social landscape in which we live and the interpersonal relationships, which are at the core of every society. Their tremendous impact on our lives raises, therefore, various concerns such as values, life satisfaction and predictions about the future. Related to the life satisfaction issue, the main reason of concern is the potential power of SNW to alter users’ dissatisfaction with themselves and with others. We argue that this is a mediated process, a consequence of the climax of materialistic values through social networks. Before SNW, classical mass media, especially the television and television advertising, were those that had influenced viewers’ materialism and dissatisfaction with life (Moschis & Moore, 1982; Sirgy et al., 1998; Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003). Nowadays, SNW are a new source that stimulates materialistic values in users, with possible negative consequences.

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Bianca-Florentina CHEREGI*

The discursive construction of Romanian immigration in the British media: Digitized press vs. Television documentaries

Abstract

This paper looks at how the media – particularly the British press and television – frames the issue of Romanian immigrants in Great Britain, in the context of the freedom of movement for workers in the Euro- pean Union. The study focuses on the frames employed by the British journalists in constructing anti-immigration discourses in the digital and the TV sphere, comparatively. This study analyzes the stereotypes about Romanian people used in two British media formats and the way in which they affect Romania’s country image overseas. Using a mixed research approach, combining framing analysis (Entman, 1993) with critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993), and dispositif analysis (Charaudeau, 2005) this article investigates 271 news items from three of the most read newspapers in the UK (The Guardian, Daily Mail and The In- dependent), published online during January 2013 – March 2014. Also, the paper analyzes three film documentaries from BBC (Panorama – The Romanians are Coming? – BBC1, The Truth About Immigration – BBC2 and The Great Big Romanian invasion – BBC World News). The analysis shows that the British press and television use both similar and different frames to coverage Romanian migrants. The media also infer the polarization between “Us” (the British media) and “Them” (the Romanian citizens). Keywords: Media frames, migration, critical discourse analysis, stereotypes, nation brand

Introduction

On the 1st of January 2014 the restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians who sought work in the UK were lifted. Victor Spirescu was one of the Romanians to arrive in the UK on the first day of unrestricted access for Romanian workers. After introducing him as a Romanian who came in Britain to work, the British tabloid press moved on to frame the discussion in terms of health benefits, migration, employment, his personal life, and his plans to move his girlfriend over to London (“Romanian migrant No1 exposed as brute. Vaz shake newcomer is crook”, The Sun, 1 January 2014, “Washing car in Biggleswade, the Romanian welcomed to UK on New Year’s Day by Keith Vaz…meanwhile, his fiancée is left chopping wood in Transylvania”, Daily Mail, 3 January 2014, “Romanian migrant treated to Costa Coffee by Keith Vaz is accused of being a drug user who beat up his girlfriend and threatened to drown her”, Daily Mail, 8 January 2014, “Now Romanian migrant treated to Costa Coffee by Kei- th Vaz lands a 60 pounds-a-day building job in London after quitting car wash following just one shift”, Daily Mail, 18 January 2014). Furthermore, the press pictured him with politicians such as the Labour MP Keith Vaz, who greeted him at the Luton airport on his day of

* PhD candidate, Doctoral School in Communication, National University of Political Studies and Pub- lic Administration, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 54

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arrival in the UK. Victor Spirescu was a 30-year-old man living in a small village in Transyl- vania flying to the UK to work, being a symbol of the Romanian migrant in the face of the latest debates over immigration. Following months of stories in the media about “the wave” of Romanians and Bulgarians that would invade Great Britain starting on the 1st of January 2014, Victor Spirescu was perceived as a potential threat to the UK by the tabloid press (Dai- ly Mail, Daily Express, and The Sun): he had quit his job after the first day, he was a drug user, and beat up his former girlfriend. The story of the Romanian migrant heading to Britain is linked with the immigration media debate. At the beginning of 2013, the British Government launched the “Don’t Come to Britain” campaign, in order to discourage potential migrants from Romania and Bulgaria. Af- ter a short time, the Romanian newspaper Gândul responds with the ”Why don’t you come over?” campaign, hitting back at Britain’s negative portrayal of Romanian immigrants. The debate about migration intensified during 2013 in the British press, especially in the tabloids (Daily Mail, Daily Express). The way in which Victor Spirescu was portrayed in the British media is related to the frames employed by different newspapers and televisions when discussing about Romanian migrants in the UK. The tabloid press insisted on the human interest aspect, while the quality press revealed political and economic issues, having to do with the reason for which Kei- th Vaz waited for him at Luton airport, how much does he earn per month, what are his future prospects. Considering these aspects, this article looks at how the media – particularly the British press and television – frame the issue of Romanian immigrants in Great Britain, in the context of freedom of movement for workers in the EU. Furthermore, the paper aims to identify and discuss the stereotypes about Romanians used by the British media. The British television often uses the same frames that can be found in the British press, with respect to Romanian migrants in the UK. For example, the abuse of the social benefit system is reinforced as an argument in a lot of articles from the tabloids and in television documentaries. However, television could frame the same issue completely different from the press. Therefore, a comparison between the frames applied by the press and television is necessary, in order to reveal the similarities and differences in the coverage of Romanian migrants in Great Britain. This study reveals how media frames are related to two different formats, considering the public issue of immigration. This article begins with an overview of the public sphere concept, in the context of con- vergence between old media and new media. The Internet introduces new practices of communicating, in relation to the fragmentation and diversification of media channels and audiences. In this regard, the public sphere is a secondary dimension analyzed in this article, because the British journalists shape the media discourse through the frames they use when discussing about Romanian migrants. The framing process is a subject of constant debates in the academic literature, therefore theories and models of frames are explained and analyzed in a special section.

Changes in the media discourse and in the public sphere

According to Thompson (2000), the media have become one of the main institutions of the public sphere in the industrial society. The impact of modern societies on the conceptualization of the public sphere is also discussed by Habermas (2006), while revisiting the con- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 55

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cept of the public sphere. The German philosopher calls for the use of mass media in order to challenge the private interests of corporate media. He supports the idea of a ”self-regulating media system”, arguing that

„mediated political communication in the public sphere can facilitate deliberative legitimation processes in complex socities only if a self-regulating media system gains independence from its social environments, and if anonoymous audiences grant feedback between an informed elite discourse and a responsive civil society”. (Habermas, 2006, pp. 411- 412).

Consequently, the media should be independent from political interests. Likewise, Haber- mas imagines the public sphere as an intermediary system of communication between for- mally organized and informal face-to-face deliberations in the arenas both at the top and the bottom of the political system. The public sphere that was once anchored around the national instutions has now shifted to a public sphere constituted around networks of communication. As the communication landscape gets denser, complex and participatory, the networking population acquires greater acces to information, which means more opportunities and facilities to engage in the public sphere. Due to the development of mass media, the political function of the press has been replaced by a commercial function. The development of the capitalist economy led to the sac- rifice of political content space to a more commercially viable content. With the fragmentation of mass media channels and audiences, various media have become interactively connected. In this way, information flows more easily across technological, social, and geo- graphical boundaries. Therefore, this new public sphere is characterised by diversification, fragmentation and commercial norms. Levinson (2009) discusses the role of new technologies in democratizing closed societies. He introduces the distinction between the information consumer and the producer. In the age of traditional media (print, radio, television), there was a literate population able to understand written messages. In the age of the Internet, blogging and social-media, each citizen is an information producer and speaks on behalf of himself/herself. Most importantly, new technologies allow everyone to be free from the gatekeepers present in traditional media. There- fore, anyone can be a producer of content and part of the conversation. A divide between those who believe in the Internet’s power to revolutionize the public sphere (Benkler, 2006; Castells, 2008; Downey & Fenton, 2003) and those who believe the Internet will be normalized into existing practices (Bohman, 2004) has thus emerged. For example, Downey and Fenton (2003) claim that the Internet use contributes simultaneously to the rise of new forms of social solidarity and fragmentation. They discuss about the notion of a counter-public in contrast with the notion of community, implying that it offers forms of solidarity and reciprocity. Conversely, Castells (2008) argues that the connections between mass media and the ”mass self-communication” of Web 2.0 social networks form the new global public sphere. The mass self-communication are defined as networks of communication that relate many-to- many in the process of sending and receiving the messages, in a form that bypasses mass media and often escapes government control (Castells, 2008, p. 90). The process of globalization has shifted the debate from national to global and the Internet provides both an organizing tool and a means for debate, dialogue and collective decision-making. As a consequence, the current global civil society has the technological means to exist independently from political institutions and from mass media. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 56

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Media and audiences

The relationship between mass-media and the public sphere raises questions about how the media content is received (Dalhgren, 2006; Livingstone, 2005) and how media frame different political, social, economic issues (Schlachter, 2009). To understand today’s mediated public sphere, Dahlgren (1995) considers that there are four dimmensions one shoud take into consideration: media institutions, media representation, general social structure, and face-to-face interaction. Furthermore, ”the public sphere does not begin and end when media content reaches an audience; this is but one step in larger communication and cultural chains that include how the media output is received, made sense of and utilized by citizens” (Dahlgren, 2006, p. 274). Nevertheless, the press often plays a watchdog role, watching over the state institutions and shaping the public opinion. Schlachter (2009) reinforces this argument and suggests that „the media has often stood as a watchdog for the public interest, being called the ‘fourth estate’, which dates back to the 19th century and refers to the media’s ability to frame issues in society: traditionally, as an institution, it has signiti- ficant impact and influence on what citizens deem to be important” (Schlachter, 2009, p. 91). Livingstone (2005) remarks that media select, prioritize and shape information in accordance with the institutions, technologies and discursive conventions of the media industry. Therefore, the media contribute to the renegotiation of several versions of the ’public’ and ’private’ boundaries, redefining the public sphere. Moreover, ”the forms of mediation are themselves changing, with the public being mediated by ever more diversified, pervasive and subtle forms or mass and, recently, interactive communication” (Livingstone, 2005, p. 9). She also discusses about the way in which media mobilizes citizens to be part of the public debate, proposing the concept of active viewer. In her opinion, the understandings, values and identities of the public are mediated technologically, materially, and discursively (Living- stone, 2005, p. 10). Media address audiences as citizens, employing strategies of involvement to transform them into a public. Thus, the distinction between audiences and publics raises the question of how are publics mediated or whether audiences participate as a public. The public is perceived as active, oriented to collective and consensual action, while the audience is seen as passive and individualized. From a media perspective, the audience is „a colectiv- ity which is formed either in response to media (channels and content) or out of independently existing social forces” (McQuail, 1987, p. 215). Put simply, the audience is formed by the readers, listeners, and viewers for different media. The relationship between media and audiences is often conceptualized as media effects. Thus, the agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972) and spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1974) theories imply a relatively passive viewer, because the effect of the media is conceptualized as telling the audience what to think about. However, the uses and gratification approach (McCombs & Weaver, 1985) implies a more active vierwer, because it is focused on what people do with media. Therefore, this approach has led to the development of the notion of the ’active viewer’ (Livingstone, [1990]/ 1998) of television programmes. According to Livingstone, „when interpreting a program, viewers use not only the information in the programme, but also their social experiences with the phenomena portrayed (e.g. institutions, relationships, myths, explanations” (1998, p. 21). Consequently, the active viewer interprets media based on his knowledge and experience. The debate on the simmilarities and differences between the ’public’ and the ’audience’ has led to proposing a mediating concept, positioned between them. Hence, ’civic culture’ is Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 57

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understood as mediating between the public and the private spheres, pointing to ”those features of the socio-cultural world – dispositions, practices, processes – that constitute precon- ditions for people’s actual participation in the public sphere, in civil and political society” (Dahlgren, 2003, p. 154).

The framing process

Framing is the process of selecting ”some aspects of a perceived reality and made them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (Entman, 1993, p. 52). From a sociological perspective, frames represent cognitive structures and form an important element of public discourse. In Entman’s opinion, (1993) framing is a research paradigm which could be applied to the study of public opinion and voting behavior in the political sciences. The concept of “frames” was introduced by Goffman (1974), who related it with the organization and interpretation of life experiences, in order to make sense of them. Frames, also defined as the “schemata of interpretation” enable individuals “to locate, perceive, identify and label” (Goffman, 1974, p. 21) occurrences of information. Considering Goffman’s contribution to the framing theory, the literature defines frames as patterns of interpretation root- ed in culture and articulated by the individual (Entman, 1993; Gamson et al., 1992; Pan & Kosicki, 2003; Reese, 2007; Van Gorp, 2007). Framing has been frequently discussed with concepts such as agenda setting or priming. As a matter of fact, McCombs, Shaw and Weaver (1997) considered that not only are agenda setting and framing effects related, but framing is, actually, an extension of agenda setting. Continuing this idea, Gamson and Modigliani (1987) defined media frames as “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events” (p. 143). Furthermore, Pan and Kosicki (1993) believe that frames and framing analysis go beyond the agenda setting literature and “examine the diversity and fluidity in how issues are conceptualized and consequently allow for more fruitful analysis of the conceptual evolution of policy issues” (p. 70). Furthermore, the research on framing focuses on two types of frames: issue-specific frames and general frames. The first concept refers to certain frames that are persistent only to specific topics or events, while the second one can be identified in relation with different topics, some even over time and in different cultural contexts (de Vreese, 2002). Tweksbury and Scheufele (2009) identify processes of frame building and frame setting. The frame building involves looking at how frames get established in the public discourse and then are completed for being adopted by elites and journalists. Moreover, frame setting determines and eval- uates the framing effects on the audience. In this article, frame analysis used is based on Entman’s (1993) function frames. In his perspective, a frame in the news can be examined and identified by the “presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments” (Entman, 1993, p. 52). Furthermore, frames have at least four locations in the communication process: the commu- nicator, the text, the receiver and the culture. In Entman’s opinion, frames diagnose, evaluate, and prescribe issues discussed in the media. He identifies four functions of frames: Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 58

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„define problems – determine what a causal agent is doing with what costs and benefits, usually measured in terms of common cultural values; diagnose causes – identify the forces creating the problem; make moral judgments – evaluate causal agents and their effect; and suggest remedies – offer and justify treatments for the problems and predict their likely effects” (1993, p. 52).

According to Entman’s model, a single sentence may perform more than one of the four framing functions and a frame in any particular text may not necessarily include all four functions.

Inductive and deductive approaches on frames analysis

A frame is an abstract variable that is hard to identify and hard to code in content analysis. Therefore, many scholars have raised questions about the reliability and validity of media frames in content analysis (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Hertog & McLeod, 2001; Fagley & Miller, 1997; Scheufele, 1999; Tankard, 2001; Van Gorp, 2005). There are many different approaches to derive a set of frames given a particular issue, and most of them are inductive. Content analysis of media frames ranges from completely qualitative interpretive or hermeneutic-qualitative approaches to automated device-oriented methods, such as semantic network analyses (Scheufele & Scheufele, 2010). Linguistic approaches involve the identification of a frame derived from dimensions such as syntax, script, theme, and rhetoric (Pan & Kosicki, 1993). An advantage of these methods is that close reading of texts can reveal important frame-elements that can be completely missed by other quantitative approaches, because they do not occur frequently. Furthermore, the analysis is based on a small sample of text, heavily interpreted and deeply investigated. Therefore, intensive readings of text cannot be applied to large samples because they demand some form of quantification. Conversely, there are some deductive approaches that theoretically derive frames from the literature and code them in standard content analysis (de Vreese, Peter, & Semetko, 2001; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). For example, Semetko and Valkenburg use a deductive method, predefining certain frames as content analytic variables to verify the extent to which these frames occur in the news. They have investigated the presence of five news frames in press and television: conflict, human interest, economic consequences, morality, and attribution of responsibility. The conflict frame is defined as the “conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions as a means of capturing the audience interest” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95). The human interest frame is based on the use of emotional angle to dramatize the news. Thirdly, the economic consequences frame reports an issue in terms of economic benefits or threats on individuals or institutions. As for the morality frame, it puts an emphasis on the religious tenets or moral prescriptions. Finally, the responsibility frame attributes responsibility to the issue or problem presented to the government or an individual or group. Semetko and Valkenburg’s (2000) model is used in many research studies on press and television. They managed to compare the use of frames in television news and the press and to determine whether there are important differences between and within media. Thus, a crucial limitation of using a deductive approach is the fact that frames are known beforehand. In this way, the researcher could miss newly emerging frames by concentrating on already established ones. Matthes and Kohring (2008) tested an inductive method for frame analysis, starting with a specific operationalization of the four elements identified in Entman’s definition (1993): prob- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 59

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lem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation. Each of these elements was coded through basic quantitative content analytic techniques. In this way, frames emerged from the pattern of co-occurrences of frame elements in the media content. The use of their method was demonstrated by applying it to data on the coverage of biotechnology in The New York Times. In their opinion, “a frame consists of several frame elements, and each frame element consists of several content analytical variables” (Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p. 264). The main assumption is that different variables systematically group together in a specific way, forming a certain pattern (a frame). A crucial advantage of this method is that “frames are neither identified beforehand nor directly coded with a single variable” (Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p. 264). Furthermore, coders do not know which frames they are currently coding, which means that new emerging frames can be easily detected. Following Matthes and Kohring’s (2008) approach, this paper uses inductive reasoning to content analyze frames and function frames, following Entman’s definition. Thus, cluster analysis is not used in order to determine occurrences. After identifying the frames from a close reading of sample of texts, each frame is coded using Entman’s framing functions. The dependent variables employed in the content analysis are: define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies.

Methodology

This paper seeks to analyze the cover of Romanian work migrants by the British written press and television, in the context of the lifting of restrictions on the labor market in the UK. The research questions that guide this study are the following: RQ1: How does the British press frame the issue of Romanian migrants in Great Britain? RQ2: How does the British television frame the issue of Romanian migrants in Great Britain? RQ3: What stereotypes about Romanian people are employed in the British press and television? In order to answer these questions, a mixed method approach, combining frames analysis (Entman, 1993) with critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993), and dispositif analysis (Charaudeau, 2005) is used. Furthermore, in order to establish the main themes and patterns present in the British press, a frame analysis of three of the most read British newspapers (The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mail) will be carried out. A sample of 20% of the news items was taken into consideration when identifying frames, using Entman’s (1993) four function frames: define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Content analysis was used to measure the variables (frames and function frames) and to determine their frequencies. The unit of analysis was the article. By performing a framing analysis, this article answers to the first two research questions, revealing how the British media frame the issue of Romanian migrants in Great Britain. In addition to frame analysis, this study uses CDA as theorized by van Dijk (1993), who considers that the core of CDA is ”a detailed description, explanation and critique of the ways dominant discourses (indirectly) influence socially shared knowledge, attitudes and ideologies, namely through their role in the manufacture of concrete models” (p. 258). Drawing on this approach of discourse, this article shows how media discourse generates a polarization Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 60

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between “Us” (Britons) and “Them” (Romanian migrants). The CDA used here is based on a mixed design, combining elements from Wodak et. al (1999) and Van Dijk (1993), in order to determine what stereotypes about Romanian people are used by the British press. There- fore, the elements of the analysis are: the presence of constructive strategies (the linguistic procedures which constitute a national ’we-group’ – in this case, Britons - and marginalizes the ’other-group’- Romanian migrants); the presence of perpetuation and justification strategies (Romanian immigrants are viewed as a threat to the national security); the dominance of the power elites (British press); and forms of positive self-presentations (British press) and negative other-presentation (Romanian migrants). By employing CDA, the third research question is answered, regarding the stereotypes of Romanians presented in the British press and also how these stereotypes impact the discursive construction of Romania’s nation brand. The method of dispositif analysis (Charaudeau, 2005) will also be applied to see what stereotypes of Romanian people are employed in the British television. In doing so, three film documentaries from BBC (Panorama – The Romanians are Coming? – BBC1, The Truth About Immigration – BBC2 and The Great Big Romanian Invasion – BBC News) will be investigated, considering the themes, formats, the sequences, the addressing modalities and the participants’ roles. Stereotypes are portrayed in different ways in press and television, and this is also because of their media formats. Film documentaries focus on close-up with different Romanian migrants, while the press writes about them and eventually reinforces the arguments by selecting certain pictures. In order to analyze the stereotypes portrayed in television, CDA was not sufficient, because I wanted to emphasize the importance of the sequences and the camera perspective in filming Romanians. Each film documentary has a specific discourse which reflects the strategic vision of the BBC channel about the topic of Romanian immigration. Therefore, they are relevant because they define practices, values and representations of the British society. The dispositif is understood as a “concept that structures the discursive situations, organizing the situations by considering the participants’ position in the interaction process, the nature of their identity and the relations between them depending on certain finality (…). Dispositif also depends on the material conditions that structure the discursive interactions” (Charaudeau, 2005, p. 41, my translation).

Data and coding

The corpus contains a total of 271 news items from the British quality press (The Guardian, The Independent) and from the tabloids (Daily Mail), discussing the topic of Romanian migrants in UK, published in the period 1st of January 2013 – 31st March 2014. I selected this period because it is linked with the intensification of the migration theme in the British press. Furthermore, at the beginning of 2013, the British Government has launched a negative campaign in order to discourage potential migrants from Romania and Bulgaria to come to Britain. The online editions of the British newspapers were searched for key terms such as ’Roman- ian migrants’, ’anti-immigration discourses’, ’Romanian people in Great Britain’ or ’1st of January 2014’. After searching in the online editions, 1238 news items were found, which mentioned the topic of Romanian migrants in Great Britain, but only 271 articles were relevant for the analysis. Three film documentaries about Romanian immigration were included in the corpus. They were broadcasted on the BBC channel during the interval mentioned above: Panorama – The Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 61

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Romanians are Coming? – BBC1, The Truth About Immigration – BBC2 and The Great Big Romanian invasion – BBC World News. A total of 271 news items were content analyzed (The Guardian, N= 76; The Independent, N=65; and Daily Mail, N=130), along with 3 BBC documentaries. For the written press, the unit of analysis was the article, whereas for the documentaries, the unit of analysis was each change of speaker within story. Based on inductive reasoning, following Matthes and Kohring’s (2008) approach on identifying news frames, the frames and function frames in a sample of 20% of the corpus were identified. The frames coding was applied to the news items, evaluating with 1 the presence of a certain frame, and with 0 the absence of a frame. The coding was done by two coders and the following variables resulted: Variables Description

DP – Economics Migration is related to economic issues/migration costs

DP – Education Migrant students from Romania that study in UK

DP – Political System Political actors’ perspectives on the migration issue

DP – Labor market Romanians and Bulgarians that work in the UK

Number of Romanians and Bulgarians that live in the UK/that will come DP – Migrant population to the UK/Estimates

Migrants from poor countries (like Romania) are tempted to go de DC – Economic development developed countries like UK

DC – EU migration policy Freedom of movement for workers in the EU

DC – Benefit System EU migrants claiming social benefits – a risk for abuse

MJ – Economic benefit EU migrants (Romanians) are good for the UK economy

MJ – Economic threat EU migrants (Romanians) are bad for the UK economy

MJ – Freedom of movement Free movement of workers - a threat to the UK - mass migration

MJ – Labor British workers’ job are at risk because of EU migrants

Romanians threat the security of UK citizens (crimes, pickpocketing, and MJ – Security threat begging)

SR – Labor market Restrictions for Romanians to access the UK’s labour market

SR – EU negotiations Negotiations with the EU on free migration rules

SR – Population growth Stabilizing population growth by reducing net migration

SR – Benefit System Reduce the period over which EU migrants can claim benefits

SR – National Security Removing Romanians from UK for begging and rough sleeping

Results

The main goal of the content analysis is to identify patterns used in the coverage of Ro- manian migration by the British media. The context in which Romanian migrants were mentioned was linked to the 1st of January 2014, when the restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the EU and, therefore the UK as well, were lifted. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 62

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The British press is divided into three sectors: ‘quality’ press, ‘middle market’ press and ‘red top’ tabloids (McNair, 2009, p. 87). The Guardian and The Independent are classified into ‘quality’ press, and the first one has a Berliner format, while the second one has a tabloid format. On the other hand, Daily Mail is a ‘red top’ tabloid, with a large circulation in UK (1,780, 565 per month). In the category of ‘quality press’, The Guardian has an average circulation of 207,958 per month, while The Independent has a circulation of 66,567 per month (Audit Bureau of Circulations, UK, 2014)1. In what concerns the political affiliation of British newspapers, Patterson and Donsbach (1996) claim that “The Guardian and the Daily Mirror are among the few national newspapers on the political left, while the Daily Telegraph, Times, Daily Mail, Sun, Daily Express, Star, and Today are among the many of the right” (1996, p. 459). Therefore, The Guardian and The Independent are likely to be favorable to economic migration, whereas Daily Mail tends to be negative. The frames were identified from a close reading of a 20% sample of texts. Each frame was coded using Entman’s framing functions. The dependent variables employed in the content analysis were: define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. There were differences between the frames found in the British quality press and the British tabloid press, therefore a separate analysis was needed to understand the journalists’ practices and roles in two different media formats.

Frames employed by the British press

The results show that there are 7 media frames present in the press. First of all, the economic frame focuses on the migration costs and economic consequences of migration. The educational frame is based on the impact of Romanian students that study in the UK. Further- more, the political frame is linked with the presence of political actors in the debate over Ro- manian migrants. The social benefits frame refers to Romanian migrants abusing the social benefits system in Great Britain. The employment frame entails stories of Romanians who work in the UK. The national security frame emphasizes the fact that Romanians are a threat to the security of the UK citizens, because of crimes, begging, and pick pocketing. Finally, the EU policy frame is based on the mentioning of freedom of movement in relation to migration. Figure 1 shows the frequencies of the frames in the quality and tabloid press. The quality press (The Guardian, The Independent) focuses more on the economic consequences of migration, discussing about threats and benefits of Romanian migrants coming to work in the UK. Conversely, the tabloid press (Daily Mail) uses the economic frame to discuss about Ro- manian migrants as a threat to the economy. As for the education frame, only 5 % of the articles mention Romanian students in Britain. Thus, the educational frame is more present in the quality press. The political frame is used by both quality and tabloid newspapers, mentioning political actors in order to shape the arguments about Romanian migration. The voices of the politicians are used by the journalists as chiefly expert or elite, recognized sources. In doing so, it construct groups – such as migrants – from a distance, without exploring their beliefs, identities and lives in host societies (Beciu, 2011, p. 166). In fact, the written press may employ expert or elite knowledge to gain a false legitimacy through the use of fallacies. The most quoted official sources in the quality press were the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, the Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 63

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UK Immigration Minister, Mark Harper, The Labor Government, the Home Secretary, There- sa May, The Bulgarian President, Rosen Plevneliev, the Romanian Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, the Romanian Ambassador to the UK, Ion Jinga, UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage, and Mi- gration Watch, the pressure group arguing for tighter immigration controls. With regards to the tabloid press, the most quoted official sources were the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, the UK Immigration Minister, Mark Harper, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, Tony Blair, the Labor Government, Tory MPs, the Romanian Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, the Romanian Ambassador to the UK, Ion Jinga, UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage, the pressure group arguing for tighter immigration controls, Migration Watch, and Sir Andrew Green, of the Migration Watch. An interesting thing here is that Daily Mail employs the political frame more often (Figure 1). Quoting political actors may also function as an argument to sustain a certain position about migration. Figure 1. Frames in the British press.

A big difference of coverage is to be seen when framing social benefits of Romanian migrants in the UK. The social benefits frame is much more present in the tabloid press, in stories about Romanian people that abuse the benefit system when coming to Britain. As for the employment frame, is used especially in the tabloids, presenting Romanians that work in the UK and threaten the jobs of British people. A significant difference in frame frequencies is found in the news talking about national security issues. Therefore, the tabloid press reveals more frequently the crimes made by Romanian people, presenting them as a threat to the security of the citizens (The Romanian Roma around Marble Arch, a camp of Romanians living near Hendon Football Club, the rate of criminality in London, begging, and pick pocketing). Consequently, the tabloids are more interested in the human interest issues, while the quality press presents news from an expert position. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 64

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The EU policy frame is covered by both quality and tabloid press, mentioning the effects of the freedom of movement on the migration issue. As a result, the quality press employs this frame more frequently, discussing about the implications of the EU policies in terms of advantages and disadvantages for the UK.

Frames and function frames employed by the British television

Considering the UK television landscape, there are four main public service free-to-air broadcasters: (1) the BBC, (2) Independent Television [ITV], (3) Channel 4 and (4) Channel 5. More than 90 % of UK households have multi-channel television, but the public service broadcasters have been leading the charge into multi-channel services (Bromley, 2010). The BBC attracts about a third of the total TV audience, while ITV, the main commercial public service broadcaster, has a 25 percent share.2 The documentary BBC Panorama – The Romanians are Coming? is part of a series of in- vestigative reports on a wide variety of subjects. The reporter Paul Kenyon joins the British police in looking for Romanian people who live on the London streets. He also travels to a Romanian village to see why men have left their families to work on the black markets of Lon- don. BBC Panorama – The Romanians are Coming? raises the question of whether many Ro- manians and Bulgarians will really come to Britain and what is at the root of the Britons’ fear. In The Truth about Immigration, the political editor Nick Robinson looks at the decisions which led to one of the biggest surge of immigration in modern history and asks whether the politicians can control immigration as much as they claim. The Romanians are portrayed as migrant fruit pickers, who earn six times more compared to what they would earn in their native country for the same job. The documentary The Great Big Romanian Invasion looks behind the panic-inducing headlines about the prospect of millions of Romanians waiting to invade Great Britain on the 1st of January 2014, when the EU border controls were relaxed. The journalist Tim Samuels, himself a descendent of Romanian immigrants, explores the experiences of Romanians who went to Britain to work. The documentary also presents the story of Victor Spirescu, one of the first Romanians to arrive in the UK on the first day of unrestricted access. Figure 2 shows the evolution of news frames in the three BBC documentaries. The most frequent frame in the BBC Panorama – Romanians are Coming documentary is the national security frame, because there are a lot of images with Romanian people rough sleeping on the streets and the British police’s perspective reveals that Romanians are a threat to the UK citizens. According to the Metropolitan police, a lot of Romanian people are responsible for pick pocketing or begging. In The Truth about Immigration documentary, the most frequent frame was the political one. A lot of political actors were asked to give their opinion about immigration, from the Prime Minister David Cameron, to representatives of the Conserva- tive, Labor or UKIP parties. Furthermore, the third documentary, entitled The Great Big Ro- manian Invasion, focuses on the political, national security, and EU policy frames. The political perspectives about Romanian immigration are presented along with the effects of freedom of movement on the issue of migration. The documentary shows how Romanians had sleep on the streets because they did not find a place to work in Britain. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 65

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Figure 2. The evolution of news frames in 3 BBC documentaries.

When comparing the frequencies of frames found in the British written press and television (Figure 3), one can see that the British written press employs the seven frames more often. The use of economic, political, and employment frames in the British newspapers contrast with the use of economic, political, and national security frame in the case of British television. This shows a trend of emphasizing human interest issues (poverty, rough sleeping, crimes, and begging) on television. Figure 3. Frames frequencies in the British press and television. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 66

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Stereotypes of Romanians in the British media

Stereotypes are often linked with the representations of certain groups in some specific contexts. National stereotypes can shape the way a nation is seen on the global stage. Lipp- man (1922) has use the notion of “stereotype” in relation to the fact that people act based on mental representations, which are built on “abusive generalizations”. Furthermore, national stereotypes are the first step in developing the nation brand (Widler, 2007; Jansen, 2008). Considering these facts, every culture can be defined through the opposition “Us” – “Them”, so the collective identity of a nation is based on comparison with other states or on assimila- tion and differentiation processes. For example, the nation branding campaigns appeal to stereotypes in order to differentiate themselves on the competitive market. Stereotype content is defined as to maximize perceived intra-group similarity and inter-group difference. In this article, the stereotypes of Romanians as portrayed in the British media are not always explicitly addressed. The journalist from the press or television constructs stereotypes about Romanian immigrants in their stories, as it will be argued in the following sections.

Stereotypical representations of Romanian migrants in the British quality press

In the quality press, Romanians and Bulgarians are often referred as “EU migrants”, “A2 nationals” or “EU nationals”, raising the question of the number of people that are likely to come to Britain on the 1st of January 2014. By framing Romanian people as “EU migrants”, the British journalists construct a stereotype, considering them as a threat to their country. They also mention the fear of invasion, comparing this phenomenon with the invasion of Poles in 2004. The economic migration is one of the main themes discussed in the quality press (“Bar on migrant workers ‘leads them to stay longer in UK and bring families’, Daniel Boffey, 8 February 2013, The Guardian, “Government considers EU immigration cap of 75,000 a year”, Rajeev Sval, 15 December 2013, The Guardian). The British journalists argue that the Gov- ernment’s restrictions applied to Romanians working in the UK actually encourage migrants to stay and bring their families. On the other hand, they also present the benefits of migration: In spite of a surge of anti-immigrant rhetoric from leading politicians, British people are happy to accept migrants from the East of Europe who learn English, get a job, pay tax- es and become part of their local community. (Daniel Boffey, 28 December 2013, The Guardian). Headlines such as “Fears unfounded: The public debate is becoming ever more xenophobic, but the reality is that foreign workers are good for Britain” (Editorial, 18 De- cember 2013, The Independent), “Flood of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants ‘unlikely’, says report” (Nigel Morris, 5 April 2013, The Independent), “Ignore the xenophobic hysteria and welcome our EU neighbors. Britain is in the Orwellian middle of a Two-Minute Hate, but a Two-Year Hate” (Boyd Tonkin, 27 December 2013, The Independent), or “Mass immigration ‘unlikely’, as millions of Romanians and Bulgarians find work elsewhere (Andy McSmith, 1 January 2014, The Independent) reveal the position of the quality press in what concerns the immigration issue. Thus, one can identify a pro-migration position, reinforced by the argument of a “xenophobic hysteria” present in the public debate. The British journalists often identify themselves with the British nationals, using the plu- ral form of the first person pronoun “our”: Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 67

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Immigration from Bulgaria and Romania from January seems unlikely to be on the same scale as from Poland and elsewhere in 2004 as many Bulgarians and Romanians will choose to settle in Germany or Italy – but frankly no one knows how many will come. Our population is already raising faster than in any other country in Europe, with one-third of this the result of immigration. The pressures on infrastructure and employment can no longer be ignored. (Sarah Wollaston, 25 November 2013, The Guardian). As an alternative to the politics of deception and displacement activity, we might accept that our membership of the EU brings far more benefits than costs, but understand that in the absence of dependable labour standards, housing and other essentials, it could well fall into disrepute. (John Harris, 23 December 2013, The Guardian).

In the first example, one can notice forms of positive self-presentation of British people and negative-other presentation of Romanians and Bulgarians. The implicit assumption is that Romanian and Bulgarian migrants put pressure on the British infrastructure and employment. Furthermore, the journalist is posed in a high-power position, suggesting the dominance of the power elites (Van Dijk, 1993). Constructive strategies are also present, because of the use of the personal pronoun “our”, which implies the British nationals group and marginalizes the ‘other group’ – Romanian migrants. In the second example, the pronoun “our” suggests the fact that the British journalist appeals to national identity symbols to encourage citizens to be part of the public debate. The issue presented is related to the EU membership, suggesting an ideological discourse, based on the implicit assumption that immigration has an effect towards the bottom of the labor market. Hence, forms of positive self-presentation of Great Britain are present, along with forms of negative-other presentation of the EU migration. In Van Dijk’s perspective, “ideological discourse is generally organized by a general strategy of positive self-presentation (boasting) and negative other-presentation (derogation)” (2006, p. 126). Another aspect worth mentioning is the way in which stories of Romanian people living in Great Britain are presented in the British quality press:

I am a Romanian living in the UK and I must say that until now I didn’t really care much about my nationality. I never did because I find it really difficult to label myself as being of a certain nationality. As far as I was always concerned I am not really Romanian or European or really any nationality because to me that just doesn’t matter. It just happened that some decades ago I was born in a place on earth that people call Romania, that carries a certain history and has certain problems but also offers certain benefits. I did- n’t choose it and maybe if someone gave me the choice I would have very much liked to be born in a country where everyone seems to suffer of post-colonial pride, in a nice middle-class family in London or anywhere in Britain, in an old Victorian house with a nice garden. (The Guardian, 3 January 2014) I feel that both Romanians and Bulgarians have this „underdog“ status attached to them to say the least; we got used to being told that we aren’t that great. Why? I guess we had a rough political background and now we’re still struggling to readjust and align ourselves to „Western“ standards. I am not saying we’re ages away, but we’re not there yet. (The Guardian, 3 January 2014).

The first quote mentions a Romanian who considers that nationality is not very important: “As far as I was always concerned I am not really Romanian or European or really any nationality because to me that just doesn’t matter”. One can notice the presence of perpetuation and justification strategies, because the argument implied is that being part of a certain nationality (in this case Romanian) may be harmful. Even if the source uses the personal pronoun “I”, it does not imply a national identity discourse. Paradoxically, the person identifies itself more with British people than with Romanian people: I would have very much liked to Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 68

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be born in a country where everyone seems to suffer of post-colonial pride, in a nice middle- class family in London or anywhere in Britain, in an old Victorian house with a nice garden. The second example, on the other hand, is built on constructive strategies, using the personal pronoun “we” as a linguistic procedure to constitute the Romanians national group (We got used to being told that we aren’t that great).One can identify forms of positive other-presentation of Great Britain, because the source argues Romanians should align to “Western” standards, seeing it as a positive model to be considered for the country development.

Stereotypical representations of Romanian migrants in the British tabloid press

In the tabloid press, Romanians and Bulgarians are also referred as “EU migrants” or “EU nationals”, and it is mentioned that large numbers of migrants from Romania and Bulgaria would come to UK. The economic argument is that wages are up to five times higher than in their native countries. The tabloid press manages to create a “hysteria” regarding the number of people from Ro- mania and Bulgaria heading to the UK. Headlines and leads such as “120,000 Romanians and Bulgarians have already moved to Britain: Census shows in some parts of the country one in ten are Eastern European” (Steve Doughty, 26 March, Daily Mail), “A Romanian beggar and her child at one of London’s Marble Arch. Hundreds of thousands are expected to arrive, in a wave similar to the one that followed Poland’s accession in 2004” (James Slack, 18 February 2013, Daily Mail), “Britain faces fruit shortage next year as Romanians and Bulgarians are set to flood in to cities and desert countryside” (Steve Doughty, 15 February 2013, Daily Mail), “It is estimated that more than 700,000 people from Romania could try to find work and settle in Britain” (Steve Doughty, 11 June 2013, Daily Mail), “Sold out! Flights and buses full as Romanians and Bulgarians head for the UK” (Arthur Marin, John Stevens, 31 December 2013, Daily Mail) show case the anti-immigration position of the Daily Mail tabloid. Romanians are portrayed as being fraudsters, criminals, beggars, pickpockets and poor. For example, one headline from Daily Mail stated: “Romanians arrested at seven times rate of Britons: 800 held in London last month” (Chris Greenwood, 13 December 2013). In the newspaper article, the British journalist also mentioned numbers to strengthen the arguments, such as “for every 1,000 Romanians in London, 183 are arrested”. The discourse strategy is based on differentiation, because the journalist from Daily Mail compares the delinquency rate of Britons with the number of Romanian people arrested in London. The argument is not very well constructed, as we can identify the fallacy of a false analogy between the two nations. The British journalist also quotes an official source in order to give fallacious legitimacy to the argument: “Police say that for every 1,000 Romanians in London, 183 are arrested. This compared to 26 Britons per 1,000.” One can also identify here the dominance of the power elites, in this case constituted by the British tabloid press. The British journalists also identify themselves with the British nationals, using the plu- ral form of the first person pronoun “our”:

Needless to say, I have nothing whatsoever against Romania and Bulgaria, and remember with fondness a brief visit I paid to both countries as a 13-year-old. But after a decade of uncontrolled immigration under Labour, and with the economy wheezing and spluttering, the last thing we want is another surge of migrants. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 69

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And, believe it or not, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Under EU law there is a maximum transition period of seven years after the accession of a new member state, which will lapse at the end of this year in the case of Romania and Bulgaria. We would like to protect our own borders but are unable to do so. (Stephen Glover, 16 January 2013, Daily Mail) If you’re sitting in a crumbling, concrete, Soviet-era slum in Sofia, what’s not to like about Britain? Put yourself in their knock-off Nike trainers. Would you rather beg in the streets of Bucharest or sell the Big Is- sue in Bristol, while living rent-free in a modern council house and receiving an exciting range of welfare payments for your extended family? (Richard Littlejohn, 28 January 2013, Daily Mail)

In the first case, the constructive strategies of the discourse are present because of the “we-group”, which appeals to the national solidarity and union of British citizens: the last thing we want is another surge of migrants; we would like to protect our own borders but are unable to do so. Here, the journalist has also a civic role, he involves the citizens to act and protect their country. The strategies of positive self-presentation (British people) and negative other-presentation (Romanian and Bulgaria migrants) generate a polarization between the two entities. The argument implied is that Romanians and Bulgarians are a threat to the UK borders, which involves the presence of perpetuation and justification strategies. Furthermore, the second quote contains a role changing: the British citizen is invited to put himself in the role of a Romanian or Bulgarian. This way, the journalist intensifies the polarization between “Us” (the British people who live well) and “Them” (poor Romanian and Bulgaria migrants): Would you rather beg in the streets of Bucharest or sell the Big Is- sue in Bristol, while living rent-free in a modern council house and receiving an exciting range of welfare payments for your extended family? Of course, the positive self-presentation is obvious, when stating that migrants would live rent-free in a modern house and receive welfare payments for the family. In fact, Britain is portrayed as a salvation for the “poor” Ro- manians and Bulgarians searching for a better life.

Stereotypes of Romanians in the BBC documentaries

In order to see what stereotypes about Romanian people are presented in the British television, the method of dispositif analysis has been used. Stereotypes are portrayed in different ways in the press and television. For example, film documentaries insist on close-up with different Romanian migrants, while the press writes about them and eventually reinforce the arguments by selecting certain pictures. The sequences and the camera perspective are also elements that contribute to the framing of Romanian migrants in the UK. Each film documentary has a specific discourse which reflects the strategic vision of the BBC channel on the topic of Romanian immigration. The frame analysis presented above is completed by a dispositif analysis, revealing the way in which the camera films the migrants and the way in which participants are introduced in the scene. Therefore, the elements of analysis are the themes, the participants’ roles, the visual formats, and the journalists’ positioning. In the BBC Panorama – Romanians Are Coming?, the main theme discussed is whether the Romanian migrants are a threat to the national security of UK citizens, while in The Truth about Immigration the focus is on political issues. In the third documentary, a special attention is given to the political, national security and EU policy themes. As for the participants’ roles, images with Roma families camping at Marble Arch, homeless Romanians who sleep on the street, Romanians that pick fruits to improve their life qual- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:43 PM Page 70

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ity, or the camp of Romanians from the Hendon Football Club, evicted by the police show a lower class of Romanian people. The journalists also present the perspective of middle class Romanians about working in the UK, but the main focus is on the lower class. The visual format of the three BBC documentaries insists on close-up frames, which display the details and show the emotions. The documentary BBC Panorama – Romanians are Coming? presents images with homeless Romanians rough sleeping while the police raided the camp. Furthermore, images from a Transylvanian Roma village are displayed, following a close-up with a pauper home of a Romanian who used to live in a Hendon stadium camp. Alexandru Subtirel is presented as a Romanian from Apata that is prepared to join a green camp in London, so that he can provide enough money for his family. Another story revealed in the documentary is the story of Alex Parvu, who was from a small Roma village, Augustin, and came to London to find work. The close-up on his face intensifies the drama, revealing his emotions when the reporter shows him images of his family. As Livingstone (1998, p. 5) argues, “recency signifies importance, a close-up shot signifies intimacy, fast-cutting signifies high drama”. Tuchman (1978, pp. 116-121) has identified six ways in which journalists frame subjects on film. The camera may be held at intimate, close personal, far personal, close social, far social or public distance. Each framing convention carries connotations about the social role of the subject or significance of the event. Two framing devices are often used in television news. At “intimate distance”, the subject’s face fills the screen, so that the viewer is looking into the subject’s eyes. At “close personal distance”, the subject’s neck and shoulders are visible. Tuchman (1978, p. 119) suggests that the use of these techniques may indicate a breach in journalistic neutrality. In the BBC documentaries, the camera is held at intimate and close personal level, when the subject is the Romanian migrants in Great Britain, and at far personal distance level when the reporter is filmed addressing questions. For example, when the journalist asks a Roman- ian fruit picker how much better is the money here compared to the money back home, the camera is held at close personal level to see the interviewer’s reactions. The journalist is filmed only from the back, with a close-up to the Romanian migrant. As news workers, television reporters must be shown as nonparticipants whose role is to comment and describe neutrally (Tuchman, 1978, p. 119). The documentary The Great Big Romanian Invasion introduces the story of Victor Spires- cu, one of the first Romanian migrants to come to the UK on the 1st of January 2014. Victor is filmed usually from a close perspective, especially when he talks about his job and his future plans in Great Britain. After becoming a media sensation, Victor is considered the symbol of Romanian migrants that will come to Britain after the restrictions are lifted: “I was the only one who came on 1st of January to invade the…the Big Invader. I am only one. It’s a funny thing, you know”. In the tabloid press, Victor Spirescu was presented as a potential threat to the citizens of the UK: he had quit his job after the first day, he was a drug user, and beat up his former girlfriend. Conversely, the BBC documentary presented him as a Romanian who came to Britain to work, switched jobs because of the media attention and brought his girlfriend to London. By framing the Romanian migrants mostly in connection to images showing Roma people who camp in Marble Arch, rough sleep, or struggle to find work and send money back to their families, the British journalists employ stereotypes about the Romanian people. The images selected present pauper places where Romanians live, mentioning the economic and so- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 71

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cial advantages from the UK. Thus, the national security of the British citizens is in danger, because of the crimes committed by Romanian migrants (thievery). As far as the journalists’ positioning is concerned, they are citizen-oriented when using the personal pronoun “our”. For example, the reporter Paul Kenyon affirms that: “Still, of all arrest were made in London last year, Romanians are counted for 49%, and for pick pocketing it was 34% (Metropolitan Police, 2012). Figures like that have helped shape our opinions”. Furthermore, the journalist Tim Samuels ends the documentary entitled The Great Big Ro- manian Invasion by stating that “it seems than the language and non-hysteria about the Ro- manian invasion, well, ultimately, it might say more about us than them”. The using of “us” also suggests a citizen-oriented position, because the reporter identifies himself with the British community. Thus, the documentary The Truth About Immigration often includes a shot of the reporter standing in front of the Big Ben, which is an architectural symbol of mainstream political institutions and power. This frame is used to reinforce the journalist’s role as a watchdog in the debate about immigration.

Conclusion

The public sphere is now constituted around networks of communication. With the fragmentation of mass media channels and audiences, various media such as digitized press and television have become interactively connected. This raises the questions of how media mobilizes the citizens to be part of the public debate and how do media present a certain issue in order to reach its commercial goal. To see how the British media frames the issue of Romanian migration, this article presents a comparative analysis of frames used by the British written press and television, respectively. The results show that the use of economic, political, and employment frames in the British newspapers contrast with the use of economic, political, and national security frame in the case of British television. The tabloids (Daily Mail) and the documentaries (BBC) are more interested in emphasizing human interest issues, such as poverty, rough sleeping, crimes, and begging, while the quality press (The Guardian, The Independent) focuses more on the economic consequences of migration, when discussing about threats and benefits of Roman- ian migrants coming to work in the UK. A limit of this research is to be found in the content analysis, where only one coder analyzed a sample of 20% of the British newspapers, in order to identify the frames. This way, reliability and validity were not determined, but they are subject for future research. The critical discourse analysis and dispositif analysis performed revealed the stereotypical representations of Romanians in the British media. In conclusion, the stereotypes about Romanian people spread in British newspapers such as The Guardian, The Independent or Daily Mail („beggars”, „murderers”, „criminals”, „fraudsters”, „corrupt”) or in the BBC documentaries are linked to the construction of the Romania’s nation brand. As a matter of fact, the British journalist legitimates his/ her position by framing the Romanian migrants in terms of economy, politics, social benefits, employment, national security and EU policy. The frames used by the British journalist in the coverage of Romanian immigration may redefine the public sphere, by introducing private issues in public contexts. When portraying Victor Spirescu, one of the first Romanian migrants who came to Britain at the beginning of Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 72

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2014, the tabloids presented his personal life as a threat to the British citizens, mentioning that he was a drug user and he beated his former girlfriend. In this way, the private details of his life interfere with the public issue of Romanian migrants, creating a hysteria around the latter. The question that emerges here is if and how journalists reconfigure the public sphere when framing a public interest subject. This may be an interesting starting point for future studies.

Notes

1 Audit Bureau of Circulations UK, http://abcstandards.org.uk/, accessed on 12 May 2014 2 http://ejc.net/media_landscapes/united-kingdom, accesed on 29 August 2014.

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Book reviews Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 76 Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 77

Saiona STOIAN*1

Book review of Cultures of Mediatization by Andreas Hepp, Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2012, 180 pages

We live in a media-saturated world, both in terms of quantity – the unprecedented spread and diversity of technical media, and quality – everyday activities and relationships are increasingly re-imagined through media-related practices. In this context, the mediatization paradigm emerges as a conceptual framework and an active site of academic debate prompt- ed by the need to revisit key questions regarding the relationship between media and culture, respectively between changes in media communication and processes of social and cultural transformation. The paradigm challenges the basic assumption upon which media effects theories rely, i.e. media exerts an external, one-sided influence on culture and society, focusing instead on how the centrality of media in contemporary culture is socially constructed, meaning that media are as much a part of social life as social life itself is increasingly permeated by media technologies. As part of this paradigm shift, Andreas Hepp’s book sets out to investigate “the ongoing transition of our culture into a media culture” (Hepp, 2013, p. 1), the concept of “media culture” developing out of a distinctive understanding of mediatization. Media cultures are cultures which have undergone a process of mediatization, where mediatization is regarded as a conceptual construct similar to those of globalization, individualization or commercializa- tion, through which we render meaningful the long-lasting, broad-reaching changes generat- ed by the permeation of media in different socio-cultural fields (politics, education, religion, everyday life etc.) and the complementary development of media configurations specific to each field. This has determined some authors (Hjarvard, 2014) to speak of mediatization as a “middle range theory” which needs to combine macroscopic narratives of change with the concrete forms taken by mediatization in different spheres of society. A significant contribution stems from the book`s equal concern for what media culture is, as well as what it is not, the first two chapters positioning Hepp`s approach in contrast with established theories of media culture (Frankfurt School’s theory of mass culture, medium theory, radical constructivism and digital cultures), as well as with current models operating inside the mediatization paradigm (the mediation model of cultural studies and the institutional model of mediatization). This allows Hepp to push beyond what is usually acknowledged as literature review and approach existing theories in terms of their limitations as well as their persistent relevance for today’s mediatized world. While Hepp rejects the idea that media

* PhD Student, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, [email protected]. 1 Beneficiary in the project “Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships for Young Researchers in the Fields of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences and Sociology” POSDRU/159/1.5/S/134650 fi- nanced through the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-fi- nanced through the European Social Fund. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 78

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culture is a mass culture in the sense of a hegemonic culture industry which traps the individual through the serialization of cultural commodities and the standardization of reception, he agrees that any theory of media culture should take into account the ubiquity of media communication without rendering it, however, an integrative or inescapable reality. In a similar manner, while Hepp rejects the view of media culture as a culture characterized by a dominant medium (television culture, Internet culture) or by a historical progression of dominant media (from oral cultures to digital cultures), he argues for a need to acknowledge the power of the medium in shaping interaction and to integrate the potentialities and restrictions of specific media in a transmedial and translocal approach towards communication. Media cultures transcend individual media (even new media, which tend to be regarded as the embod- iment of high modernity), being articulated instead through communication networks integrated into larger “communicative figurations”, meaning “patterns of processes of communicative interweaving that exist across various media and have a frame that orients communicative action and therefore the sense-making practices of this figuration” (Hepp, 2014, p. 85). Hepp also distinguishes his approach from the two main models he identifies as operating inside the mediatization paradigm. The mediation model of communication, originating from a cultural analytic orientation, regards media as embodiments of highly complex communicative relationships which go beyond the linear perspective of production, transmission and reception. Johan Fornäs (2000) refers in this sense to “the centrality of mediation in cultural studies”, where mediation regards simultaneously the tension existing between subjects, texts and contexts, as well as the mediation of meanings and interactions through texts. Hepp considers mediation as a precondition for mediatization, but argues that given its broad spectrum (mediation can be used to describe the general characteristics of any process of media communication) it fails to account for the transformational dimension involved in mediatization. The second model focuses on media as institutions of mass communication which oper- ate according to a “media logic”, the institutional model regarding mediatization as a process through which: a.) media logic, understood as the technological and symbolic modus operan- di of the media, begins to exert increasing influence on other social fields, b.) media acquires the status of a social institution in its own right. Hepp considers that treating media as an in- stitutionalized social system with its own logic runs not only the risk of reinforcing mediatization as a monolithic and linear process which disregards actual interaction, but also of rendering invisible the very process through which communicative action becomes institu- tionalized. According to Hepp, media emerge out of the technological materialization of numerous communicative actions, what appears according to the institutional model as a given, being in fact the product of a process of reification and objectification, through which communicative actions become congealed into institutions and technologies. Knoblauch (2013) refers to this theoretical framework as “communicative constructivism”, building upon Berg- er and Luckmann social constructivism, arguing that in order to understand how media institutions emerge as a result of the habitualization and routinization of media use, one needs to consider communicative action as the primary unit of analysis. This approach shifts the focus from the specificity of media as a logic to the process of communication itself, asking how technological mediation ultimately moulds human interaction through a patterning of communicative relationships. Building on the distinctions identified so far, Hepp elaborates in the last three chapters a potential model for the study of mediatization, starting from the concept of “mediatized worlds”, cultures of mediatization being regarded as complexes of mediatized worlds. Me- Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 79

Book reviews 79

diatized worlds are small worlds, not in the sense of a limited domain or a restricted number of members, but in the sense of a hierarchy of relevance principles which restrict their complexity in relation to the broader life-world. The communicative actions of the members, including information access and exchange, are filtered and framed in virtue of the small world`s background normative influence. According to Hepp, the study of media cultures should begin with the empirical study of mediatized small worlds (e.g. gaming communities, social movements, religious organizations) and their patterns of media engagement, both on a structural (“communication networks” and “communicative figurations”) and personal level (“the subjective horizon of communitization” – in a fundamentally decentred world, the feeling of belonging is no longer restricted to either spatial and temporal proximity or to a single community; we can identify as members of numerous small worlds, both local or translocal, media playing an increasingly significant role in the construction of complex cultural identities). Although mediatization research is yet to provide a comprehensive methodological framework, “Cultures of mediatization” is, through its concision and clarity, a significant contribution to the field, not only mapping the limitations of existing theories, but also pointing towards further directions of inquiry. In this sense, the book may be of interest to those studying local and translocal communities and the construction of cultural identities through the appropriation of various media or the emergence of digital media in light of processes of re- mediation and hybridization, but also to those who have a general interest in media communication and social theory. By suggesting a stronger grounding of media studies in social theory, the book contributes to ongoing efforts of finding the proper distance between broader theories of social and cultural transformation and situated instances of communicative action articulated through media technologies.

References

1. Fornäs, J. (2000). The Crucial In Between. The Centrality of Mediation in Cultural Studies. European Journal of Cultural Studies 3(1), 45-65. 2. Hepp, A. (2014). Communicative Figurations: Researching Cultures of Mediatization. In L. Kramp, N. Carpentier, A. Hepp, I. Tomaniæ Trivund a, H. Nieminen, R. Kunelius, T. Olsson, E. Sundin, R. Kil- born (Eds.). Media Practice and Everyday Agency in Europe (pp. 83-99). Bremen: Edition Lumière. 3. Hjarvard, S. (2014). Mediatization and Cultural and Social Change: An Institutional Perspective. In K. Lundby (Ed.). Mediatization of Communication (pp. 199-226). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 4. Knoblauch, H. (2013). Communicative Constructivism and Mediatization. Communication Theory 23, 297-315. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 80 Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 81

Nicoleta CORBU*

Book review of The Emotions Industry edited by Mira Moshe, New York: Nova Publishers, 2014, 265 pages

Mira Moshe’s edited book The Emotions Industry is the author’s second book dedicated to the sociology of emotions. Placed in the theoretical tradition of the Frankfurt’s school, the book investigates a complex cultural phenomenon, in the wake of Adorno and Horkheimer’s seminal work on the “culture industry”. Moshe believes that the consumption society purpose- fully exaggerates emotions, in order to obtain social, cultural and economic wealth. She posits that media plays a key role in the very nature of the emotions industry by generating, strength- ening, and encouraging “emotional trade”. Building on theories and concepts such as emotional trade-off (Homans, 1961), emotional capital as a source of educational opportunities (Allat, 1993; Reay, 1998, 2000), the main argument of the book relies on the Frankfurt School’s main assumptions. As the editor writes in the Introduction, “cultural production whose origins can be traced to the emotional manipulation of media and entertainment consumers and encouraging the masses to passivity (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1972; Adorno & Horkheimer, 2007) has developed into an industry focusing on creating a false aesthetic and blurring the boundaries between culture and real life (Adorno, 2005)” (p. ix). Media’s role is thus to blur the boundaries between the original and the reproduction, to promote pseudo-authenticity by appealing to public’s emotions. The book gathers together contributions of researchers from all over the world (Israel, USA, Finland, Italy, Brazil, Romania, and Australia), thus offering various angles of interpretation of the investigated phenomenon. In the first section, The Emotions Industry - The Construction of a Romantic Production Line, Mira Moshe, Julia Meszaros, Amir Hetsroni and Abira Reizer analyze media representations of romance. From emotional branding involving love and family to the romance tourism industry and afterwards to topics of conflict in romantic relationships, this section offers a general approach to the mediatization of romance, trying to explain the subtle mechanisms through which a sense of intimacy and belonging is created in order to convert them into selling experiences. The second section covers topics related to the production and consumption of emotional content. The three chapters included in this section focus on three different types of media in order to suggest culturally sensitive ways of attracting audience, by appealing to emotions: amateur photography in Finnish journalism, television reality-shows in Italy, and ultra-Ortho- dox Jewish feature films in Israel. As far as the amateur photography is concerned, its main purpose in a consumption society has become to elicit strong emotional excitation in order to induce the feeling of “being there” in the audience. From a different perspective, the TV reality shows have the power of creating the illusion that a virtual community could success-

* College of Communication and PR, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 82

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fully replace a real one, by means of producing emotional responses into the audience. The analysis of the women dedicated ultra-Orthodox movies offer an inside perspective on the “ap- paratus by which producers focus on viewers’ emotional experiences using religion as an exciting commercial product and attempt to design an active cinematic viewing experience for participants” (p. xii). Fear and death in the media are covered in the following section. The two chapters cover the emotions industry based on negative feelings, from anxiety to fear, self-recrimination, and dissatisfaction. In chapter seven, Shirly Bar-Lev analyzes the emotional codes embedded in the on-line communication on the verge of death. Fear is further examined in chapter eight through frightening visual content consumed by Israeli and American children. Section four, “The Emotions Industry: The Politics of Emotion” offers two culturally based approaches to politics, from the point of view of the spectacle of politics built on exploiting emotions. Adrian Scribano and Mira Moshe show how sports can be emotionally used in political marketing, while Florenta Toader offers insights from the online communication in Ro- manian politics. The last section of the book deals with self-exposure in the emotions industry. The topics covered in the three chapters vary from marketing celebrities by means of entertainment mag- azines and ethical representations of emotions and fame, to the re-interpretation of Simmel’s theory regarding fashion. The coherence of the book resides in its general approach to the emotions industry from various angles and cultural perspectives. The book is unique from this point of view: it offers a multi-faceted insight into what has nowadays become the classical concept of “culture industry”, from the perspective of the sociology of emotion. The reader has thus the opportunity to have new insights into the mechanisms of production and distribution of emotions, with the purpose of accumulating social, cultural, and economic wealth. Mira Moshe’s second edited book dedicated to the sociology of emotions places her among the prominent scholars preoccupied with cross-cultural approaches to emotional phenomena. This book is situated at the crossroads of sociology of emotions, critical communication studies, and cultural studies, which makes it interesting and appealing to scholars from various fields of studies.

References

1. Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1972). Dialectic of enlightenment, Translated by J. Cumming. New York: Herder & Herder. 2. Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (2007). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. In S. Holmes & S. Radmond (Eds.), Stardom and celebrity: A reader (pp. 34-43). London: Sage. 3. Adorno, T. (2005). The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture J. M. Bernstein (Ed). London: Routledge. 4. Allatt, P. (1993). Becoming privileged: The role of family processes. In Youth and inequality, I. Bates & G. Riseborough (Eds.), 139–59. Buckingham: Open University Press. 5. Homans, G. (1961). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 6. Reay, D. (1998). Class work: Mothers’ involvement in their children’s primary schooling. London: Uni- versity of London Press. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 83

Call for papers

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations www.journalofcommunication.ro

The Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations (RJCPR) is now seeking manuscripts for its upcoming issues. We welcome scholarly contributions from the broad field of communication studies, from public relations research, as well as from related areas. RJCPR also accepts relevant contributions for its permanent book review section. Prospective authors should submit original papers which meet the customary academic standards in the social sciences. These materials should be methodologically sound, thoroughly argued, and well crafted. They must not have been published elsewhere, or be currently under review for any other publication. All manuscripts are subject to a blind review process before publication. The author(s) name(s) should not appear on any page except the title page of the submitted paper, and electronic identification data should be removed before submission.

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Submission Submissions must follow the Guidelines for Authors, available on the Journal’s website (www.journalofcommunication.ro/guidelines). For further inquiries, please contact the editor, dr. Elena Negrea, [email protected]. More information on the Journal of Communication and Public Relations can be found at www.journalofcommunication.ro. Revista_comunicare_35.qxd 9/15/2015 7:44 PM Page 84 Coperta_revista_comunicare_35.qxd 11.09.2015 12:20 Page 1

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