The Online Communication of Political Parties and their Leaders Reacting to Street Protests in Romania Senior Lecturer Meda MUCUNDORFEANU, PhD Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. At the beginning of 2017 massive protests took place on the streets of the biggest cities in Romania, unprecedented in the post-De- cembrist history of the country. They were caused by a decree passed by the government that was meant to decriminalize certain offences, in- cluding official misconduct. In situations such as social movements on a larger scale, the communication flow on social networking platforms, es- pecially on Facebook, which is the most popular social media platform in Romania, increases exponentially (Tufekci & Wilson, 2012; Valenzuela, 2013). In this context, the present paper focuses on the analysis of the so- cial media communication of the main political parties and their leaders. The communication strategy expressed especially on Facebook is interest- ing, because it is preferred by a large part of the protest participants (for information regarding Facebook groups of protesters see Adi & Lilleker, 2018). The central question of the present paper revolves around the way in which political parties and leaders communicated during the afore- mentioned protests. We have carried out a computer-assisted frequency analysis and have analyzed 15 Facebook accounts of the main political parties and their leaders during the period January 18th – March 5th 2017, which corresponds to the period of the protests. Keywords: Social Media; Official communication; Political parties; Political actors; Credibility. Journal of Media Research, DOI:10.24193/jmr.34.3 50 Vol. 12 Issue 2(34) / 2019, pp. 50-73 Published First Online: July 2019 Introduction At the beginning of 2017, the Romanian Minister of Justice proposed an emer- gency ordinance with the intent to decriminalize certain acts of corruption by poli- ticians. This action led to the largest protest in Romania’s post-communist history, which lasted for almost two months and caused uproar and debates throughout the country. The protests were often organized and promoted on Facebook and relevant issues related to protests were also discussed on this platform. In the context of recurring misconduct and neglecting office duties by politi- cians, sometimes the last resort of citizens is to organize and take part in protests. The objective of such events is to raise awareness about relevant issues, start a dia- logue and, not least, to find reasonable solutions to pressing problems. Hirschman (1999) considers that protests are meant to release the tension of those who are most frustrated and to postpone or annihilate the exit of the most discontent indi- viduals in the society. Social networks have redefined the relationship between citizens and political parties by facilitating a more direct communication and an open dialogue between political representatives and other members of society. These communication channels provide governments and political parties with the opportunity to in- teract and engage with citizens more than they did before. Social media represent another channel which allows political actors to promote themselves and directly communicate with the electorate and have direct and inexpensive access to vot- ers (Jacobs & Spierings 2016). The difference between social networks and other e-government websites is that the former allows a higher degree of interactivity, which should lead to increased transparency and trust in ruling political parties and government, whereas the latter does not allow for such interactivity. According to recent data gathered by Gemius, a reputed consultancy company in the field of online advertising, in 2017, Facebook was the most used social me- dia platform in Romania with over 5.5 million users, followed by Pinterest with 724,400 active users. Instagram, with 660,700 users, LinkedIn with 644,000 users and Twitter with 582,000 users.1 Facebook is the most popular social networking platform in Romania with 8.4 million users, in June 2017. At a population of 19.2 million, that is a penetration rate of 43%. To be precise, 70% of all Romanian Internet users own a Facebook ac- count. In Eastern Europe, Romania has the highest number of Facebook users. If we take a look at the penetration rate of Facebook, that is the number of Facebook users in relation to the total number of the population of each country, Romania (43%) is close to, but comes after Hungary (54%), Bulgaria (47%), Czech Republic (46%) and Slovakia (44%), but ahead of Moldova (17%) and Ukraine (12%).2 1 https://www.gemius.com/agencies-news/romania-top5-social-networks.html (11.03.2018) 51 2According to Facebrands.ro, a Romanian monitoring service of Facebook ac- counts nationwide3, in 2017, 50% of users were women and 50% were men. The top three age categories of users are the following: most of them are 25-34 years old (26.83%), followed by users aged 18-24 years old (21.47%) and 35-44 years old (21.15%). Other age groups are the following: 45-54 years old (12.63%), 13-17 years old (9.24%), followed by 55-64 years old (6.16%) and by users aged 65+ (2.53%). Most of them are married (68.04%), while only 22.6% of them are single, 8.2% are in a relationship and 1.09% are engaged. These number and figures show that this social networking platform reaches a significant proportion of Romanian Internet users, considering that almost half of all Romanian Internet users are present on Facebook and most of them are relatively young. This segment of the population that is present on social media is the same segment that represents the working force of the country directly affected by any political action or decision. For politi- cians, the fact that they can address this population segment directly through this communication tool should be perceived as an asset and should be fully used. Whether this is the case will be shown in the following chapters. We will focus on the created dialogue, or to be specific, on the use or lack of reactions and responses from the main political parties and leaders towards the issues. By using a computer-assisted analysis, we analyzed online materials pub- lished by the abovementioned country’s representatives on their Facebook pro- files during the period of the protests, in order to see how they acted and reacted during the protests, how active (number of posts) and how involved they were (discussions carried out on the matter or related to it). The Events In January 2017, two weeks after the PSD-ALDE government headed by prime minister Sorin Grindeanu was inaugurated, street protests began in Romania be- cause of the government’s intentions to bring amendments to the Criminal Code. On the first day, on January 18, around 5,000 people protested, out of which nearly 4,000 in Bucharest, the capital of the country. During the following days, the protests expanded all over Romania and in the diaspora, especially after the Minister of Justice, Florin Iordache, announced that government carried out its previously expressed intentions and published a gov- ernment decree (OUG13) in the Official Journal of Romania, with the aim of par- doning certain criminal acts by amending the Criminal Code in order to decrimi- nalize certain acts of abuse of office. He also informed the public that the govern- 2 Internet World Stats. Usage and Population Statistics, “Romania”, available at: https://www. internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm#europe (04.03.2018) 3 http://www.facebrands.ro/demografice.html (04.03.2018) 52 ment adopted a project aimed at offering collective pardoning for punishments for certain offences. During this entire time, the ordinance was subject number one in the media and in the public opinion. The protests peaked on a Sunday evening, at the end of the third week of pro- tests, on February 5th, when more than 600,000 demonstrators protested across the country.4 In the fourth week, the minister of justice resigned as a sign of collabora- tion and poof that the initiators do not have personal interests or any other hidden agenda. The protests continued even though the government adopted a decree to repeal the controversial OUG135. At the beginning of the fifth week, the Senate adopted another bill OUG14, through which it dismissed the previous ordinance. OUG13 would have decriminalized acts of corruption which caused less than $48,000 (about 200,000 lei) in damage and it would also have halted all investigations for pending corruption offenses, prevented further cases related to these offenses to be brought to justice, and freed some officials imprisoned for corruption. Despite the dismissal of OUG13, demonstrations calling for the resignation of the entire Social Democratic-led government, which introduced the measure, continued for several more days.6 During the sixth week of protests, the ordinance that had already been abro- gated was subjected to a vote of rejection in Parliament. For the first time in the post-Decembrist history of Romania, the Senate was put in a position to reject an already dismissed ordinance, which virtually no longer existed. The protests, al- though smaller, continued for one more week. Theoretical Framework One can consider protests to be a huge crisis for the country, its people and its representatives. Usually, during such crisis situations the responsible actors become more active, in order to solve the crisis through various communication techniques. According to Coombs (2007), crises are negative events that cause stakeholders to make ‘attributions’ (interpretations) about crisis responsibility, affecting how stakeholders interact with the organization. Coombs’ situational crisis communication theory SCCT (Coombs, 2007a) is the most used theory to examine crisis communication and management.