Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Societal Crisis of an EU Country – Between Social Inequalities and Poor Sustainability: A Case Study of a Romanian Mainstream Newspaper

D2-S2-A8

14 May 2026, 11:45

20m

A8 (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Oral Presentation Session 2.3 (Day 2)

Speaker

Mona Simu (Research Institute for Quality of Life)

Description

In my PhD thesis on Social problems in Romania as reflected by the press was shown, as one of the results, that, on one side, people and communities in the Romanian society are resorting to social innovations as coping, and on the other side, authorities are insufficiently adapted to change, and the public policies lack sustainability.
The methodology of the here proposed paper (based on the results from my PhD thesis) is a qualitative one, using the methods of content and discourse analysis, and involves a data base of 200 press articles from the year 2023, representing a case study on one national daily prestigious Romanian newspaper. The analyses showed that, among other social problems, social inequalities in the Romania society are pervasive. In spite the fact that Romania is EU integrated on levels as economy and politics, it shows many aspects of social inequalities, polarization, and exclusion, which apparently came along with the globalization process in the Romanian society.
The multiple crisis pertaining to: care for the elderly (the articles covered the cases regarding several care homes, where they were inhumanly treated), and to other many examples of social problems, inefficiency, and corruption, like the deadly explosion of the GPL station in a small town, violence against women, violence in schools, etc., all are pointing to the same evidence: insufficient sustainability of policies, and reactive political factors, instead of proactive ones.
The many examples of inequalities in the Romanian society as an EU country for 18 years show a society in crisis, especially on social dimensions, pertaining to: social, economic, gender, age, and sometimes racial and ethnic inequalities. These aspects as covered by the studied newspaper for a period of one year are depicted through the utilized language, the media discourse, and this is also one of the scopes of this presentation, to make a linguistic approach demonstration of a contemporary societal crisis.