Framing the Economic Crisis in the Romanian Online Media

In the context of the current crisis, scholars pay more and more attention to how European issues are approached, made visible, and framed by the national media. So far, most of the research was focusedon Western countries, such as UK, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. However, little is known about how the Euro crisis is actually covered by news media in the EU’s new member states, such as Romania. Our research consists in a content analysis performed on the most visible Romanian news portals – hotnews.ro, and ziare.com. Theanalysis is focused on two important moments related to the economic crisis: 1. the signing of the first financial agreement between Romania and the International Monetary Fund at the beginning of May 2009, and 2. the organization of the Euro Summit for saving the Euro Zone at the end of October 2011. These events are not chosen arbitrarily, as they mark the peaks of the economic crisis, at leastas far as Romania is concerned. A total of 11.570 news items were content analyzed in order to understand the visibility of the European topics, and, more importantly, the frames applied by the Romanian online media when approaching the crisis.