AUSTERITY - THE TRIGGER FOR WAVES OF CONTENTION IN ROMANIA

This paper deals with the international media coverage of the Romanian protests from January-February 2012. The purpose is to analyze whether the events managed to transcend the borders of national representation in the media. Our hypothesis is that, due to the fact that Romania is not considered to be a major player in world politics and economy, the representation of the social protests in foreign publications will be mainly informative, describing the series of events as a consequence of the economic hardship and integrating this social movement in the wave of protests which occurred all over Europe, after the economic crisis of 2008. Results of a combined approach to the analysis of newspaper content – integrating both qualitative and quantitative methods – suggest that the international media depicts endemic corruption and public discontent as the underlying profound causes for the protests, where austerity was the trigger.