POPULISM DISCOURSE IN ROMANIAN POLITICS AND MASS MEDIA: A COMPUTATIONAL CONTENT ANALYSIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2218-1067-2026-3-27-36Keywords:
populism, discourse analysis, Romania, computational content analysis, AUR, mass media, mediatization, sovereignism, 2020–2026Abstract
This article offers a computational content analysis of how the terms "populism" and "populist" are deployed in Romanian political discourse and media between 2020 and 2026, when populist parties became a substantial parliamentary force. A two-stage system was built: a Python web scraper gathers texts from 14 major online outlets, while a custom parser recognizes 30 morphological variants (including palatalized forms) and codes each occurrence for valence, rhetorical function, and thematic frame. From 136 articles, 700 contextual mentions were extracted and classified. Neutral valence dominates (49.9 %), reflecting primarily informational rather than evaluative usage. Analytical valence (19.3 %) surpasses negative (12.6 %), underscoring the role of meta-discourse. Among eight thematic frames, the anti-elite frame is most frequent (155 mentions, 22.1 %); frames of traditional values, Euroscepticism, and corruption are also prominent. The quantitative findings are interpreted alongside qualitative research on the AUR party, anti-corruption populism, and the mediatization of populist rhetoric, revealing the multilayered functioning of populist discourse as an informational marker, a delegitimizing weapon, and a tool of reflection.
References
Биткова, Т. Г. (2023) ‘«Старые и новые популисты в румынской политической парадигме»’, Актуальные проблемы Европы, (4), сс. 289–312. [Bitkova, T. G. (2023) ‘Old and new populists in the Romanian political paradigm’, Aktual’nye problemy Evropy, (4), pp. 289–312. (In Russ)]. DOI: 10.31249/ape/2023.04.14
Bonikowski, B. and Gidron, N. (2016) ‘The populist style in American politics’, Social Forces, 94(4), pp. 1593–1621. DOI: 10.1093/sf/sov120
Brubaker, R. (2017) ‘Why populism?’, Theory and Society, 46(5), pp. 357–385. DOI: 10.1007/s11186-017-9301-7
Danileț, C. (2025) ‘Criza politică din România produsă de erorile CCR privind alegerile prezidențiale’ [The political crisis in Romania caused by the CCR errors regarding the presidential elections], Polis. Journal of Political Science, 13(1(47)), pp. 159–167.
de Vreese, C. H. et al. (2018) ‘Populism as an expression of political communication content and style’, International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(4), pp. 423–438. DOI: 10.1177/1940161218790035
Grapă, T.-E. and Mogoș, A.-A. (2023) ‘The spectacle of “patriotic violence” in Romania’, Media and Communication, 11(2), pp. 148–162. DOI: 10.17645/mac.v11i2.6367
Hawkins, K. A., Aguilar, R., Silva, B. C. et al. (2019) ‘Measuring Populist Discourse: The Global Populism Databaseʼ, in: EPSA Annual Conference.
Kiss, T. and Székely, I. G. (2022) ‘Populism on the semi-periphery’, Problems of Post-Communism. 69(6), pp. 514–527. DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2020.1869907
Krippendorff, K. (2018) Content analysis: an introduction to its methodology. 4th edn. London: SAGE.
Mihai, M. and Ungureanu, C. (2024) ‘Far-right ecology and geopolitical resentment at Europe’s periphery: the case of Romania’s «conservative revolution»’, Geoforum, 156, pp. 104–122. DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104122
Mișcoiu, S. and Erdei, R. (2025) ‘Rebel with many causes: Romania’s national-populist leader, George Simion’, in: Contemporary populist leadership in Central and Eastern Europe. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, pp. 121–139.
Moffitt, B. (2016) The global rise of populism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mudde, C. (2004) ‘The populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition, 39(4), pp. 541–563. DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x
Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017) Populism: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rooduijn, M. and Pauwels, T. (2011) ‘Measuring populism’, West European Politics, 34(6), pp. 1272–1283. DOI: 10.1177/0010414020938081
Soare, S. (2022) ‘Romania’, in: Havlík, V. and Pinkova, A. (eds.) Populist parties in CEE. London: Routledge, pp. 145–168.
Soare, S. (2023) ‘Romanian populism and transnational political mobilization’, in: Ivaldi, G. and Zankina, E. (eds.) The impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on right-wing populism in Europe. Brussels: ECPS, pp. 250–264. DOI: 10.55271/rp0027
Soare, S., & Tufis, C. D. (2023) ‘No populism’s land? Religion and gender in Romanian politics’, Identities, 30(1), 112–130. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2021.1953784
Stoica, M. S., (2016) ‘The turning fortunes of Romania's far right. The rise and fall of Greater Romania Party’, in: Fielitz, M. and Laloire, L. (eds.) Trouble on the Far Right. Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 49–55.
Vacariu, M. (2025) ‘Alegerile prezidențiale din România 2024: dezinformare și manipulare în campania lui Georgescu’ [The 2024 Romanian presidential elections: disinformation and manipulation in Georgescu’s campaign], Polis. Journal of Political Science, 13(1(47)), pp. 115–127.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The author grants the Publisher of the journal (Perm State University) the right to use their article in the journal, as well as to include the text of the abstract, the full text of the article and information about authors in the "Russian Science Citation Index" (RSCI).
The author agrees to the processing of personal data.
The right to use the journal as a whole belongs to the Publisher and acts indefinitely on the territory of the Russian Federation and beyond in accordance with cl. 1260 of the Russian Federation Civil Code.
There is no author's fee paid for providing the above rights by the author.
The author of the article included in the journal retains the exclusive right to it, regardless of the Publisher's right to use the journal as a whole:
a. The authors retain their copyrights to the article and transfer the right of the first publication along with the article to the journal, while also licensing it on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to distribute this article with the obligatory indication of authorship of the article and reference to the original publication in this journal.
b. The authors retain the right to enter into separate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the version of the text published by this journal (for example, post it in a university archive or publish it in a book), with reference to the original publication in this journal.
c. d. Authors are allowed to post their text on the Internet (for example, in a university archive or on their personal website) before and during the review process by this journal, as this can lead to a fruitful discussion and to higher number of the references to this published work (Please refer to The Effect of Open Access).
Submission of an article by the author implies that they agree for it to be used by the Publisher on the above conditions and to be included in the RSCI system. It also implicates that the author is aware of the terms of its use. The information about the author sent to the Publisher, including by e-mail, is also considered as such consent.
The editorial board posts the full text of the article on the Perm State University site: http://www.psu.ru and in the OJS system at http://press.psu.ru
The publication fee is not collected and fees are not paid. The author's copy is sent to the author to the address provided by them.
