Stereotypes of Romanians: Analyzing the Image of Romanians in the National Press

Our study aims to inquire the matter of the national identity and image of Romanians as they are spread out by the national press. We depart from Claude Lévi-Strauss’ idea that a society is a group of people who communicate and therefore we consider that the identity and image levels are influenced by the messages that are promoted by the media. Our paper's goal is to find out how the image of the Romanians is being shaped and spread out by the media and which are the labels used in the process of framin g the Romanian people. Therefore, we applied the method of framing analysis as it was developed by William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani. In order to study what are the image parameters and levels that describe the Romanians and analyze the framing process we consider that frames are linguistic structures such as metaphors, visual icons and catchphrases, as Gamson and Modigliani pointed out. In this sense, we try to identify not only the imagological levels of the Romanians, but also the framing devices and try to find out the way they have influenced the image. Moreover, our research points out the fact that image has a strong stereotype character as the messages that regard Romanians refer to stereotypes. Finally, the research tries to identify which of the framing devices used by the media is more visible and has more influence in the construction of stereotypes.