Alexandru Cârlan | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (original) (raw)

Papers by Alexandru Cârlan

Feminist Media Studies, 2023

The article examines the enactment of rhetorical citizenship in a cultural journalism podcast tha... more The article examines the enactment of rhetorical citizenship in a cultural journalism podcast that seeks (1) to raise awareness of the exploitation and abuses against intra-EU migrant caregivers (predominantly women) and (2) to reinvest with credibility and agency a woman activist with a contested personal history. The analytical framework draws upon semio-pragmatics, multimodal discourse studies and rhetorical criticism in order to show how rhetorical agency is jointly performed by the producer of the podcast (a woman journalist) and the migrant caregiver within the interaction frame of the podcast dispositive. We show that rhetorical agency is enabled through a balanced articulation of news-style documentary, reportage-specific personal narrative and voice-over commentary, cast in immersive podcast features. The producer combines traditional and alternative journalistic styles, genres and digital technologies to engage listeners, while connecting them to the low-skilled women migrants' transnational everyday lives and problems, and to their voices and rhetorical acts.

Revista Română de Sociologie, 2008

Starting from a recent volume issued by the Romanian researcher Constantin Schifirneţ, the author... more Starting from a recent volume issued by the Romanian researcher Constantin Schifirneţ, the author tries to prove the inadequacy of the term brand to the Romanian culture and civilization as it belongs to the so-called notion of the "forms without a content" deviced by the Romanian critic titu Maiorescu in the 19 th century already.

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, 2016

In this paper we investigate how the model of deliberation proposed by Isabela and Norman Fairclo... more In this paper we investigate how the model of deliberation proposed by Isabela and Norman Fairclough can be used for a better clarification and understanding of the framing processes in media – especially in opinion articles. We thus aim at integrating theoretical contributions from critical discourse analysis and argumentation theory with standard approaches to framing, originating in media studies. We emphasize how a rhetorical approach to framing can provide analytical insights into framing processes and complement the typical quantitative approaches with qualitative analysis based on textual reconstruction. Starting from an issue-specific approach to framing, we discuss a particular case of framing of intra-EU migration, analyzing four opinion articles selected from a larger corpus of Romanian, British and French media. We highlight, along our analysis, various methodological options and analytical difficulties inherent to such an approach.

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, 2015

This paper 1 investigates the sources of representations on the communist period and the type of ... more This paper 1 investigates the sources of representations on the communist period and the type of engagement with the past in an experiential museum, in the context of the National Network of Romanian Museums' project for a laboratory-museum of Romanian Communism. Our analysis of focus-groups in October-November 2012 explores the public's expectations in terms of museum experience and engagement with objects and the potential of an experiential museum to facilitate deliberation about the past. We use the conceptual framework of recent studies on postmemory (Hirsch, 2008) and prosthetic memory (Landsberg, 2004, 2009) to focus on ways of building the experiential archive needed to produce prosthetic memory. We consider that such an analysis is relevant for two interconnected problems: the bidirectional relationship between a projected museum of communism and a prospective public, and the methodological insights available for investigating this relation. With regard to the first problem, this paper makes a case for treating museums as a memory device rather than a lieu de memoire and analyses the role of the museum in relation to cultural memory. With regard to the second problem, it offers an example of conducting research on prospective publics which departs from traditional marketing approaches, adopting theoretical insights and analytical categories from specific conceptualizations in the field of memory studies.

Europenizarea societăţii româneşti şi mass-media

Page 239. 239 LEGITIMÂND EUROPA, LEGITIMAŢI DE EUROPA: CONSTRUCŢIA LEGITIMĂRII CA DUBLU JOC ÎN DI... more Page 239. 239 LEGITIMÂND EUROPA, LEGITIMAŢI DE EUROPA: CONSTRUCŢIA LEGITIMĂRII CA DUBLU JOC ÎN DISCURSUL CANDIDAŢILOR LA ALEGERILE EUROPARLAMENTARE Alexandru I. Cârlan INTRODUCERE ...

Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter einer Deposit-Lizenz (Keine Weiterverbreitung-keine B... more Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter einer Deposit-Lizenz (Keine Weiterverbreitung-keine Bearbeitung) zur Verfügung gestellt. Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an. Terms of use: This document is made available under Deposit Licence (No Redistribution-no modifications). We grant a non-exclusive, nontransferable, individual and limited right to using this document. This document is solely intended for your personal, noncommercial use. All of the copies of this documents must retain all copyright information and other information regarding legal protection. You are not allowed to alter this document in any way, to copy it for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the document in public, to perform, distribute or otherwise use the document in public. By using this particular document, you accept the above-stated conditions of use.

This explorative study focuses on the construction of migration as a public problem through media... more This explorative study focuses on the construction of migration as a public problem through media discourse. Adopting Rogers Brubaker’s suggestion to approach diaspora as “a idiom, stance and claim”, we start from the assumption that journalists, when discussing migration, adopt diasporic stances, expressing loyalties and moral commitments and articulating them in the debate through practical arguments. Focusing on the media debates generated, in August 2010, by a declaration of Traian Bãsescu, president of Romania, on the effects of migration, we identify three types of media discourse: the policy approach discourse, the professional accomplishment discourse and the citizen-as-victim discourse. We systematically relate these types of discourses with the arguments invoked for or against migration, and their subjacent loyalties. We conclude that through such diasporic stances, journalist engage diaspora in an instrumental manner, instituting a onedimensional perspective on it, along the traditional view of the social-political victimization.

What kind of story could be conveyed about psychiatric patients and the practices of their confin... more What kind of story could be conveyed about psychiatric patients and the practices of their confinement in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century? How could such an account be grounded? What theoretical tools and frameworks would allow for an apprehension of this situation, and within or across which disciplinary frameworks? Firmly situated in the field of rhetoric of science, Diagnosing Madness. The discursive construction of the psychiatric patient, 1850-1920 attempts such an account, “placing rhetorical analysis of the written word at the center of the web of cultural practices that made asylums possible in the nineteenth century”

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations

Photography has been, from its early stages, a powerful tool for the anthropologist, both as a me... more Photography has been, from its early stages, a powerful tool for the anthropologist, both as a mechanical technique to record data and as a heuristic tool used to reflect on the anthropologist’s approach as such. At the same time, its iconicity and indexicality have allowed for a different epistemic regime, an allegedly privileged connection to “the facts” or “the truth”, in opposition to the written notes of the anthropologist, vulnerable to subjectivity, bias or error. A substantial direction in visual culture studies questions the articulation of image and text, and acknowledges a power relation between the two, as if despite its iconicity and indexicality, photography needs taming by the text that clarifies its meaning and incorporates it in bigger narratives. It is in this context that W. J. T. Mitchell echoes the famous question “Can the subaltern speak?” in relation to photography, asking “What do pictures want?” (Mitchell, 2005, pp. 28-30). It is within this vision of photog...

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, Dec 1, 2019

Journal of Language and Politics

The article examines three Romanian diasporic publications in the UK, aiming to identify the form... more The article examines three Romanian diasporic publications in the UK, aiming to identify the formation of a diasporic counterpublic in opposition to mainstream anti-EU immigration stances, during and after the 2016 referendum. Drawing upon (critical) discourse analysis, argumentation theory and rhetoric, it proposes a discursive operationalisation of the concept of counterpublic, employed to analyse the articulation of exclusion and the expression of opposition in diasporic media. The diasporic contributions undermine the nativist logic of particular mainstream stances by exposing discrimination and injustice against EU immigrants as unacceptable for a democratic society, and by openly rejecting the identity-based hierarchies that uphold this logic. Such positions co-exist with the partial reproduction of symbolic boundaries, in a style that is similarly mixed (deliberation, irony, personal narratives, classic reporting and blog style). Despite these contradictory tendencies, critic...

Critical Discourse Studies, 2017

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, Dec 1, 2019

Journal of Language and Politics, 2020

Debating Migration as a Public Problem: National Publics and Transnational Fields (Global Crises and the Media Series). , 2018

The President 1 expressed well and succinctly the desire of the majority of the population when h... more The President 1 expressed well and succinctly the desire of the majority of the population when he urged those dissatisfied with the conditions in the country 2 to abandon Romania and go to other countries, which could offer them what they wanted. He first wished "safe journey" and "fair wind" to doctors. He then implied that teachers should feel free to follow them, if they can't find a second "job" in Romania. 3 ("Traian Băsescu, Criticized by the British Press: He Supports the Migration of His Own Citizens") 4 debating migration as a public problem Our own research focuses on how media debates on emigration institute a transnational field in which a public problem is articulated, identities are constituted, symbolic missions are attributed to emigrants claimed as "diaspora", and symbolic exclusions and hierarchies are produced.

Feminist Media Studies, 2023

Revista Română de Sociologie, 2008

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, 2016

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, 2015

Europenizarea societăţii româneşti şi mass-media

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, Dec 1, 2019

Journal of Language and Politics

Critical Discourse Studies, 2017

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, Dec 1, 2019

Journal of Language and Politics, 2020

Debating Migration as a Public Problem: National Publics and Transnational Fields (Global Crises and the Media Series). , 2018

This volume identifies empirical sites and methodological frames for approaching the construction... more This volume identifies empirical sites and methodological frames for approaching the construction of migration as a public problem. Starting from the premise that transnationalism becomes structural in setting the public agenda, the authors explore topics and arguments on migration in media and political discourses, as well as the ways migrants and non-migrants recontextualize these discourses in the process of making sense of migration, as a matter of citizenship and policy action.