Irina Diana Madroane | West University of Timisoara (original) (raw)

Papers by Irina Diana Madroane

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.

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen

In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when t... more In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when they are away, the anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu wrote that the food ‘from home’ ‘is not from the marketplace, it is not even “as grandma makes it” or “as Mum makes it at home”, it is from Mum. It is Mum.’ (2018, our translation, added emphases), thus stressing the fact that it has the capacity to instantly recreate affective bonds across space. This chapter looks into the symbolic construction in alternative media of transnational forms of identification and connection that are developed and sustained through mobility and home/place-making practices, permeated with affect and emotion. Our exploratory analysis examines a video reportage by the Romanian online publication, Recorder, starting from the hypothesis that it offers viewers specific semiotic resources for interpretation, identity building in transnational contexts and engagement in the transnational social field. Titled ‘Diaspora la pachet’/‘Diaspora in a parcel’1 (Udișteanu and Muntean, 2019), the video reportage, released on 28 December 2019, follows en route Christmas food parcels sent by families in Romanian villages to their migrant members in London and Coventry, parcels that are carriers of affects, emotions and memories of the home(land). It enjoyed popularity on social media2 (most prominently on Facebook and YouTube), reaching both diasporic and non-diasporic publics, and being widely circulated in the context of the family-centred winter holiday season. We aim to bring out the characteristic ways in which an alternative media publication attempts to grant visibility to ordinary migrant and non-migrant actors engaged in regular mobilities and emotion-ridden interactions within transnational families and communities. Our points of reference for comparison are findings on the construction of Romanian intra-EU migration as a public problem (Beciu et al., 2018), which reveal an instrumentalization of the diaspora in mainstream media and political discourse. Reified identity categories (the ‘diaspora’, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Romanian migrants, the ‘heroes’ and the ‘slaves’/‘victims’) have thus been strategically used by public actors to formulate stances and claims regarding other issues (such as Romania’s country image), to mobilize, or to reposition Romania as an EU member-state in a transnational field of power relations (Beciu et al., 2018). As shown by Beciu and Lazăr (2016), the mainstream media representations of the migrants’ mobilities are well integrated into such discursive mechanisms, resulting into visibility patterns of mobility geographies, processes and identities that are essentialized, dramatized, and instrumentalized. The ensuing repertoire, they conclude, ‘circumvents the ways in which these actors foster meaningful relationships and roles’ in the transnational social field (Beciu and Lazăr, 2016: 54). Our working hypothesis is that, as an alternative media publication, the Recorder seeks to capture for its publics the ‘meaningful relationships and roles’ that migrants develop across borders in relation to their families and communities in the localities of origin and destination. We regard the verbal and visual representations in the video reportage as semiotic resources that diasporic and non-diasporic publics could use to interpret transnational migration phenomena and spaces, as well as to negotiate their identities and belongings to transnational communities (Georgiou, 2006). Within this frame, a special focus will be on emotion in relation to the migrants’ subjective engagement, an under-researched area in transnational migration studies (Boccagni and Baldassar, 2015). Our chapter will give insights into the distinct alternative media construction and performance of mobility practices that connect migrants and non-migrants in transnational contexts. We begin by conceptualizing transnational identity and relationship building through the lens of practices of home-/place-making, emotions and mobilities.

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen, 2022

In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when t... more In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when they are away, the anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu wrote that the food ‘from home’ ‘is not from the marketplace, it is not even “as grandma makes it” or “as Mum makes it at home”, it is from Mum. It is Mum.’ (2018, our translation, added emphases), thus stressing the fact that it has the capacity to instantly recreate affective bonds across space. This chapter looks into the symbolic construction in alternative media of transnational forms of identification and connection that are developed and sustained through mobility and home/place-making practices, permeated with affect and emotion. Our exploratory analysis examines a video reportage by the Romanian online publication, Recorder, starting from the hypothesis
that it offers viewers specific semiotic resources for interpretation, identity building in transnational contexts and engagement in the transnational social field. Titled ‘Diaspora la pachet’/‘Diaspora in a parcel’1 (Udișteanu and Muntean, 2019), the video reportage, released on 28 December 2019, follows en route Christmas food parcels sent by families in Romanian villages to their migrant members in London
and Coventry, parcels that are carriers of affects, emotions and memories of the home(land). It enjoyed popularity on social media2 (most prominently on Facebook and YouTube), reaching both diasporic and non-diasporic publics, and being widely circulated in the context of the family-centred winter holiday season.
We aim to bring out the characteristic ways in which an alternative media publication attempts to grant visibility to ordinary migrant and non-migrant actors engaged in regular mobilities and emotion-ridden interactions within transnational families and communities. Our points of reference for comparison are findings on the construction of Romanian intra-EU migration as a public problem (Beciu et al., 2018), which reveal an instrumentalization of the diaspora in mainstream media and political discourse. Reified identity categories (the ‘diaspora’, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Romanian migrants, the ‘heroes’ and the ‘slaves’/‘victims’) have thus been strategically used by public actors to formulate stances and claims regarding other issues (such as Romania’s country image), to mobilize, or to reposition Romania as an EU member-state in a transnational field of power relations (Beciu et al., 2018). As shown by Beciu and
Lazăr (2016), the mainstream media representations of the migrants’ mobilities are well integrated into such discursive mechanisms, resulting into visibility patterns of mobility geographies, processes and identities that are essentialized, dramatized, and instrumentalized. The ensuing repertoire, they conclude, ‘circumvents the ways in which these actors foster meaningful relationships and roles’ in the transnational social field (Beciu and Lazăr, 2016: 54). Our working hypothesis is that, as an alternative media publication, the Recorder seeks to capture for its publics the ‘meaningful relationships and roles’ that migrants develop across borders in relation to their families and communities in the localities of origin and destination. We regard the verbal and visual representations in the video reportage as semiotic resources that diasporic and non-diasporic publics could use to interpret transnational migration phenomena and spaces, as well as to negotiate their identities and belongings to transnational communities (Georgiou, 2006). Within this frame, a special focus will be on emotion in relation to the migrants’ subjective engagement, an under-researched area in transnational migration studies (Boccagni and Baldassar, 2015). Our chapter will give insights into the distinct alternative media construction and performance of mobility practices that connect migrants and non-migrants in transnational contexts. We begin by conceptualizing transnational identity and relationship building through the lens of practices of home-/place-making, emotions and mobilities.

Critical Discourse Studies, 2017

The article examines the construction of transnational migrant agency in the media of the sending... more The article examines the construction of transnational migrant agency in the media of the sending country, starting from the contestation and reinterpretation in the Romanian press of a British documentary about Romanian migrants in the UK. It proposes an analytical framework that allows insights into the ways in which the national mainstream media engage in transnational dynamics. The findings show that Romanian journalists construct a European field of power relations where Romania is in a disadvantageous position, followed by a symbolic appropriation of the migrants' identities, as a means of rearticulating the country's position in this field. This is coupled with the emergence of a self-reflexive discourse that informs a stance of collective responsibility and provides well-grounded reasons for a debate about 'us'. The Romanian media (re)produce a politics of belonging, legitimising particular migrant-nonmigrant relationships as well as policies, and (re)position themselves and their publics towards the issue of intra-EU migration.

Identities, 2015

The study explores through a 'transnational lens' the Romanian media construction of remitting pr... more The study explores through a 'transnational lens' the Romanian media construction of remitting practices and identities within a wider debate on circular migration. It uses a broad definition of remittances (financial, sociocultural and political) and is concerned with the role of the Romanian press in articulating migrant-non-migrant relationships and laying the ground for informed policy debates. The methodology consists of qualitative corpus analysis and discourse analysis applied to a corpus of 221 news articles. The main findings indicate an overall positive evaluation of remittances (with the main exception of family separation), which endows migrants with social recognition as development agents and is used to justify various policy initiatives, but at the same time disempowers them through instrumentalisation. Even though limited in scope, grassroots migrant-non-migrant interaction, combined with a critical journalistic stance in editorials, opens up an avenue towards negotiation and joint transnational actions.

This paper proposes a new theorization of the concept of “framing”, in which argumentation has a ... more This paper proposes a new theorization of the concept of “framing”, in which argumentation has a central role. When decision-making is involved, to frame an issue is to offer the audience a salient and thus potentially overriding premise in a deliberative process that can ground decision and action. The analysis focuses on the Roşia Montană case, a conflict over policy that developed over the years into an environmental social movement and, in September 2013, culminated in the most significant public protests in Romania since the 1989 Revolution. Starting from Entman’s understanding of framing as “selection and salience”, several framing strategies are identified and discussed, illustrating three main mechanisms. The way in which “selection and salience” operates via a range of argument schemes in a deliberative, decision-making process, in order to produce framing effects (including, possibly, collective mobilization) is illustrated with examples from the 2013 campaign and protests...

Gender Studies, 2019

Starting from the premise that intra-EU migration has generated a repertoire of representations, ... more Starting from the premise that intra-EU migration has generated a repertoire of representations, narratives and stances in Romanian public imagination, within a transnational context, the present article explores an area that has attracted little scholarly attention to date: Romanian New Cinema films that tackle this theme. The analysis focuses on “Francescaˮ (Bobby Păunescu, 2009), a film centred on a female character who is on the verge of deciding whether to emigrate or not. It examines how female identity and agency are shaped in connection to symbolic constructions of the “West” as a destination space for Romanian migrants, through modalities of expression specific to the New Romanian Cinema.

Revista Română de Sociologie, 2016

Advocacy media campaigns, staged by Romanian television channels and focused on changing social p... more Advocacy media campaigns, staged by Romanian television channels and focused on changing social policies, have gained increasing visibility in the Romanian public sphere. The article examines models of journalism and normative theories about the role of the press in a democracy in order to carve out a normative position from which this emerging media format can be analysed. It situates media advocacy within the frame of interpretive journalism, aimed both at facilitating democratic debate and citizen participation (civic journalism), and at social reform (radical journalism). The reassessment of media strategies based on emotions and interpretation as mediators of social reality may lead to a positive, 'optimistic' view of campaign journalism. However, the advanced commercialisation of the media and the struggles for political representation interfere with and make the task of socially responsible journalism an incredibly challenging one

This paper proposes a new theorization of the concept of ‘framing’, in which argumentation has a ... more This paper proposes a new theorization of the concept of ‘framing’, in which argumentation has a central role. When decision-making is involved, to ‘frame’ an issue amounts to offering the audience a salient and thus potentially overriding premise in a deliberative process that can ground decision and action. The analysis focuses on the Rosia Montană case, a conflict over policy that led, in September 2013, to the most significant public protests in Romania since the 1989 Revolution.

Gender Studies, 2017

The outcome of an ambitious editorial project, Gender Equality in a Global Perspective is a timel... more The outcome of an ambitious editorial project, Gender Equality in a Global Perspective is a timely and insightful contribution to the ongoing scholarly and policy debates about the implementation of international legislation on gender equality in a range of national contexts around the globe. The volume brings together specialists with a background in disciplines as

Dossier: Argumentación, deliberación y acción colectiva, 2020

Journal of Language and Politics, 2020

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...

Television & New Media, 2017

The article examines emerging practices of personalization in political talk shows on Romanian te... more The article examines emerging practices of personalization in political talk shows on Romanian television. Our interest lies in the reconfiguration of the role of critical journalist, as performed by talk show hosts on private TV channels, in the context of increasing commercialization and instrumentalization of the Romanian media in postcommunism. This development consists of the strategic use of personalization, achieved through the talk show dispositive, for the enactment of positions of journalistic interpretation, adversarialness, and intervention on behalf of the citizens. The findings indicate shifts in the symmetry/asymmetry relationships between journalists, guests, politicians, and publics, as well as new ways of constructing and understanding public issues. Two main patterns of personalization have been identified: the journalist as a fully engaged voice, effectively substituting itself for the public opinion, and the journalist as an ordinary person, who has the capacity...

Romanian Journal of English Studies, 2014

The article applies a recently developed framework for the reconstruction and evaluation of argum... more The article applies a recently developed framework for the reconstruction and evaluation of arguments based on practical reasoning (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012) to the analysis of a public consultation session organised by the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2011, which made partial use of digital media. The session is concerned with the Environmental Impact Assessment report in a case of public notoriety in post-communist Romania: the goldmining project at Roșia Montană. The findings indicate that the critical questioning by the public is aimed at rebutting the corporation’s main claim and proposed course of action, but its final outcome is conditioned by the institutional context and the steps that follow the consultation session.

The entry discusses gender and class, but also race, ethnicity, and geographic location as inters... more The entry discusses gender and class, but also race, ethnicity, and geographic location as intersecting axes of social inequality, and the role of the traditional media in (re)producing social hierarchies resulting from such intersections and in backgrounding structural conditions of inequality. It looks at media production (women journalists; ordinary people as cheap labor in reality television entertainment), at audiences (the feminization of media output; the focus on a general middle‐class audience, and, consequently, the legitimation of middle‐class values as the norm, and of the middle‐class woman and man as role models), and at the media construction of gendered and classed identities, viewed as part of symbolic struggles for repositioning in society. Noteworthy representations of gendered and classed identities in the news deal with violence against women or with the situation of women domestic workers; the intersection between gender and class leads to the minimization of rape through the blaming of women for inappropriate behavior (associated with the working class and/or with race) or to the devaluation of domestic workers who do not comply with the expectations of middle‐class employers. Reality television genres present a complex picture, with participants embarking on a (neoliberal) project of self‐improvement, which involves the shaming of working‐class, and, less often, of aspiring upper‐middle‐class contestants, the commodified performance of “real” selves, including “abject” identities that arouse disgust (e.g., the “chav,” the White “trash”) and, overall, symbolic boundary‐drawing that reproduces gender and class stereotypes and maintains inequalities. At the same time, the infotainment genres in the mainstream media have some (limited) potential for empowerment and change.

Gender Studies

The article looks at a corpus of personal stories told by Romanian migrant women who work as care... more The article looks at a corpus of personal stories told by Romanian migrant women who work as caregivers in Italy or by journalists, from the women’s perspective, in two Romanian diasporic publications. It aims to gain an insight into the ways the narrators use the diasporic media space to (re)situate themselves in relation to the home and host societies. A methodological framework that incorporates elements from narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis is applied for examining the (self-)construction of agency and social roles, the negotiation of belonging to social categories, and the positionings that emerge, including towards dominant worldviews and discourses on low-skilled migrant women. The findings indicate that the women narrators build their identities in a complex interplay of (dis-)empowering stances, using their experience of migration to attain agency and to contest, but also reaffirm, in a transnational context, traditional gender roles, occupational and clas...

The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication (Wiley-Blackwell; editor-in-chief: Karen Ross), 2020

Journal of Language and Politics, 2020

Feminist Media Studies, 2023

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen, 2022

In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when t... more In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when they are away, the anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu wrote that the food ‘from home’ ‘is not from the marketplace, it is not even “as grandma makes it” or “as Mum makes it at home”, it is from Mum. It is Mum.’ (2018, our translation, added emphases), thus stressing the fact that it has the capacity to instantly recreate affective bonds across space. This chapter looks into the symbolic construction in alternative media of transnational forms of identification and connection that are developed and sustained through mobility and home/place-making practices, permeated with affect and emotion. Our exploratory analysis examines a video reportage by the Romanian online publication, Recorder, starting from the hypothesis
that it offers viewers specific semiotic resources for interpretation, identity building in transnational contexts and engagement in the transnational social field. Titled ‘Diaspora la pachet’/‘Diaspora in a parcel’1 (Udișteanu and Muntean, 2019), the video reportage, released on 28 December 2019, follows en route Christmas food parcels sent by families in Romanian villages to their migrant members in London
and Coventry, parcels that are carriers of affects, emotions and memories of the home(land). It enjoyed popularity on social media2 (most prominently on Facebook and YouTube), reaching both diasporic and non-diasporic publics, and being widely circulated in the context of the family-centred winter holiday season.
We aim to bring out the characteristic ways in which an alternative media publication attempts to grant visibility to ordinary migrant and non-migrant actors engaged in regular mobilities and emotion-ridden interactions within transnational families and communities. Our points of reference for comparison are findings on the construction of Romanian intra-EU migration as a public problem (Beciu et al., 2018), which reveal an instrumentalization of the diaspora in mainstream media and political discourse. Reified identity categories (the ‘diaspora’, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Romanian migrants, the ‘heroes’ and the ‘slaves’/‘victims’) have thus been strategically used by public actors to formulate stances and claims regarding other issues (such as Romania’s country image), to mobilize, or to reposition Romania as an EU member-state in a transnational field of power relations (Beciu et al., 2018). As shown by Beciu and
Lazăr (2016), the mainstream media representations of the migrants’ mobilities are well integrated into such discursive mechanisms, resulting into visibility patterns of mobility geographies, processes and identities that are essentialized, dramatized, and instrumentalized. The ensuing repertoire, they conclude, ‘circumvents the ways in which these actors foster meaningful relationships and roles’ in the transnational social field (Beciu and Lazăr, 2016: 54). Our working hypothesis is that, as an alternative media publication, the Recorder seeks to capture for its publics the ‘meaningful relationships and roles’ that migrants develop across borders in relation to their families and communities in the localities of origin and destination. We regard the verbal and visual representations in the video reportage as semiotic resources that diasporic and non-diasporic publics could use to interpret transnational migration phenomena and spaces, as well as to negotiate their identities and belongings to transnational communities (Georgiou, 2006). Within this frame, a special focus will be on emotion in relation to the migrants’ subjective engagement, an under-researched area in transnational migration studies (Boccagni and Baldassar, 2015). Our chapter will give insights into the distinct alternative media construction and performance of mobility practices that connect migrants and non-migrants in transnational contexts. We begin by conceptualizing transnational identity and relationship building through the lens of practices of home-/place-making, emotions and mobilities.

Critical Discourse Studies, 2017

Identities, 2015

Gender Studies, 2019

Revista Română de Sociologie, 2016

Gender Studies, 2017

Dossier: Argumentación, deliberación y acción colectiva, 2020

Journal of Language and Politics, 2020

Television & New Media, 2017

Romanian Journal of English Studies, 2014

Gender Studies

The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication (Wiley-Blackwell; editor-in-chief: Karen Ross), 2020

Journal of Language and Politics, 2020

Europe: Continent of Conspiracies Conspiracy Theories in and about Europe, 2021

This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the und... more This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the understanding of Europe as a geo-political entity as well as an imagined political and cultural space.

Focusing on recent developments, the individual chapters explore a range of conspiratorial positions related to Europe. In the current climate of fear and threat, new and old imaginaries of conspiracy such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have been mobilised. A dystopian or even apocalyptic image of Europe in terminal decline is evoked in Eastern European and particularly by Russian pro-Kremlin media, while the EU emerges as a screen upon which several narratives of conspiracy are projected trans-nationally, ranging from the Greek debt crisis to migration, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodological perspectives applied in this volume range from qualitative discourse and media analysis to quantitative social-psychological approaches, and there are a number of national and transnational case studies.

This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of extremism, conspiracy theories, and European politics.

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.

Co-herencia, 2020

El presente artículo propone una nueva teorización del concepto de framing o marco, en el cual la... more El presente artículo propone una nueva teorización del concepto de framing o marco, en el cual la argumentación cumple un papel fundamental. Cuando hablamos de tomar decisiones, enmarcar un asunto implica ofrecer a la audiencia una premisa destacada y, por ende, posiblemente primordial en un proceso deliberativo que permite fundamentar tanta la decisión como la acción. El análisis se centra en el caso de Roşia Montană, una controversia sobre políticas públicas que, con el correr de los años, se transformó en un movimiento socioambiental y que, en el mes de septiembre de 2013, culminó en las protestas más importantes que se vivieron en Rumania desde la Revolución de 1989. Partiendo del concepto de framing que Entman entiende como “selección y énfasis”, se identifican y comentan varias estrategias de enmarcado que ilustran tres mecanismos principales. La manera en que operan la “selección y el énfasis” a través de una serie de esquemas de argumentos dentro de un proceso de decisión deliberativo para producir efectos de enmarcado (incluida, posiblemente, la movilización colectiva) se ilustra con ejemplos de la campaña y las protestas de 2013 (eslóganes, sitios web, blogs y notas periodísticas).