A History of Roma in the Public Sphere : The social construction of Roma in press and history textbooks after Ceausescu

Abstract: This study addresses the post-revolutionary history of Roma in the Romanian public sphere by examining the social construction of this minority in press and history textbooks. The objective is to illuminate synchronic and diachronic structural patterns in public texts debating Roma in order to offer a deeper understanding of the Romanian xenophobia assuming that the public debate affects the status quo of Roma. Public texts represent fruitful channels of communication through which selective social realities par excellence, stocks of knowledge and typifications are proclaimed by different societal actors. The press possess a critical function whilst history textbooks a manipulative function advocating normative historical realties par excellence. The modi operandi utilized are quantitative, qualitative content- and critical discourse analysis, which are applied in the monitoring of approximately 6000 newspapers, 197 articles (1991-2012) and 6 textbooks (2008-2014). The results indicate that the media history of Roma resembled police investigations rather than conventional journalism. Manifest and latent stereotypifications have synchronically and diachronically formed uncritical and demonizing stocks of knowledge, whose societal truths sustained the othering of Roma in press and were depicted as a force behind the destruction of [“our”] national self-image. History textbooks have offered an inexistent stock of historical knowledge omitting, e.g. the slavery and deportations of Roma but highlighting ethnocentric perspectives, patriotism and other minorities.