In this article, we carry out a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of a sample from a larger corpus of Romanian news articles that covered the controversial camp evictions and repatriation of Romanian Roma migrants from France that began in 2010 and continue to the time of writing in 2017. These French government policies have been highly criticized both within France and by international political and aid organizations. However, the analysis shows how these brutal, anti-humanitarian events became recontextualized in the Romanian Press to represent the French government’s actions as peaceful and consensual. In addition, the demonization of the Roma in the press serves as a strategy to continuously disassociate them from their Romanian counterparts. While there is a long history of discrimination against the Roma in Romania, these particular recontextualizations can be understood in the context of the Romanian government’s need to gloss over its failure to comply with the Schengen accession requirements and acquire full European Union (EU) membership.

This article carries out a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of a Romanian Facebook page where comments are made in response to a shared news-clip showing a Roma wedding which clearly invites ridicule. It has been documented that there are well-established discourses representing the Roma as criminal, uneducated, dirty, immoral, and as resisting assimilation into wider society. This Facebook page offers the opportunity to explore which discourses are used in 1500 posts to represent the Roma. We show that the affordances of Facebook open-up the mixing of humor, venting of frustration, extreme racism and sexual violence as those posting entertain each other, create bonds and overtly call out the Roma and others who are believed to be part of a conspiracy against ordinary Romanians. We argue that these newer patterns of representing the Roma are related to the rise of extreme right-wing populist ideology across Europe and beyond. An ideology where direct, simple and violent solutions are required.

Research shows that the public image of Roma on television reinforces existing prejudice and stereotypes in relation to illiteracy, criminality, primitiveness, or refusal to comply with societal norms and values. Scholars have drawn attention to the various forms of racism, both overt and covert, we find in media and political discourse.  Yet, one aspect that is less explored is the role of humor and ridicule in communicating anti-Roma racism. In this article, I conduct a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of two news clips aired by one of the leading audio-visual stations in Romania. I draw attention to the use of humor and ridicule on public television as discursive strategies to belittle or conceal anti-Roma racism. I argue that such representations­—where buffoonery, bad taste, cultural incompetence, and arrogance are highlighted—go beyond simple entertainment and cheap laughs but reinforce the inferior and marginalised status that Romani people have held for centuries on Romanian territories.

Research shows that news media around the world tend to represent ethnic minorities in ways which nurture distorted views and invite negative attitudes. Scholars have also emphasised that, in contemporary societies, a political climate has emerged which has made overt racism unacceptable and social taboos leading to racist statements are increasingly being managed and disguised in order to avoid direct accusations. In this paper we use Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to carry out an in-depth analysis of a Romanian television news report—selected from a larger corpus—which addressed the situation of the Roma migrants in Norway. We show how this medium, with editing techniques, voice-overs, sound effects and captions, has its own subtleties for communicating racism in ways that are less obvious at a casual viewing. The case we analyse reports on a Norwegian/EU project to build a factory in Romania, so that Roma migrants can return home to work rather than live and beg on the streets of Oslo.

The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens in the EU, in January 2014, encountered much resistance both in European political discourse and the media, as these migrants became demonised and presented as social and economic threats. In this article, we show how the Romanian press dealt with such discriminatory discourses against the Romanian migrants. We conduct a thorough Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of news items published in Romanian press, prior to the lifting of work restrictions, and we argue that the Roma emerged as the perfect scapegoats that could explain the deviant and unruly behaviours ascribed by some western media to ‘Romanians’. We also show how racism toward the Roma, referred here as Romaphobia, invokes non-racial practices and instead builds on a reverse victimhood narrative. Such discourses relate in a broader sense to well-established discursive practices in Romanian context but also to the political climate across Europe which is marked by increased intolerance toward the Roma. It is the mixture of stereotypical discourses and populist rhetoric that makes racism towards the Roma appear naturalised and increasingly more difficult to challenge.