El sitio de noticias ro.sputnik.md es la versión en lengua rumana de la plataforma web de noticias Sputnik, propiedad del gobierno ruso, uno de los principales canales utilizados por el Kremlin para difundir información errónea y desinformación a través de las fronteras rusas. La presente investigación pretende identificar en los textos mediáticos de ro.sputnik.md los marcos asociados a las vacunas anti-COVID-19 y los valores noticiosos utilizados para construir el discurso informativo sobre la vacunación. Para mapear los marcos mediáticos y las construcciones léxicas y discursivas, la investigación propone un enfoque mixto basado en el contenido, en el que el análisis automatizado del texto (frecuencia, co-ocurrencia, n-gramas) se combina con el análisis temático y del discurso. En el corpus se identifican seis marcos de énfasis (N=1.165): Superioridad de la vacuna rusa Sputnik V, efectos fatales/secundarios de las vacunas autorizadas por la UE, limitaciones de los derechos y libertades individuales, lucha de las autoridades de la ue y/o rumanía, protección de los niños/adolescentes y conspiración de las grandes farmacéuticas. Los resultados muestran que al valor noticioso de negatividad se asocian fórmulas discursivas específicas: muerte, efectos secundarios (coágulos de sangre, trombosis, coagulación), restricciones e interdicciones o advertencias (grave, riesgo, pánico), mientras que al valor noticioso de conflicto se asocian el vocabulario bélico (defensa, batalla, pólvora) y al elitismo, actores conocidos (líderes estatales, «conspiradores» famosos) y países (actores internacionales poderosos, vecinos significativos). Russian disinformation in Eastern Europe. Vaccination media frames in ro.sputnik.md

"The entertainment media often delivers cultural symbols, which occasionally inform news media discourse. Such is the case of the “Joker” being used as a symbol of chaos. Since the character’s existence and popularity generated a pool of possibilities for political associations, the latest Joker film by director Todd Phillips, which premiered in 2019, caused controversy on many levels: “The real threat of Joker is hiding in plain sight” (The New York Times 2019); “Joker isn’t an ode to the far right – it’s a warning against austerity” (The Guardian 2019). The polemical aspect of the discourse prompted by this film is apparent in the frames used by the news media to cover Joker’s premiere. This paper aims to identify these news media frames, using an inductive clustering method, and further investigate them by exploring theories of social construction of reality, with a focus on psychoanalytic aspects of the hero/villain myth that informs these news frames. Keywords: Media Frames, Myth, Constructivism, Joker. "

Political actors who adapt their performance to the logic of politainment gain visibility and success in the public sphere. Such is the case of George Simion, an emerging politician and leader of the newest parliamentary party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), a populist radical right party that proved especially attractive to Romanian diaspora voters. This study focuses on the discursive and stylistic dimensions of Simion’s newsworthiness and mediatization. Additionally, a multiplatform analysis of his populist communication content and style aims to determine degrees of populism. As such, we propose a mixed-methods multimodal approach that combines corpus linguistics and semi-automated content analysis with thematic coding and visual semiotic analysis. The media-reported performance analysis focuses on content (<em>n</em> = 963) produced by three popular online news media outlets (<em>Digi24.ro</em>, <em>Adevărul.ro</em>, and <em>Antena3.ro</em>) between May 13th 2015 and April 30th 2022, while the analysis of Simion’s discourse examines his Telegram channel’s feed (738 messages and 383 images) between March 15th 2021 and April 30th 2022, and his authored texts published in <em>Adevărul.ro</em> (<em>n</em> = 116) between July 8th 2014 and April 30th 2022. The results indicate that news media reports are defined by conflict (aggression, violence), scandalization, negativity, emotionality, and by a prevalent use of arresting quotes that employ colloquial language (sarcasm, vulgarity). Simion’s celebrity populism is styled through an “ideal candidate,” “populist campaigner” image and framed through the emotional glorification (unionism, patriotism, Orthodoxy) of a potentially united “homeland,” a democratic space that reflects the unadulterated will of ordinary Christian-Orthodox Romanians whose sovereignty is currently undermined by corrupt political elites. He invokes historical narratives (e.g., founding fathers, retrospective utopia) reinforced through othering the EU and ethnic/sexual minorities as forces that threaten the purity of “the people.”

This study is a critical mixed-methods investigation of the Joker’s ubiquity within international media discourse. The research comparatively examines the myth’s presence within The Guardian and The New York Times’ news reporting (1999–2020), and determines intermedia agenda-setting processes. Using a corpus linguistics approach, the paper also analyses news media’s deployment of the Joker as a figure of speech, with the purpose of identifying prom­inent news values. The results indicate a high prevalence of consonance, eliteness, proximity, negativity, and superlativeness. Moreover, the study investigates the role that user-generated media plays in perpetuating or countering dominant hegemonies, by semiotically analysing internet memes that use the myth within the r/meme subreddit community. Overall, the study finds that the Joker is a popular resource for the mediated construction of a derogatory stereotype, associated with sexist, racist and ableist myths, often in connection to political elites (Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Barack Obama), and serves as a tool for mockery, shame, and dramatization of events.