IDEOLOGIZED IDENTITIES IN THE ROMANIAN E-NEWS. A CULTURAL SOCIOLINGUISTIC QUERY OF CONVERGED MEDIA TEXTS ON THE 2022 RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT

Diana COTRĂU

doi:10.24193/subbphilo.2022.4.04

Authors

Diana COTRĂU Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. Email: diana.cotrau@ubbcluj.ro https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2495-0097

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2022.4.04

Keywords:

Cultural Sociolinguistics, Ethnography of Netspeak, ideologized identity, digital cultural practices, textual interpretation, e-Press, Social Networked Sites

Abstract

Ideologized Identities in the Romanian e-News. A Cultural Sociolinguistic Query of Converged Media Texts on the 2022 Russia-Ukraine Conflict. The design for this paper is to provide a qualitative analysis of how positioning towards the two parties directly involved in the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict has been the catalyst of the textual morphing of two ideologized identities in some of the Romanian e-Press. The focus was on the locus of convergence of two types of mediated texts: the production of professional press editors and journalists, and of Social Networked Sites users and prosumers. With this intent, the Romanian HotNews.ro website was scrutinized, and a number of e-news items were singled out thematically and structurally. The presumption is that the mediation process has been conducive to foregrounding two ballpark antithetic identities as underpinned by correspondent ideologies. An interdisciplinary perspective was opted for, one that joins Cultural Sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis (Agha 2007; Androutsopoulous 2006; Blommaert 2017; Herring 2013; Silverstein 2004; Thurlow 2017; Wodak 2022) with the Ethnography of Netspeak (Kozinets 2010; Markham 2016, 2020; Zappavigna 2011) and focuses on collective identities in order to diagnose how the mediated text, as part of the semiotic architecture of the said e-Press inputs, pairs up antithetic ideology-determined identities in times of crisis.

Article history: Received 15 August 2022; Revised 26 October 2022; Accepted 8 November 2022;
Available online 20 December 2022; Available print 30 December 2022.

REZUMAT. Identități ideologizante în presa electronică din România. O investigație de factură sociolingvistică și culturală a unor texte mediatice convergente pe tema conflictului ruso-ucrainean din 2022. Intenția lucrării de față este de a furniza o analiză calitativă a modului în care poziționarea față de cele două părți direct implicate în conflictul ruso-ucranean a catalizat alcătuirea în textele unei părți a presei electronice românești a două identități ideologizante. Accentul cade asupra locului de convergență a două tipuri de texte mediatice, și anume produsele editorilor și jurnaliștilor de presă și cele ale utilizatorilor și prozumatorilor de pe siturile de socializare în rețea. S-au identificat din punct de vedere tematic și structural un număr de articole de știri electronice de pe platforma românească de știri HotNews.ro. S-a presupus că procesul de mediatizare facilitează evidențierea, în mare, a două identități antitetice, întemeiate pe ideologiile aferente. S-a optat pentru utilizarea unei perspective intersdisciplinare, ce reunește Sociolingvistica culturală și Analiza critică a discursului (Agha 2007; Androutsopoulous 2006; Blommaert 2017; Herring 2013; Thurlow 2017; Silverstein 2004; Wodak 2022) și Etnografia dialogului pe Internet (Kozinets 2010; Markham 2016, 2020; Zappavigna 2011) cu accent pe identitățile colective, cu scopul de a diagnostica modul în care textul mediatic, parte a arhitecturii semiotice a tipului de presă menționat, alătură identități antitetice în baza curentului ideologic căruia îi subscriu în momente de criză.

Cuvinte-cheie: Sociolingvistică culturală, Etnografia dialogului pe Internet, identitate ideologizantă, practici culturale digitale, interpretare de text, presă electronică, situri ale rețelelor de socializare

Author Biography

Diana COTRĂU, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. Email: diana.cotrau@ubbcluj.ro

Diana COTRĂU is Associate Professor at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. Her core academic work has been devoted to teaching and researching fresh topics in domains such as Intercultural Communication, Cultural Sociolinguistics, and Internet Linguistics. Her latest interests lie in analysing the online discourse construction of identities and textual semiotic architecture in the Social Media. Her single-authored and collaborative published work includes several papers and the following books and volumes: Youth Identity in Media Discourse. A Sociolinguistic Perspective (2008), Studies in Language, Culture, and the Media (2009), Online and Offline Discourses. New Worlds, New Sociolinguistic Perspectives (2019) and An Introduction to Internet Linguistics. The Cultural Sociolinguistic Take with Case Studies (2021). Email: diana.cotrau@ubbcluj.ro

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Webography:

https://www.hotnews.ro/razboi_ucraina