Browsing by Author "Cheregi, Bianca Florentina"

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Branding Romania as a ”Tech Country”. Nation Branding in Times of Digital Disruption
(‘Henri Coanda’ Air Force Academy Publishing House, 2020) Cheregi, Bianca Florentina; Bârgăoanu, Alina
In the age of “digital disinformation 2.0” (Bârgăoanu, 2018) and “digital deceit” (Ghosh & Scott, 2018), nation branding has become part of a new paradigm of strategic communication between states, trying to seduce various audiences. According to Korjus (2017), the next big industry to face digital disruption will be our nations. For instance, Estonia’s brand image is based on the idea of a digital state, both for domestic and foreign audiences. In Denmark, Casper Klynge has become the first nation state ambassador to Silicon Valley, describing his job as “techplomacy” (Baugh, 2017). The nation-state is responding to the new communications environment by reinventing itself in the current climate of intercultural dialogue for Europe. An interesting case is to be found in contemporary Romania, ranked 46th in the world, in terms of digital competitiveness at global level (World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, 2019). Overall, the aim of our research is to investigate technology as a soft power (Nye, 2004) instrument for Romania and to analyze how journalists and public actors construct the topic of new technology as a competitive advantage. In doing so, our research revolves around 50 news articles, published in the Romanian quality press (Adevărul, Gândul, România Liberă), employing mixed methods such as framing analysis (Entman, 1993) and critical discourse analysis. The results show that journalists have an active role in constructing technology as a public issue in Romania, related to future policy-making and regulation endeavors, as well as the future of public diplomacy.
Branding Romania in the Age of Disruption.Technology as a Soft Power Instrument
(Editura Accent, 2020) Cheregi, Bianca Florentina; Bârgăoanu, Alina
"In the age of disruption and in today’s platform society (Van Dijck et al., 2019), communication between nation states is influenced by the development of technology. The nation state is responding to the new communication environment through “techplomacy” and through the use of Artificial Intelligence as a strategic asset in the global tech race. Artificial Intelligence (AI), including the strategies to come up with viable AI, has a big potential for nation branding, being also a competitive advantage for countries worldwide. In this context, the aim of our research is to investigate technology as a soft power (Nye, 2004) instrument for Romania and to analyze how the nation brand is constructed in relation to technology. In doing so, our research revolves around the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy for Romania, presented at the IT&C Summit on May 8, 2019, and 50 news articles, published in the quality press (Adevărul, Gândul, România Liberă) employing mixed methods such as framing analysis (Entman, 1993) and critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993). The results show that there are four dominant media frames: (1) artificial intelligence, (2) the 5G technology, (3) education and (4) smart city, while both journalists and public actors have an active role in constructing technology as a public issue in Romania."
The Articulation of Public Problems within a Communicative Figuration Approach
(College of Communication and Public Relations, NUPSPA, 2019) Ciocea, Mălina; Cârlan, Alexandru; Cheregi, Bianca Florentina
This article proposes an analytical shift in the theorization of public problems, from the standard (institutional) constructionist view which has informed the tradition of conceptualising social problems since Spector and Kitsuse’s classic work, to a communicative constructionist view, stemming from the mediatization paradigm. The rationale behind this shift is based on the conceptualization of the relation between various types of actors as claim makers and the logic of visibility governing processes of publicization in a media ecology marked by accelerated development. If, in the new communicational landscape, claim-making activities can turn any new-media user into a potential constructor of public problems, then we need to explain how developments in media technology reconfigure the practices of claim-making. In our understanding, such reconfigurations are just a particular case of the socio-cultural processes of transformation which are the focus of the mediatization paradigm. On the other hand, in a Foucaultian tradition, a shift from problems to problematizations is required in order to account for the processual dynamic through which certain phenomena are analysed under specific circumstances and at certain times, while others are ignored. This shift leads to an understanding of communicative figurations as a meta-theoretical framework for the construction of public problems, accounting for the interdependencies between articulations of public problems and the dynamics of the public sphere. With this aim in view, we first identity and evaluate the theoretical directions that are symptomatic for the transition from social problems to public ones and from problems to problematizations. In the second part, we present the heuristic potential of the concept of communicative figurations for our topic and articulate some methodological implications for a research agenda.