Mediating Public Issues in Romanian Broadcast Talk: Personalized Communication Strategies

Abstract

The article examines emerging practices of personalization in political talk shows on Romanian television. Our interest lies in the reconfiguration of the role of critical journalist, as performed by talk show hosts on private TV channels, in the context of increasing commercialization and instrumentalization of the Romanian media in postcommunism. This development consists of the strategic use of personalization, achieved through the talk show dispositive, for the enactment of positions of journalistic interpretation, adversarialness, and intervention on behalf of the citizens. The findings indicate shifts in the symmetry/asymmetry relationships between journalists, guests, politicians, and publics, as well as new ways of constructing and understanding public issues. Two main patterns of personalization have been identified: the journalist as a fully engaged voice, effectively substituting itself for the public opinion, and the journalist as an ordinary person, who has the capacity to see through and expose dominant public discourses.