News Focus: Dacian Ciolos reactivated in politics at the top? Impact and trends in the online conversation
After Dacian Ciolos hinted in the summer of 2024 that he would retire from Romanian politics, earlier this year the former prime minister was appointed honorary advisor by Romania's interim president Ilie Bolojan, recently returning to the public debate with the prospect of a new public role. According to data aggregated and analyzed with NewsVibe, an AI-supported media intelligence software, his appointment to the Cotroceni has generated the most mentions of Dacian Ciolos in recent months.
His name has been floated as a possible candidate for a ministerial portfolio in a PSD-PNL-USR-UDMR government and, in recent days, has been discussed in the public space as a possible candidate for the head of the SIE or SRI.
Dacian Ciolos was also recently involved in an event that stirred controversy, after he was turned down by a taxi driver as he exited Otopeni Airport. This incident generated a second spike in mentions of the former PM in recent months.
Graphic NewsVibe. Evolution in the number of mentions of Dacian Ciolos and their total impact from March 17 to July 14, 2025
Predominant sources
The top of the sources that have written the most about Dacian Ciolos in the last month is dominated by generalist and news websites, as well as Facebook pages affiliated to such media sources. Of these, the Adevărul, EVZ.ro and Facebook pages Realitatea.NET and stiripesurse.ro stand out, each with more than 10 mentions of the former prime minister's name.
The Facebook page of the former PSD MP Daniel Ghiță, who has recently become one of the sovereignist voices visible in the social media space, with very critical positions towards the USR area or towards politicians who are or have been affiliated to it, such as Dacian Ciolos, also stands out. Other alternative platforms - such as Ecopolitic or 60m.ro - are also in the top.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top relevant web sources that have covered Dacian Ciolos in the last month
Top keywords mentioned
The terms most frequently associated with Dacian Ciolos in articles from web sources and Facebook posts are Nicușor Dan, Ilie Bolojan (who helped to reactivate the former PM at the top), Henri Coandă Airport (where the recent incident with the taxi driver took place), Dragoș Pîslaru (whose appointment in the Bolojan Government was speculated in the media to have been influenced by Dacian Cioloș), USR, PSD, but also REPER (party founded by Dacian Cioloș), as well as SRI and SIE (where his name is being circulated in the media as a possible director).
Grafic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in the context of mentions of Dacian Ciolos in the last month
Evaluating the tone of communication
The NewsVibe platform has created an advanced sentiment analysis system that uses artificial intelligence, specially trained algorithms and LLM-type language models to detect nuances of tone - favorable, unfavorable or neutral - in the context of references to entities relevant to an online conversation.
Grafic NewsVibe. Automated assessment of the tone of online conversation about Dacian Ciolos in the last month
Although the majority of mentions about Dacian Ciolos are categorized by NewsVibe's own algorithm as neutral (77%), the proportion of negative mentions is notable (22%), which can be explained by the tense context of references to his name. In contrast, positive mentions do not exceed 2% of the total.
Emoji and hashtags
The most frequently used emoji in Facebook posts in which Dacian Ciolos was mentioned symbolize alertness, breaking news, news, stun, surprise, economy and even protests.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top emoji used on Facebook in conversations about Dacian Ciolos in the last month
The most commonly used hashtags in social media posts mentioning Dacian Ciolos are #reper and #nicușordan, in addition to those that actually reflect a particular interest in the former prime minister's name by news sources' social media channels.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top hashtags used on Facebook in conversations about Dacian Ciolos in the last month
Dacian Ciolos remains a relevant actor in the public debate, with appointments as presidential adviser, speculation about his future and recent controversies reflecting a high degree of polarization and attention around his name.
*****Syndicated via a monitoring feed provided by NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data and images presented were enhanced with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.
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