NEWS FOCUS: Deputy Prime Minister Dragoș Anastasiu has resigned. Impact and trends in the online conversation
Previously known mainly as a businessman, Dragoș Anastasiu has been, in recent months, one of the most important figures on the political scene, becoming presidential advisor and, later, deputy prime minister in the government formed by PSD, PNL and USR.
According to data identified and analyzed by NewsVibe, an AI platform for media and social media monitoring, none of the moments in recent months in which Dragoș Anastasiu was a central actor generated, in the relevant online sources, a number of mentions or an estimated impact comparable to that produced by the moment of his resignation.
In fact, of the more than 5,100 mentions of Dragoș Anastasiu in the last six months, more than 3,500 were concentrated in the last week alone - more than 1,000 of which on the day of his resignation. Also, the cumulative impact of the mentions over the last 7 days is of the order of several tens of millions of estimated views.
In conclusion, the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Anastasiu, along with the accusations that preceded it, was by far the peak of his visibility in the months of his direct involvement in political life.
Graphic NewsVibe. Changes in the number of mentions of Dragoș Anastasiu and their total impact over the last six months
Pdominate sources
The top sources that have written the most about Dragoș Anastasiu in the last week are dominated by generalist and news websites, some of them doubled by associated Facebook pages. Of these, stiripesurse.ro, Gândul, G4Media, Ziare.com, Puterea and Realitatea.net stand out, along with the Facebook page stiripesurse.ro, each with over 60 mentions of the resigned deputy prime minister.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top relevant web sources that have covered Dragos Anastasiu in the last week
Top keywords mentioned
The terms most frequently associated with Dragoș Anastasiu, in articles from web sources and social media posts, are descriptive of the case that led to his resignation - ANAF, DNA, Romania, terms related to the Government and coalition (such as Ilie Bolojan, Palatul Victoria, Gov. of Romania and.a.), as well as the names of the president Nicușor Dan and Angelei Burlacu (the ANAF inspector accused of receiving bribes from one of the firms that belonged to the resigned deputy prime minister).
The high volume of mentions over the past week has therefore mainly concerned the accusations against Dragoș Anastasiu regarding the alleged bribery, by one of his firms, of an ANAF official in exchange for protection, as well as his resignation. This issue has largely overshadowed Dragoș Anastasiu's public interventions on government policies during this period.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in the context of references to Dragos Anastasiu in the last week
Evaluating the tone of communication
The NewsVibe platform has created an advanced sentiment analysis system that uses artificial intelligence, specially trained algorithms and LLM-like 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. Automatically rating the tone of online conversation about Dragos Anastasiu in the last week
The extremely consistent segment of mentions in negative context about the former deputy prime minister - 44%. This pronounced negative trend is almost entirely influenced by the revelations that led to his resignation, as well as by the tone of comments in the public space. The share of mentions in a positive context does not exceed 1%, while the proportion of neutral references is also very low compared to the average for public topics - only 55%.
Emoji and hashtags
The most frequently used emoji in Facebook posts in which Dragoș Anastasiu was mentioned express the idea of Breaking News and emotions such as shock or amazement. Emoji symbolizing government activity, although present, are noticeably less frequent.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top emoji used on Facebook in online conversations about Dragos Anastasiu in the last week
The most used hashtags in social media posts in which Dragoș Anastasiu was mentioned, at the level of the last week, are #dragosanastasiu, anaf, #government of Romania, #romania, #government, #politics, #corruption, #iliebolojan and #dna, along with those indicating a high interest of Facebook pages belonging to news sources in the name of the resigning deputy prime minister.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top hashtags used on Facebook in Dragoș Anastasiu conversations in the last week
The Dragoș Anastasiu case has become, in the last week, one of the most visible and intensely discussed topics in the public space, with a significant impact in the media and on social networks. Its development reflects how an image crisis can dominate the public agenda and completely redefine the perception of a political leader.
*****Synthesis compiled using a data feed provided by the media monitoring platform NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data and images presented have been enhanced using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.
.webp)
