News Focus: The first censorship movements against the Bolojan Government. Online impact

In a historic premiere for the Romanian Parliament, deputies and senators voted on Sunday, September 7, no less than four motions of censure, initiated by opposition parties. This event was made possible, procedurally, by the fact that the Government took responsibility, distinctly, but on the same day, for several legislative packages. Data extracted and analyzed with the help of NewsVibe – an AI platform for automated multilingual media monitoring – shows that there were over 2100 mentions about the censure motions in the last week, in the most relevant online sources, which reached an estimated number of views of over 29 million.

The vast majority of mentions about the censure motions focused on the day they were submitted and the following day, when they entered the attention of media conversations, as well as on the day of the vote in the joint plenary of Parliament, when the peak visibility for the opposition's efforts was reached.

NewsVibe Chart. Evolution of the number of mentions about the censure motions, respectively their total impact, in the last week

Top mentioned keywords

The most frequently associated terms with the censure motions in articles from web sources or posts on social networks are AUR (presented by online sources as the main initiator of the censure motions), Romania, Ilie Bolojan (as Prime Minister), Bolojan Government, Parliament.

There are also associations with terms such as Opposition, POT, PNL, PSD, USR, SOS or UDMR, or that refer directly to the legislative measures promoted by the Government and contested by the initiators of the censure motions.

NewsVibe Chart. Top entities mentioned in the context of mentions about the censure motions, in the last week

Map of semantic associations

Through semantic network analysis, by which NewsVibe maps the structure and connections within an online conversation, we can observe an overview of the themes discussed in the digital environment regarding the censure motions, during the analyzed period. Thus, we find that discussions in these days have organized around two major cores:

• The first of these has AUR as a central actor, having nearby terms such as POT, Bolojan Government or Romania. AUR stands out as the main opposition actor, regarding the initiation of the censure motions and the confrontation at the communication level with the governing formations.
• The second core centers around terms such as Ilie Bolojan and Parliament, having nearby entities such as Government. It is a core that clearly shows how the Prime Minister's name is confused with the image of the Executive. Ilie Bolojan is the main political leader associated by online sources with the government.
• The two smaller cores are concentrated around PSD and PNL, which generate a significant volume of online conversations, through participation in governance, and of Parliament, as an institution that represented the stage for the political events of Sunday.

NewsVibe Chart. The semantic network of the online conversation about the censure motions, in the last week

*****Synthesis made with the help of a data stream provided by the media monitoring platform NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data, and images presented have been enhanced with the help of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.