NEWS FOCUS: The president and the prime minister at 100 days in office. Comparative impact online

Recently, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan presented his official report on the first 100 days of his mandate, after President Nicușor Dan had made the same symbolic political gesture at the beginning of September. The data extracted and analyzed with the help of NewsVibe, the AI media monitoring platform, shows that both the number of mentions and the estimated impact of those related to the Prime Minister's report, in the most relevant online sources, exceeded those similar to the presidential report.

Specifically, there were over three times more mentions, with more than double the impact regarding the Prime Minister's report, compared to that of the President. We specify that the analysis at hand refers exclusively to the mentions about the reports of the two political leaders, while the online media coverage of their general activities is, overall, much broader. Although these summaries of activity were presented within a relatively well-defined time frame, they continued to generate interest, on a smaller scale, in the subsequent periods.

NewsVibe Chart. Evolution of the number of mentions about the reports of the President and Prime Minister, respectively the total impact of these, during the period from September 1 to October 6

Top mentioned keywords

The most frequently mentioned terms in the context of the online debate about the two reports are, first of all, Ilie Bolojan and Nicușor Dan, however, the larger volume of mentions about the Prime Minister is clearly illustrated in the graph below, by the larger size of his name, which indicates a higher frequency of mentions. Terms such as Romania, Government, Cotroceni, Palace of Victoria, or PNL (due to the fact that Prime Minister Bolojan is also the president of this party) are also noteworthy.

These terms do not only function as descriptive markers, but underline the symbolic nature of the two reporting moments. The mention of the institutions – Cotroceni and Palace of Victoria – reflects the direct association between leaders and their constitutional roles, transforming the official residences into symbolic frames for legitimizing the political message.

NewsVibe Chart. Top entities mentioned in the context of references to the reports of the President and Prime Minister, during the period from September 1 to October 6

Map of semantic associations

Through semantic network analysis, through 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 reports of the two political actors, during the analyzed period.

NewsVibe Chart. The semantic network of the online conversation about the reports of the President and Prime Minister, during the period from September 1 to October 6

What the analysis shows us:

• A broad segment of the online conversation is built around the name Ilie Bolojan, in proximity to which terms such as Government, Palace of Victoria, Coalition, EU, or Prime Minister are found. This association indicates that online discussions about the Prime Minister's report significantly focused on the dimension of government policies.
• Another notable segment is outlined around the name Nicușor Dan, associated with terms such as Antena, Palace Cotroceni, George Simion, Russia, and Romania. This configuration reflects both the influence of the President's media appearances on the reporting moment (for example, the appearance on Antena 3 on September 4, where he spoke about the first 100 days of his mandate), as well as the reactions generated from the opposition, respectively the impact of the external dimension on the debate.
• The presidential core of the debate has direct connections, even if not very strong, with governing parties – separated into a peripheral cluster of the conversation.
• A distinct area of public discussions, significantly smaller in size, is determined by contextual and political discussions about the significance of the government's report, including in relation to events such as the debate on the censure motions initiated by the opposition.

SENTIMENT. The NewsVibe platform has created an advanced automated sentiment analysis system, which uses specially trained AI algorithms and LLM tools to detect tonal nuances – favorable, unfavorable, or neutral – in the context of references to relevant entities for an online conversation.

NewsVibe Chart. Automated assessment of the tone of the online conversation about the reports of the President and Prime Minister, during the period from September 1 to October 6

What the analysis shows us:

• The moment of the presidential report was framed by a context of controversial and polarizing online media coverage, significantly more intense than in the case of Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan. The Prime Minister did not benefit from a more favorable framework either, his report feeding into the polemical conversation about the effects of government policies.
• In conclusion, according to the automated sentiment analysis, neither of the two political leaders had a predominantly positive media context at the time of presenting the report on the first 100 days of activity. However, both names were also reflected in a positive tone, albeit at a lower intensity.
• Other entities discussed favorably in association with the reports – European Union, International Monetary Fund.

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