tailieunhanh - Negative Media Representation of the Roma in Bulgaria

The Agency may require any organisation which has been awarded a grant to provide a guarantee in order to limit the financial risks linked to the prefinancing payment. The purpose of this guarantee is to make a bank or a financial institution stand as irrevocable collateral security for, or first-call guarantor of, the grant beneficiary's obligations. This financial guarantee, in euro, shall be provided by an approved bank or financial institution established in one of the Member State of the European Union. When the beneficiary is established in a third country, the Agency may agree. | Ị_J Journal for Politics Gender and Culture Vol. 4 No. 8 9 Summer Winter 2005 Nadezhda Georgieva Negative Media Representation of the Roma in Bulgaria 1. Introduction It has been an undeniable fact that the influence of the mainstream media in all Central and East European countries has been a predominantly negative one reinforcing stereotypes and prejudice and creating the basis for ethnic hostility and conflict. Therefore we consider it as necessary to present the effects of such media and their dominant representation alongside good media practices. Attention will be shifted mainly to the Bulgarian press and the representation of the Roma riots in Stolipinovo in 2002 by the mainstream dailies. The research aims to explore the structural discursive and ideological conditions for the negative media representation of the Roma. Several analytical approaches will be employed in order to fulfill this task. Firstly it is necessary to recognise the contribution of media cultural studies as a whole as it attempts to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive picture of the multiple influences in the creation of media discourses. This presupposes the study of the complex relationship between media institutions media texts politics audiences and the socio-cultural context Kellner 1995 37 . The analysis of media institutions requires directing the attention to the 301 a Negative Media Representation of the Roma in Bulgaria patterns of ownership and control in the new Bulgarian media to media legislation media ethics and questions of media regulation and accountability. Secondly critical discourse analysis van Dijk 1998 of media texts will be applied with the purpose of deconstructing surface meanings and embracing the underlying assumptions of their political effects encoding for or decoding by particular targeted audiences. The framing11 of the texts will be discussed. Textual interpretation will be pursued in terms of relationships between texts the context within which they