Ethnicizing Covid-19: How media coverage and Facebook echo-chambers developed hate-speech and ethno-nationalist narratives during the outbreak in Romania?

Amongst the many adverse events that happened during the Covid-19 pandemic was the scapegoating of ethnic communities for the spread of the virus. One of the most pinned ethnic communities in the media was the Roma communities. Labeled as not complacent with the rules emitted by national authorities, the Roma communities were harassed online and in the open by police forces. Romania, the country with the highest number of Roma people in Eastern Europe, i.e., 1.8 million people, according to the Council of Europe approximations, witnessed an increase in racism, xenophobia, and hate speech on Facebook during the first weeks of the national lockdown. Aroused by the influx of ethnic Romani people returning to Romania from other European countries, the media expanded its coverage on the ethnic minority. Several incidents in which the police authorities and the Roma communities were involved triggered a hyperbolic treatment in Roma news through the use of clickbait articles. In this study, the main aim is to analyze the input/output dynamism of the information flow created by media and developed further in echo-chambers targeting the Roma community in Romania. Thus, we ask to what degree was the virus ethnicized in the Romanian media? Also, we ask what new conditions of hate-speech did the Covid-19 produced in terms of ethnic racism on Social Media? Using network analysis, we will analyze how clickbait articles posted on Facebook by conventional news outlets connected and inflamed the racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes. Secondly, using framing analysis, we investigate how ethno-nationalist rhetoric framed the ‘illegitimate other’ as opposed to the homogeneous nation. We will do this by examining the reactions generated by the media posts in the comment section. Besides, we extend the examination on the comments written in particular nationalist groups where the same articles were shared. Though not having our data collection completed, we estimate two specific findings from our analyses. Firstly, the hyperbolic treatment in the news of the Roma community focused on socio-cultural arguments that alluded to the community being responsible for the spread of the disease. Secondly, the coverage of the Roma community from the media developed an entrenched racist and xenophobic set of narratives in echo-chambers groups on Facebook.