Religious issues in the Romanian public sphere. Media discourse and deliberative practices

This article considers the media debates around challenging the status of religious education in the Romanian public schools while aiming to investigate the deliberative practices through which the Romanian media problematizes this controversial issue, grants visibility and mediates between different viewpoints, worlds and interests. By using content analysis doubled by a critical discourse analysis perspective, correlated with theoretical approaches on media and public space, the study examines the media discourse on the “religion class” controversy. The concept of “deliberative mediatization” is operatio-nalized in an analysis that targets to highlight the role of the journalist, the variety of actors and viewpoints considered as well as the specific strategies underpinning the journalists’ engagement with the expressed opinions, the extent to which they assumed a particular role in the debate, adhered to or dissociated themselves from expressed viewpoints, reframed or redefined certain views. The analysis substantiates that the media has had manifold roles in shaping the public debate on the status of religion in national public schools not only by granting access to the public arena to a varied typology of actors and arguments, but also by a significant number of problematizing strategies and practices.