Transformation of digital TV news content. Romanian televisuality in the post-broadcast era

<p>The current Romanian television landscape presents an unusual abundance of 24-hour news channels that emerged in the 2000s. As these media still play a central role in the public sphere, the media logics (technologies, formats, genres, norms) followed by prominent Romanian news TV channels need to be discussed in relation to the growing influence of digital and social media, because in this hybrid media system, power is exercised by those who are able to create “information flows across and between a range of older and newer media settings” (Chadwick, 2013:207) The current study aims to analyze how traditional news media logics are merged with new televisual practices, by thoroughly examining how TV formats and visual conventions changed during the past years, under the influence of digital technologies, social media and the Covid19 pandemic. The textual analysis of prime time talk show programmes broadcast by the most popular Romanian news TV channels (RomâniaTV, Antena 3 CNN, Digi24, Realitatea Plus) focuses on news programs formats and their respective translation into audiovisual language (mise-en-scène, image, sound, image-text relation). The results are in line with the literature that states that in the context of news, both visual and textual codes and conventions are used in specific programme formats to create a convincing representation of reality (Bignell & Woods, 2022), displaying mainly a fractioned visual signature, focused on figures of authority (academics, analysts, political figures), in order to emphasize the credibility of the news programs.<strong> </strong></p>