Authors

Discussion

My research aims to identify the use of medical populist narratives by Romanian political actors in relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This will take the form of a critical discourse analysis of the statements, tweets and manifestos of Romanian political actors to answer the following questions:  

1.      How do politicians use medical populist rhetoric to influence voters?

2.      How do politicians use medical populist rhetoric to compete with other political actors?

3.      How do different aspects of medical populist rhetoric interact and reinforce each other?

This will draw on ideas from Political Science, Sociology, and Medical Anthropology in order to understand why actors may use medical populist ideas including Cohen's moral panics, Moffitt's conception of Populism and Lasco's medical populism. The PhD from which this presentation is drawn from will be the first study to apply the final concept to Romania, as its prior European uses have looked primarily at Turkey, Poland, and Italy. 

By focusing on the Pandemic for this conference, I aim to demonstrate that politicians in Romania were willing to employ simplifications of scientific discourse, claims of scientific knowledge, a performance of health policy, and a creation of conflict between an elite in both a traditional populist sense and that of medical populism. This will look in particular at AUR and SOS Romania, and discuss how the two radicalised throughout the pandemic period, and were willing to embrace increasingly conspiratorial platforms, messages and ideas.