Abstract
The dissertation writes a first history of Romanian television using a longue-dur饠perspective from 1956 until after the fall of communism. It looks at television as an agent of power in constant negotiation with social and political actors. Employing the actor-network framework of Bruno Latour, it deconstructs the medium of television
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into different spaces of agency: from technology, to institutional relations, to reception practices and programs. In doing that, the dissertation revisits and adds to definitions on the medial construction of television, while investigating the role of Romanian television in society and history as well as its relations to political power. Contrary to popular belief, television under Ceausescu’s coercive regime has not been an instrument of political control. Making use of a wide variety of sources (from classified documents of the communist secret services, to audiovisual material, oral interviews, broadcast data and press resources), this study shows how Romanian television has shifted between a politically critical medium to a resistant, subversive or compliant medium. The book stays loyal to pursuing the historical shifts of the medium through changing contexts and configurations of power and to understanding the different agency of the medium at different moments in Romanian history. The climax of the dissertation is an investigation of the Live Romanian Revolution in 1989 using the conceptual tool of television as an agent of power. In that sense, the dissertation reveals innovative historical data and shows how the televised event of the Romanian Revolution concealed a decade-long process of public rebellion and dissidence that was controlled, nourished, and manipulated by the Securitate, the former communist Romanian secret services. The investigation that the dissertation pursues demonstrates that the Live Romanian Revolution was not a spontaneous outburst against Ceausescu, but a rehearsed process that took place in the private spaces of television reception and was kept under secret by the Securitate. Existing scholarship on the 1989 revolution has neglected the role of the televisual medium in the events. In that sense, the dissertation makes an innovative contribution to Romanian history and to discourses on the revolution. As an agent of power, television is not only able to affect change, but it also carries with it the force of its historical past. That is why television in post-communist Romania is investigated from the point of view of continuities and discontinuities with the communist regime. Television production and management after 1989 is understood in reference to the communist period. The dissertation looks at instances of political control over television after the fall of Ceausescu and explains them as a translation of communist practices. The agency of television in Romanian history has so far been overlooked. This dissertation constructs a conceptual framework that links an understanding of the televisual medium as a power agent to historical, social and political instances. It is the neglect of the power of television that has enabled manipulations of the medium and recycling of communist elements into the post-89 Romania. It is this power of television that this dissertation restores into Romanian history
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