In the name of public health: understanding the media portrayals of marginalized Roma quarantines during COVID-19 in Slovakia : master's thesis

Sliepková, Petra (author), Toplak, Cirila (mentor)

This thesis explores the framing of the Roma minority in media discourse during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia, seeking to reveal what role the media played in the securitization of the minority and in the subsequent legitimation of the racialized quarantine measures taken by the Slovak authorities. Building on the framework of biopolitics as proposed by Foucault, the paper first examines the socioeconomic position of the Roma minority in the country, which had made the group an exemplary scapegoat in the context of a global health crisis. Guided by Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis, the thesis then analyses a corpus of 153 articles on the Roma minority selected from four Slovak daily newspapers with the largest readership. The findings suggest that the media largely legitimated the securitization of the Roma people through the employment of various othering, stigmatizing and dehumanizing strategies which contributed to the framing of the Roma as the dangerous biopolitical Other. By the same logic, the racialized lockdown measures imposed on the Roma communities were normalized as a necessary measure for the sake of public health, and the impacts they had on the persons affected by them were rarely presented as the breaking news that such severe violations of human rights in an EU country in the 21st century might be expected to be.

• Language: English
• Keywords: Roma quarantines, COVID-19, critical discourse analysis, racialized governance, biopolitics
• Work type: Master's thesis/paper
• Typology: 2.09 - Master's Thesis
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Place of publishing: Ljubljana
• Publisher: P. Sliepková
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 1 spletni vir (1 datoteka PDF (130 str.))
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-173757
• UDC: 614:32(437.6)(043.2)
• COBISS.SI-ID: 253676803
• Publication date in RUL: 21.09.2025

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: V imenu javnega zdravja: razumevanje medijskih predstav marginaliziranih romskih karanten med pandemijo COVID-19 na Slovaškem : magistrsko delo

Abstract

Ta magistrska naloga raziskuje medijsko uokvirjanje romske manjšine v času prvih dveh valov pandemije COVID-19 na Slovaškem, pri čemer želi razkriti vlogo medijev pri varnostizaciji te manjšine in posledični legitimaciji rasiziranih karantenskih ukrepov, ki jih je sprejela slovaška oblast. Z uporabo Foucaultovega koncepta biopolitike najprej analizira socialno-ekonomski položaj romske manjšine v državi, ki je v kontekstu globalne zdravstvene krize postal primeren grešni kozel. Ob uporabi Faircloughovega modela kritične analize diskurza naloga nato analizira korpus 153 člankov o romski manjšini iz štirih slovaških dnevnikov z največjo branostjo. Ugotovitve kažejo, da so mediji v veliki meri legitimirali varnostizacijo Romov z uporabo različnih strategij drugosti, stigmatizacije in dehumanizacije, s čimer so pomagali uokviriti Rome kot nevarnega biopolitičnega Drugega. Po isti logiki so bili rasizirani ukrepi zapiranja romskih skupnosti normalizirani kot nujni v imenu javnega zdravja, pri čemer so bili njihovi vplivi na prizadete posameznike redko predstavljeni kot pomembna novica – čeprav bi tako hude kršitve človekovih pravic v državi članici EU v 21. stoletju to vsekakor morale biti.

• Keywords: romske karantene, COVID-19, kritična analiza diskurza, rasizirano upravljanje, biopolitika