The Mediatic Construct of a Political Ceremony: The Visit of the USA President George W. Bush in Romania

Based on a political event -- the November, 23rd, 2003's official visit of the USA President in Romania -- largely covered by media, we tried to see if, besides the actual political action (establishing contacts, signing contracts & bilateral agreements etc.) this visit has acted up to yet another level, a symbolic one. Thus, situating ourselves rather within the perspective opened by Daniel Dayan & Elihu Katz' studies on media events & their typology, & applying this grid of interpreting to the reality of the circumstances the visit took place, we shall assert that we witnessed the building of a transformative media event, whose crucial characteristic is that it acts onwards reality in a symbolic manner, so that it comes to imposing a new situation within the sphere of the plausible, a new situation unconceivable until that moment. We looked up to Romanian national newspapers issued the next day to validate this hypothesis of the symbolic action. It was revealed to us that the ceremony operated, on the one hand, on a spatial-temporal level, by proposing a new framing; on the other hand, the innovative solution that the event brought into the sphere of the possible was to make compatible the idea of integrating into NATO with the request of establishing a cordial relationship with Russia.