Blind Spots in the Spotlight

This book examines the changes in the communication of the National Bank of Romania (NBR) during the 2008 crisis. To x-ray these changes, we looked at the perspective of the representatives of the central bank, of the specialized public, of the general public, and of the media on how the NBR communicated publicly during the Great Recession.

Currently, researchers and specialists are calling for a second revolution in central banks’ communication. But what exactly is the first revolution? This chapter touches upon two key concepts for the strategic communication of these institutions: transparency and trust. The aim is to put at your fingertips the main findings from relevant research, barometers, and studies dedicated to both communication as a monetary policy tool and strategic communication on monetary and nonmonetary topics.

This analysis brings together certain aspects of the language used by central banks, their stakeholders, communication channels, their tactics, and provides theoretical support from central bank specialists and researchers for a better understanding of the fundamental changes in communication before and after the 2008 crisis.

This chapter presents the framing theory, which provides us with the analytical framework necessary to analyze how media framed the National Bank of Romania’s messages in the post-crisis period. The research uses framing theory and refers to the media as a stakeholder of the central bank, as well as possibly influencing the way the audience selects and interprets different communication situations.

In the first part, we present the definitions and results of the main framing theorists, we look at the literature on how media framing influences public opinion, focusing on the process-based framing interpretation scheme and cascading network activation (Entman, Political Communication 20:415–432, 2003). It is then highlighted the important role of journalists in building news, in the process of appreciation and valorization of certain narrative elements to the detriment of others. The chapter ends with exposing the results of the main researches regarding the framing of the 2008 crisis in the international media and in the Romanian press.

National Bank of Romania’s public communication changed, after 2008, mainly due to the intensification of nonmonetary communication, which eclipsed the communication of monetary policy objectives. The NBR was at the forefront of important public debates, that were not related to monetary policy objectives, but which attracted the attention of large audiences. These public debates such as the giving in payment law, the crisis of the Greek capital banks, and the Swiss francs credit crisis required more active public communication on behalf of the NBR, which was on an upward trend in transparency, but, at the same time, on a downward trend in terms of public confidence.

This work paves the way for the entire research project, and defines the roles of all actors with an impact on NBR’s communication considered during qualitative and quantitative analysis—specialized public, general public, mass media, and the Parliament. The research model adapts the frames according to the “cascading network activation” model (Entman, Political Communication, 20(4):415–432, 2003), following the flow from the messages sent by the main actors—in this case, the NBR, but also the Parliament, the messages taken over by the elites, then by journalists, the framing of the news as it reaches the general public and then the reverse flow, in the defined post-crisis context.

This work is a qualitative research that analyses, based on 20 semi-structured interviews, the perception of the National Bank of Romania’s representatives—communication specialists and officials who were highly visible in the mass media after the 2008 financial crisis—upon the loss of public trust in the central bank. At the same time, the interviews reflect the perception of the central bankers upon the effects of making the monetary policy more transparent during the period considered, and examine to what extent the chosen communication decisions can be reversible after surmounting the financial crisis, in an emerging market where no other unconventional monetary policy measures had been used. The research proposes a radiography of the nonmonetary and monetary communication activities after the financial crisis, based on the opinions of NBR representatives; on the way they perceived or implemented, from the inside, the changes regarding the communication strategy; as well as on the assessment of the limitations involved by transparency.

This research provides the perspectives of the general public and the specialized public on the communication of the National Bank of Romania (NBR) after 2008. According to the results of two sociological surveys based on questionnaires (specialized public, N = 186; general public, N = 391), both categories of public believe that the central bank communicated more after 2008, compared to the pre-crisis period, on both nonmonetary and monetary issues. They also agreed that the messages on monetary and nonmonetary issues that are closer to the mission of the central bank were most clearly communicated in the post-crisis period. The perceived level of clarity decreased as the topics proposed for evaluation moved further away from the mandate of the NBR. The analysis shows that the trust of both categories of public in the NBR was eroded in the post-crisis period and that confidence in the NBR could be restored through greater clarity in communication.

The financial crisis started in 2008 generated aftershocks that lasted years and affected economies everywhere, among other things, leading to a deeper erosion of the public trust in central banks. This research examines the manner Romanian online media framed, in 2016, the reaction of the National Bank of Romania (NBR) to the “giving in payment” law initiated by a member of the second largest party, and one of the most visible topics involving the central bank during post-crisis period for the local audience. The study sheds light upon the way media uses different frames—focusing on conflict, economic consequences, responsibility, human interest, and ethical issues—in making sense of the crisis to their audiences. The research here concentrates on a quantitative content analysis of a corpus of 420 articles from four highest-ranked financial and generalist online media: zf.ro, bursa.ro, adevarul.ro, and hotnews.ro. The main findings indicate a clear prevalence of economic and conflict frames.

What remains following this research on the changes in the public communication of the National Bank of Romania in the post-crisis period? Did the NBR capitalize on the 2008 crisis or did it waste it?