7/2013 - Adina Schneeweis, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism, authored the article, "Advocacy Representation and Resistance: Two NGOs' Efforts to Communicate the Movement for Roma Rights, 1990-2006," which was published in the international, peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 37(2), 149 - 170. The article offers a case study of two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have tailored and improved their communication efforts so that politicians, governments, and international organizations hear and take action about the plight of the Roma, the most discriminated European minority. This study examines advocacy publications and describes the discursive repertoire available to European NGOs working for Roma rights post-Communism. The analysis suggests that advocacy communication is fraught with imperfections and therefore resistance takes the shape of ambivalent discourses, both strong and ambiguous, which nonetheless disrupts fixed representations that have motivated historic and contemporary anti-Gypsyism. At the same time, it concludes that the movement for Roma rights is in need of clearer organizational and political mobilization if it is to succeed in the model of other vibrant social movements.
7/2013 - Adina Schneeweis, assistant professor of Communication and Journalism at Oakland University, authored the article, "Empowered Leaders and Alone in Community: Stories of Romanian Roma Health Mediators," which appears in the national, peer-reviewed journal, Women's Studies in Communication (2013), 36.2, pp. 167-188. The article investigates the experiences of Roma women who work in Romania as health mediators to build bridges between Romani patients and the public health system. Given the precarious socioeconomic conditions, overt discrimination, policy changes, and rights advocacy that mark these women's lives - and at the same time the near invisibility of Roma women in scholarship - this study offers women's stories as communicative practices of telling oneself. The mediators narrate stories of successes and challenges in their profession, of discrimination, of empowerment, and of identi ty shifts toward hybridity and contextual alliances.
10/2012 - Adina Schneeweis
, Ph.D, assistant professor of journalism, was published in the international, peer-reviewed journal, International Communication Gazette, volume 74.7. The article is titled, "If They Really Wanted to, They Would: The Press Discourse of Integration of the European Roma, 1990-2006" (pp. 673-689). Dr. Schneeweis analyzes the solidification of the discourse of integration of the Gypsy/Roma in the European press following the fall of Communism.
Focusing on the British and Romanian press between 1990 and 2006, Dr. Schneeweis argues that in the midst of the opening of EU borders and talks of a European Constitution, the idea and necessity of integration grew in political popularity as a means to peaceably alleviate inter-ethnic conflict. However, the discourse of integration has continuously shifted between assimilationist voices and projects that attempt to change the Gypsy other into a non-Gypsy, and human rights-inspired defense and advocacy for the Roma. Dr. Schneeweis further suggests that the press does more than confirm stereotypes; instead, uncertainties, contradictions, and changes mark press writing.
7/2011 - Adina Schneeweis, , Ph.D. and assistant professor of journalism in the Department of Communication and Journalism, authored the article, "Constructing the Roma Audience: Public Health Communication and Intervention in Contemporary Romania," which appears in the 2011 edition of Critical Public Health. The study investigates health promotion materials targeting a group historically conceived as problematic, the Romanian Roma. In the article, Dr. Schneeweis examines how recent campaigns of interventions, funded by the United States and Western non-profit organizations, understand their audience and how such constructions relate to larger political dynamics in Europe. Focusing on how practitioners conceptualized the Roma audience as entities to be communicated with and about in order to affect their behavior, the study provides insight regarding health communication as a political endeavor, as well as current institutionalization of cultural and ethnic differences in Romania. The analysis revealed cause for concern and also evidence of progressive thinking.