Canon and Countercast in Romania’s 2018 Family Referendum

Abstract

The 2018 Romanian referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage crystallized a struggle over normativity that was simultaneously legal, moral, and media-performative. This article reinterprets the campaign as a competition between distinct performative regimes staged across two intersecting axes: secular–religious and television–digital. Drawing on cultural pragmatics, performance theory, mediatization scholarship, and framing analysis, the article contrasts the conservative camp’s vertical referendum campaign—organized through the Coalition for the Family, Trinitas TV, Prodocens Media, and aligned evangelical broadcasters—with the progressive camp’s horizontal and affective counter-performance articulated through digital activism and civic campaigns. Special attention is given to the contrast between the Orthodox “great stage” of televised authority and the fragmented “small stages” of evangelical and digital media. The article argues that the referendum’s invalidation cannot be reduced to political apathy, but reflects an asymmetrical clash between ritualized authority and distributed authenticity, between canon formation and digital countercasting, within a post-secular media ecology increasingly shaped by platform culture and affective publics.