Research objective: This article continues the scholarly tradition of uncovering the rhetorical practices that influence audiences’ perceptions, beliefs, and behaviours towards nuclear actors and issues and examines how the Romanian mass media reports on nuclear threats against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: This article conducts a detailed examination of how media coverage of nuclear-related topics influences public perceptions, generating a feeling of urgency and potentially leading to mass panic and hysteria. The study employed a quantitative methodology, conducting content analysis on a selection of 190 online news articles from the primary Romanian press agencies (Mediafax and Agerpress) published between February 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023. Employing an inductive approach, our analysis was guided by frames identified during the examination of the sample material. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Nuclear threats and other related issues were frequently reported in the media in the post-World War 2 period. Given the history of media coverage of this topic, it is perhaps not surprising that a return to reporting nuclear threats has dominated the media discourse since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. RESEARCH RESULTS: The results of our study reveal two main frames used to report issues related to nuclear threats during the war in Ukraine: a historical reference frame and a forward-looking frame. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: This study introduces a fresh research direction for potential investigations into the origins and progression of nuclear threats as a unique area of focus in the analysis of Eastern European media reporting during times of conflict.

Inequalities between women and men in the labor market intensified during the pandemic, wiping out at least two years of progress over the past decade, accordingly to recent reports (European Commission, World Bank, etc.). The existing analyses estimate a "COVID-19 gap" that compares job losses with the increase in employment expected before the pandemic, finding that there are 5.1 million more women unemployed and 5.2 million fewer women working now, compared to what would have happened if the pandemic did not occur. According to Global Gender Gap Report 202," Romania was placed in the 88th position in The Global Gender Gap Index 2021 rankings, with the most significant decrease in Eastern Europe, as compared with the previous year. Our article is focused on the situation of Romanian gender inequalities. As methods of research, we used secondary analysis of data and focus groups. Our study's results discuss the situation of women's inequalities in the Romanian workforce market, particularly in the educational system. Our conclusions point out the necessity of solutions for Romanian women to ease their work's existing double and triple burdens.

Many social studies emphasize that sleep medicalisation has emerged in the 1950s, with the rise of somnology. In this paper, I argue that the medicalisation of sleep is rather selective and incomplete. Building on the remark of one of the founding fathers of the sociology of sleep, Simon Williams’(2005), that if we revisited the nineteenth-century medical texts, we would notice evidence of early, pre-1950s medicalisation of sleep, I analyzed nineteenth-century public health policies and documents in Romania and found evidence that, during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, sleep was, de facto, medicalised due to the general trend to medicalise the body. I outline two dimensions of this pre-1950s medicalization of sleep: the rationalization and the hygienisation of sleep.

The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the decision to control it through a worldwide vaccination programme brought to the forefront the debates about people’s attitudes towards vaccines and vaccination in general, and people’s attitude towards COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination, in particular. This study focuses on trust in hospitals, as a predictor of Romanians’ hesitancy towards vaccination. The study utilizes a longitudinal approach, examining data from two distinct periods: 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic; and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that the COVID-19 pandemic has altered public attitudes towards vaccination and may also have compromised the link, considered implicit before the pandemic, between the level of trust in the medical system and favorable attitudes towards vaccination.

The paper explores how the Korean Wave (or Hallyu) is received, practiced, and localized among Romanian fans of South Korean culture. Moving beyond an understanding of Hallyu as imported entertainment, the study approaches K-pop, K-dramas, and similar cultural phenomena as resources through which fans build preferences, communities, identities, and instances of cultural mediation. The research uses a mixed-methods design based on an online questionnaire administered in March 2025 to 122 Romanian Hallyu fans. The findings show that Romanian fans express strong affective attachment to Korean culture while remaining cautious in assessing their own cultural knowledge. Their engagement was structured by a transmedia ecology linking K-pop, K-dramas, webtoons, social media, streaming platforms, fan communication, Korean products, and language learning. Fan practices are active but unevenly formalized. Respondents reported following artists, sharing content, voting, buying albums, talking to other fans, attending events, and learning Korean, yet official fan-club participation was limited. The results also revealed selective media consumption, critical reception of K-dramas, interest in broader East Asian cultures, and strong imagined tourism toward Korea. Korean language learning appeared as a particularly significant form of cultural investment. The article argues that Korean cultural diffusion in Romania is not a linear process of media exposure, but a complex articulation of affect, platforms, commodities, sociability, criticism, language, regional comparison, and imagined mobility. This paper contributes to Hallyu studies by foregrounding local fan agency within a specifically Eastern European cultural context.