Archiving the Present: The Social Conflict Between Romanians at Home and in the Diaspora on TikTok
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Jun 29, 2026
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Abstract
This paper qualitatively analyzes the social conflict emerged on TikTok between Romanians living in the diaspora and those residing in Romania during the 2025 presidential elections. These elections were characterized by a strong polarization of political opinions. The paper examines the relationships established between the platform, algorithms, political factors, and human actors. At the same time, it attempts to address the methodological challenges of conducting qualitative research in the online environment. TikTok is conceptualized here as an archive of the present. It is the space where users produce and preserve multimodal content through which they express their political opinions and interact with one another. The re-archiving of online content enabled the creation of a database consisting of 250 posts disseminated by users between May 5 and June 5, 2025. This database was used for qualitative content analysis. The research findings reveal the mutual antagonization between Romanians inside and outside the country’s borders through stereotypes and their integration into local and global socio-economic processes. Social labeling regarding electoral behavior and social values – expressed through oppositions such as civilization vs. barbarism, the European Union vs. Russia, education vs. lack of education – together with the problematization of non-residents’ voting rights, reflect social class tensions. In addition, the study highlights how TikTok contributes to the deterritorialization of nationalism and political participation as a result of migratory processes. The paper emphasizes the diaspora’s double marginalization: by host countries and, more recently, by the country of origin.
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How to Cite
CRISTEA, C. O. (2026). Archiving the Present: The Social Conflict Between Romanians at Home and in the Diaspora on TikTok. Sociologie Românească, 24(1), 116-138. https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.24.1.5
References
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Blanke, T. (2024). Reassembling digital archives - strategies for counter-archiving, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), 1-12.
Brǎdǎţan, C., & Kulcsár, L. J. (2014). When the educated leave the East: Romanian and Hungarian skilled immigration to the USA, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 15(3), 509-524.
Braun, L. N., & Mateus, A. M. V. (2024). Contemporary ethnographic aesthetics: The TikTok turn, Visual Anthropology, 37(3), 195-211.
Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the new Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brubaker, R. (2005). The ‘diaspora’diaspora. Ethnic and racial studies, 28(1), 1-19.
Bucher, T. (2018). If... then: Algorithmic power and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burean, T., & Popp, R. (2015). Migrant political participation and voting behavior in Romania. San Francisco: Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association San Francisco, September 2015.
Chafe, H. (2023). The TikTok problem: Issues of preservation, cultural memory, and personal archiving on Social Media platforms, The iJournal: Student Journal of the Faculty of Information, 8(2).
Cismaș, L. M., Curea-Pitorac, R. I., & Vădăsan, I. (2020). The impact of remittances on the receiving country: some evidence from Romania in European context, Economic research-Ekonomska istraživanja, 33(1), 1073-1094.
Covaci, M. (2015). Factorul Facebook în alegerile prezidențiale din 2014, Sfera politicii, 23(183/1), 85-91.
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Fox, J. E., Moroşanu, L., & Szilassy, E. (2015). Denying discrimination: Status,‘race’, and the whitening of Britain's new Europeans, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(5), 729-748.
Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’, New media & society, 12(3), 347-364.
Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale: Yale University Press.
Grossman, J. (2019). Toward a definition of diaspora, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(8), 1263-1282.
Gușă, A. R. (2021). Corruption as a rhetorical strategy of the populist parties. Case study: The 2020 electoral campaign for the Romanian Parliament of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, in Reflections on emotions, populism and polarisation. Helsinki: Reflections on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation, HEPP2 Conference Proceedings, pp. 30-38.
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Hobsbawn, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Horváth, I., & Anghel, R. G. (2009). Migration and its consequences for Romania, Comparative Southeast European Studies, 57(4), 386-403.
Horváth, I., & Kiss, T. (2016). Depopulating semi-periphery? Longer term dynamics of migration and socioeconomic development in Romania. Demográfia English Edition. 58. 10.21543/DEE.2015.4.
Ianos, I. (2016). Causal relationships between economic dynamics and migration: Romania as case study, in Global change and human mobility (pp. 303-322). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1978) Antropologie structurală. (Trad. De J. Pecher.) Bucureşti: Politică.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1995) Mitologice I. Crud și gătit. (Trad. și pref. de Ioan Pânzaru.) București: Babei.
Markley, E., & Lepadatu, D. (2015). The Romanian American Dream: Permanent Migration, Identity and Integration of Romanian Immigrants in the United States, Sociologie Românească, 13(1), 70-85.
Ministerul Afacerilor Externe. (2021). Date statistice cu privire la cetățenii români cu domiciliul sau reședința în străinătate, la sfârșitul anului 2021. Diaspora.gov.ro. Disponibil la https://diaspora.gov.ro/images/content/resurse/Date_statistice_-_M.A.E._2021.pdf.
Momoc, A. (2018). Populism 2.0, digital democracy and the new ‘enemies of the people’, Communication Today, 9(1), 58-77.
Moroşanu, L. (2013). ‘We all eat the same bread’: the roots and limits of cosmopolitan bridging ties developed by Romanians in London, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(12), 2160-2181.
Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2019). Talent abroad: A review of Romanian emigrants. OECD Publishing. DOI: 10.1787/bac53150-en.
Pirvu, R., Badarcea, R., Manta, A., & Florea, N. (2018). The link between migration, remittances and economic growth: Empirical evidence from Romania, Theor. Pract. Res. Econ. Fields, 9, 109-123.
Popescu, C. (2020). ‘Back to the village’: the model of urban outmigration in post-communist Romania, European Planning Studies, 28(6), 1200-1218.
Ragazzi, F. (2012). Diaspora: The politics of its meanings, International Political Sociology, 6(1), 107-111.
Roos, C., Nagel, M., Kieschnick, H., & Cherniak, K. (2025). The emigration conundrum: EU countries of origin of migrants between integration and demarcation, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 63(1), 160-178.
Sandu, D. (2010). Lumile sociale ale migratiei româneşti în străinătate. Iaşi: Polirom, 11.
Shafir, M. (2008). From historical to “dialectical” populism: The case of post-communist Romania, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 50(3-4), 425-470.
Smyrnaios, N., & Baisnée, O. (2023). Critically understanding the platformization of the public sphere, European Journal of Communication, 38(5), 435-445.
Soare, S., & Tufiș, C. D. (2023). Saved by the Diaspora? The Case of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, European Political Science, 22(1), 101-118.
SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2652423.
Tănase, T. (2015). The electoral campaign through social media. Case study-2014 presidential elections in Romania, Sfera politicii, 23(183/1), 92-104.
Todorova, M. (2000). Balcanii şi balcanismul [Imagining the Balkans]. (Trans. Mihaela Constantinescu, Sofia Oprescu). Bucureşti: Humanitas.
Trandafoiu, R. (2013). Diaspora online: Identity politics and Romanian migrants. New York: Berghahn Books.
Vincze, H. O., & Balaban, D. C. (2022). Between conflict and solidarity: pandemic media coverage of Romanian intra-EU labour migrants, Media and Communication, 10(2), 265-275.
Wilterdink, N. (2017). The dynamics of inequality and habitus formation. Elias, Bourdieu, and the rise of nationalist populism, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 22-42.
Wolff, L. (2000). Inventarea Europei de Est: Harta civilizației în Epoca Luminilor (B. Rizzoli, Trad.). București: Humanitas.
Zulli, D., & Zulli, D. J. (2022). Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform, New media & society, 24(8), 1872-1890.
Ajder, T. (2018). Romanian diasporic facebook groups as public spheres, Open Cultural Studies, 2(1), 723-734.
Anderson, B. (1998). Long-distance nationalism, The spectre of comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the world, 58, 74-88.
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Andrei, T., & Mirică, A. (2019). Key Features of the Internal Migration Process in Romania-An Economic and Historical Perspective, Romanian Statistical Review, 2.
Andrén, D., & Roman, M. (2016). Should I stay or should I go? Romanian migrants during transition and enlargements, in Labor migration, EU enlargement, and the great recession, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 247-269.
Anghel, R. G., Botezat, A., Coșciug, A., Manafi, I., & Roman, M. (2016). International migration, return migration, and their effects: A comprehensive review on the Romanian case. Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization (Vol. 1). Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press.
Blanke, T. (2024). Reassembling digital archives - strategies for counter-archiving, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), 1-12.
Brǎdǎţan, C., & Kulcsár, L. J. (2014). When the educated leave the East: Romanian and Hungarian skilled immigration to the USA, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 15(3), 509-524.
Braun, L. N., & Mateus, A. M. V. (2024). Contemporary ethnographic aesthetics: The TikTok turn, Visual Anthropology, 37(3), 195-211.
Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the new Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brubaker, R. (2005). The ‘diaspora’diaspora. Ethnic and racial studies, 28(1), 1-19.
Bucher, T. (2018). If... then: Algorithmic power and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burean, T., & Popp, R. (2015). Migrant political participation and voting behavior in Romania. San Francisco: Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association San Francisco, September 2015.
Chafe, H. (2023). The TikTok problem: Issues of preservation, cultural memory, and personal archiving on Social Media platforms, The iJournal: Student Journal of the Faculty of Information, 8(2).
Cismaș, L. M., Curea-Pitorac, R. I., & Vădăsan, I. (2020). The impact of remittances on the receiving country: some evidence from Romania in European context, Economic research-Ekonomska istraživanja, 33(1), 1073-1094.
Covaci, M. (2015). Factorul Facebook în alegerile prezidențiale din 2014, Sfera politicii, 23(183/1), 85-91.
Datta, A. (2009). Places of everyday cosmopolitanisms: East European construction workers in London, Environment and planning A, 41(2), 353-370.
Departamentul pentru Românii de Pretutindeni. (2023). Studiu sociologic aprofundat privind diaspora românească pentru proiectul „Cadru strategic pentru dezvoltarea infrastructurii politicilor publice derulate de Departamentul pentru Românii de Pretutindeni” (Cod SIPOCA/MySMIS 730/130070). Programul Operațional Capacitate Administrativă 2014-2020.
Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process, Journal of advanced nursing, 62(1), 107-115.
Fox, J. E., Moroşanu, L., & Szilassy, E. (2015). Denying discrimination: Status,‘race’, and the whitening of Britain's new Europeans, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(5), 729-748.
Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’, New media & society, 12(3), 347-364.
Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale: Yale University Press.
Grossman, J. (2019). Toward a definition of diaspora, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(8), 1263-1282.
Gușă, A. R. (2021). Corruption as a rhetorical strategy of the populist parties. Case study: The 2020 electoral campaign for the Romanian Parliament of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, in Reflections on emotions, populism and polarisation. Helsinki: Reflections on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation, HEPP2 Conference Proceedings, pp. 30-38.
Guzman, A. (2021). TikTok and the Public Sphere: Examining the Structure of Online Discourse.
Heavner, K. (2021). The Impact of Media Algorithms on The Habermassian Public Sphere and Discourse. University of Arkansas.
Hobsbawn E. J. (1997), [1990]. Națiuni și naționalism din 1780 până în prezent: program, mit, realitate (D. Stanciu, Trad.). Chișinău: Editura ARC.
Hobsbawn, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Horváth, I., & Anghel, R. G. (2009). Migration and its consequences for Romania, Comparative Southeast European Studies, 57(4), 386-403.
Horváth, I., & Kiss, T. (2016). Depopulating semi-periphery? Longer term dynamics of migration and socioeconomic development in Romania. Demográfia English Edition. 58. 10.21543/DEE.2015.4.
Ianos, I. (2016). Causal relationships between economic dynamics and migration: Romania as case study, in Global change and human mobility (pp. 303-322). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1978) Antropologie structurală. (Trad. De J. Pecher.) Bucureşti: Politică.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1995) Mitologice I. Crud și gătit. (Trad. și pref. de Ioan Pânzaru.) București: Babei.
Markley, E., & Lepadatu, D. (2015). The Romanian American Dream: Permanent Migration, Identity and Integration of Romanian Immigrants in the United States, Sociologie Românească, 13(1), 70-85.
Ministerul Afacerilor Externe. (2021). Date statistice cu privire la cetățenii români cu domiciliul sau reședința în străinătate, la sfârșitul anului 2021. Diaspora.gov.ro. Disponibil la https://diaspora.gov.ro/images/content/resurse/Date_statistice_-_M.A.E._2021.pdf.
Momoc, A. (2018). Populism 2.0, digital democracy and the new ‘enemies of the people’, Communication Today, 9(1), 58-77.
Moroşanu, L. (2013). ‘We all eat the same bread’: the roots and limits of cosmopolitan bridging ties developed by Romanians in London, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(12), 2160-2181.
Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2019). Talent abroad: A review of Romanian emigrants. OECD Publishing. DOI: 10.1787/bac53150-en.
Pirvu, R., Badarcea, R., Manta, A., & Florea, N. (2018). The link between migration, remittances and economic growth: Empirical evidence from Romania, Theor. Pract. Res. Econ. Fields, 9, 109-123.
Popescu, C. (2020). ‘Back to the village’: the model of urban outmigration in post-communist Romania, European Planning Studies, 28(6), 1200-1218.
Ragazzi, F. (2012). Diaspora: The politics of its meanings, International Political Sociology, 6(1), 107-111.
Roos, C., Nagel, M., Kieschnick, H., & Cherniak, K. (2025). The emigration conundrum: EU countries of origin of migrants between integration and demarcation, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 63(1), 160-178.
Sandu, D. (2010). Lumile sociale ale migratiei româneşti în străinătate. Iaşi: Polirom, 11.
Shafir, M. (2008). From historical to “dialectical” populism: The case of post-communist Romania, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 50(3-4), 425-470.
Smyrnaios, N., & Baisnée, O. (2023). Critically understanding the platformization of the public sphere, European Journal of Communication, 38(5), 435-445.
Soare, S., & Tufiș, C. D. (2023). Saved by the Diaspora? The Case of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, European Political Science, 22(1), 101-118.
SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2652423.
Tănase, T. (2015). The electoral campaign through social media. Case study-2014 presidential elections in Romania, Sfera politicii, 23(183/1), 92-104.
Todorova, M. (2000). Balcanii şi balcanismul [Imagining the Balkans]. (Trans. Mihaela Constantinescu, Sofia Oprescu). Bucureşti: Humanitas.
Trandafoiu, R. (2013). Diaspora online: Identity politics and Romanian migrants. New York: Berghahn Books.
Vincze, H. O., & Balaban, D. C. (2022). Between conflict and solidarity: pandemic media coverage of Romanian intra-EU labour migrants, Media and Communication, 10(2), 265-275.
Wilterdink, N. (2017). The dynamics of inequality and habitus formation. Elias, Bourdieu, and the rise of nationalist populism, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 22-42.
Wolff, L. (2000). Inventarea Europei de Est: Harta civilizației în Epoca Luminilor (B. Rizzoli, Trad.). București: Humanitas.
Zulli, D., & Zulli, D. J. (2022). Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform, New media & society, 24(8), 1872-1890.