METHODOLOGY
My investigation will address the research problem - in its most detailed terms – at the level of the Romanian society. However, the evaluation of current practices and media policies in the field will also have a comparative dimension as I shall proceed to a comparative analysis of the situation in three countries. The United States, as an example of well developed institutional preoccupations and arrangements; Hungary, a country which successfully attempted to adopt viable solutions in the past few years; and Romania, which is only at the beginning of such process. It is hoped that on the basis of results and then tested methods of this pilot investigation it will become possible to extend the research to the whole of the region.
The methods to be employed in the proposed research are:
1. Survey and comparative analysis of special arrangements for deaf in the television programs of Romania, Hungary and the US, as well as a study of legal regulations, policy statements and institutional set ups in the field in the three selected countries. The sources of information will be the existing official and other data, reports, legal documents, articles in written media and the information collected by my own survey of selected TV stations.
2. Thematic interviews with persons having hearing disability, deaf community leaders, media representatives and policy-makers in the field
- The interviews with hearing impaired will focus on the way they perceive television as a source of information and the disadvantage encountered as the result
of communicational and informational barriers
- The interviews with deaf community leaders will look at the special needs of this social category and will try to identify their ideas, proposals concerning the improvement of available communicational arrangements for deaf in the visual media.
- The interviews with media leaders and experts will search for the causes of the unsatisfactory level of special provisions for deaf, trying to identify the gaps and to look for ameliorative measures
- The interviews with policy-makers will focus on the possibility to adopt new legal regulations in order to facilitate access to television spread information by deaf.
3. Survey in selected rural and urban localities of Romania in order to evaluate attitudes towards deaf people and concerning their rights, with focus on the right to information. The aims of the survey are to identify the most frequent prejudices as well as their social roots, and also to form a better image on the penetration among various social groups of those moral values, human resources which potentially can lead to a more positive and constructive attitude towards people with hearing disability.
4. Study of current media reports, opinion polls concerning the situation of deaf in Romania, with particular attention to the communicational barriers they have to face and their access to information.