The Romani Need More Information in Their Mother Tongue, According to the IJC Study
Approximately 30% of the Romani cannot find information in their mother tongue at all, 39% find it with difficulty, and only 22% of them affirm that they identify such information easily or very easily. These conclusions are part of the study conducted by the Independent Journalism Center entitled “Vulnerable and/or Marginalized Groups in Relation to the Media: Access, Consumption, and Media Literacy.”
According to the research, the Romani mainly get information from the TV (65%), Telegram and Viber (58%), and to a lesser extent from podcasts, non-governmental organizations which represent this ethnic group, and magazines.
The respondents from this category consider themselves to be better informed due to civil society initiatives and the information published in the press (72%), and 52% confirm they have medium and high trust in media sources from the Republic of Moldova. However, the Romani have the greatest confidence in the information they get from their family members, colleagues, relatives, and neighbors.
The types of information the people in the analyzed group search for in the media sources are news and current events in the Republic of Moldova (70%) and around the globe (51%); science and technology (9%) and sports (7%) are less popular categories. At the same time, 83% of them are interested in the information about the Romani culture and traditions, and 53% of them use multiple sources of information.
The quantitative study respondents were asked whether they could find information in their native language easily. Thus, 30% of the Romani said that they could not find such information at all, and 39% stated that they found it with difficulties. Only 22% of the Romani said that they could identify information in the Romani language easily or very easily, and 9% do not even search for it.
Another aspect refers to the degree of difficulty in identifying the information about the region or locality where the respondents reside. In this case, the Romani are again in the most complicated situation: 40% of them say it is difficult or impossible to find information about the region where they live, and 6% do not even search for such information. However, only 10% of refugees complain about the difficulties in finding information about the region where they currently reside. Persons with disabilities face certain difficulties: every fifth of them has difficulty identifying such information; 19% of elderly people are in the same situation.
When asked, “How easily do you find useful information you can understand without difficulty?” one third of the Romani respondents replied that it was difficult or very difficult for them to obtain useful and clear information. Likewise, the Romani are among the most vulnerable categories in terms of detecting manipulative news. Some refugees (11%), elderly people (14%), and persons with disabilities (14%) are also faced with such difficulties.
