Abstract
Media linguistics, an interdisciplinary research field, extensively engages in the analysis of language in the media and its impact on society. An interesting application case in media linguistics concerns the analysis of headlines in online press. Headlines in the media play a crucial role in information dissemination and significantly influence public opinion formation. When it comes to political events or international developments, headlines serve as powerful tools to shape the perception of the news and thus steer readers’ attitudes in a desired direction. In this article, I refer to the Austrian, German and Romanian online press regarding Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area. It is noticeable that the coverage in German media often appears more distant, while Austrian media adopt a critical tone in their headlines. This particularity could be linked to Austria’s geo graphical proximity to Romania, raising interesting questions about media linguistics and the cultural imprint on media coverage. In addition, the analysis also employs a pragmalinguistic perspective, which explores how linguistic elements in headlines are used within specific communicative contexts to convey meaning and achieve pragmatic goals.