The research question
Media representation of youth is important because the way young people are framed is directly related to the public opinion of younger generations. The more people hear how problematic young people are, the more critical the public will be of them. Subsequently, state policies will also be determined in large part on the basis of the public perception of youth. Mass media are responsible for the image of young people. Therefore, it is important to understand how media frame the youth. The research question is, “whether the negative image of youth is a stable or transformative phenomenon?”. The authors’ research hypothesis is that negative media coverage of youth is overstated.
Overall, previous research indicates a negative perception of youth. As far back as 1961, Stensaas presented noted that news stories surrounding young Americans were primarily negative. Eleven years later, in 1972, Stanley Cohen warned of a prevalent social stigma against contemporary young people. This tendency was also noted by Porteous and Colston in 1980 in the United Kingdom. In 1983, Geoffrey Pearson pointed out frequent criticisms of youth as posing constant threats to society. Three years later, in 1986, Falchikov conducted a large study in which he found that news coverage of young people was mainly related to their problems. This idea was further reiterated by Devlin 2000, who studied youth in Ireland. Six years later in 2006, Devlin would come to the same conclusion that the media perceived young people as deviant and dangerous. As such, the negativity trend has consistently persisted in the new century.
Method
The authors use two reasons for justification of the choice of newspapers. First, it was established in 2003 that other types of media turned to newspapers for information. Second, the availability of past newspaper issues allowed the authors to ensure a consistent supply of data, which would not be accomplished with television, radio, and the internet. Although newspapers may no longer be the original source of news today, they were a reasonable choice for 2003.
The authors’ selection of newspapers was made on the basis of diversity. Two newspapers targeted the entire Danish population – Politiken and BT. Fyens Stiftisidende represented a lesser audience in a specific region. Næstved Tidende has an even lesser audience by focusing on the readership from a specific location. Finally, the analysis of Kristeligt Dagblad allowed the authors to understand how the religious overview of the youth corresponded with the overall public perception. The authors identified a particular week, which represented the average week for news stories. Having amassed 210 issues published within this week from 1953 to 2003, the researchers ensured a stable supply of data. The reason for the choice of these years is the sufficient number of newspapers available from this period.
Targeted reading was the primary way the research was conducted. First, they determined a specific definition of a young person using the United Nation’s guidance. Second, they identified a number of keywords related to youth. When the research assistants identified a word matching the key terms, they would read the news story more attentively. In total, the readings were done by three research assistants.
The research team used coding to ascertain valuable data. An important role was given to the identification of the news stories’ bias. If the stories elaborated on young people’s resources and talents, they were deemed positive. If there was an indication of delinquent aspects of the youth’s life, the connotation was negative. Stories devoid of positive and negative bias were classified as neutral. Similarly, the topic of the articles was coded based on the keywords. Group belonging was used as an indication of the age of young people, as such movements as punks generally encompassed young people. Another important distinction was whether a young person was quoted as an individual or a group member in the news stories.
Results
The main finding is that Danish newspapers had a slightly more positive outlook on youth than a negative one. 16% of all newspaper items related to youth focused on the topic of crime, 16% focused on culture, the sport had 12%, education – 11%, and politics – 8%. Social items encompassed 6%, while philosophical, accidents, labor, family, international, and health items had 3% each. As such, the findings of the study supported the research hypothesis because there was no domination of negativity found. However, this does not imply that young people were framed in a primarily positive manner, as the data showed that news items with positive bias encompassed only 39%, while negative items had 32%.
Limitations
The most evident limitation is the choice of the average news week. Whatever news stories were published during other weeks of the year were not analyzed in this study. Furthermore, the study effectively disregards the importance of seasons, even in such season-dependent spheres as culture and education. As a result, the analysis was limited by choice of the season in each year, although the authors believe that it is not relevant for ascertaining the longitudinal tendencies.
The second limitation is the choice of newspapers as the only source of data. As the twentieth century drew to a close, electronic media gained prominence. It is reasonable to suggest that some people acquired information from televisions and radio, which was different from newspapers. As such, there is a possibility that the analysis focusing only on newspapers misses out on important data from electronic media, which also shaped public perception.