media portrayal of young people glasgow

7/27/2019 Media Portrayal of Young People Glasgow

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The Representation of Young People in the MediaFebruary 2011

Graeme Mason, Information Officer, Youth Justice Research Team


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Introduction

The media is often accused of propagating myths about young people and crime.Indeed the media and the tabloid press in particular, often appear endlessly pre-occupied with the notion that all young people are a danger to their communities.

Countless studies conducted over previous years have found that the representationof young people in the media is in fact biased and, on the whole, unfair. For example,a 2004 study by MORI found the majority of articles from a mix of tabloid, broadsheetand local papers offered negative perspectives on young people and their activities.

Since the media plays an important role in creating public opinion and in turn increating policy and laws, negative media hype about young people can have seriousconsequences. Negative media stereotypes can alienate young people from the restof society and lead to unfair discrimination.

Despite media hyperbole about children and crime there is evidence to suggest that

youth crime in Scotland has fallen in recent years as a result of continued investmentin initiatives to tackle youth offending.

The central aim of this piece of research is to explore how young people in Scotlandare presented in Scotlands national and local newspapers and to examine the claimthat young people are habitually denigrated in the media.

Methodology

A mix of tabloid, broadsheet and local newspapers were used in this study. Thenewspapers that were studied were: The Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman, The Daily

Record and The Evening Times.

Articles were accessed through NewsUK, an online service which combines the mostpopular British newspapers in one database. Using this online resource it waspossible to search across all four titles simultaneously. The selected newspaper titleswere searched for all mentions of children, young people and related terms duringthe period between 1st December 2010 and 31st January 2011. A total of 55 suitablearticles were identified for inclusion in the study.

These articles were then divided into three categories positive, negative and neutralto determine the overall tone of media coverage of young people. In addition articleswere divided by subject on the basis of what the main focus of each article was.

A word frequency analysis was conducted using various online text analysis tools toidentify which terms appeared with greatest regularity across all articles. Thisprocess was repeated for articles according to newspaper type to establish howcoverage of young people varied between broadsheet, local and tabloid newspapers


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Discussion

The word cloud above provides a visual representation of the content of the articlesincluded in this study. The bigger the word the more frequently it appears in the text.A glance at the cloud gives no real indication of any negative bias in reporting aboutyoung people.

Given the nature of the study it is unsurprising that words related to youth appearmost prominently. Beyond this, the prominence of jobs and work would suggestthat youth employment is one of the most pressing concerns for young people in theview of these newspapers.

Of the larger words in the cloud care is perhaps the only word which has negativeassociations i.e. the care system. However, this word could be used in many differentways depending on the context in which it is applied. Indeed, there is a notable lackof words typically associated with an unfair portrayal of young people in the cloud(e.g. crime, disorder, violence).


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Tone of media coverage of young people

Tone

Positive

20%

Negative

30%

Neutral

50%

Determining the overall tone of a newspaper article is clearly a subjective processand it can be difficult to discern how a given article aims to present young people toits readership. Nevertheless an attempt was made to categorize all of the articlesincluded in the study as either positive, negative or neutral based on the content andstructure of the article.

As the chart above shows, half of the articles studied were deemed to be neutral intheir stance towards young people. Articles were labelled neutral if they did not offeran overtly positive or negative view of young people. Indeed, these articles wereoften ambiguous in their portrayal of young people.

The language deployed in neutral articles can often be misleading. Consider, forexample, the article title below:

FEARS FOR YOUNG SCOTS OVER CUTS

This article title conjures up a negative image of young people suffering as a result

public sector cuts. Moreover the article contains words and phrases such asdevastating, poor outcomes and failure which give an overall impression of badnews.

However while the article itself is broadly negative it makes no negative comment onthe young people themselves but rather portrays them as being at the mercy ofexternal forces out with their control, namely government action being taken toaddress the faltering economy.

Therefore it is important to acknowledge that an article can be negative in tonewithout necessarily portraying young people negatively. There were many examplesof this throughout the articles that were studied with young people often portrayed as

being victims of harsh economic conditions, failing services and a general lack ofopportunity.


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A further style of article which was classed as neutral was one in which the articlewas structured in such a way as to give both a positive and negative impression ofyoung people. An example of this would be an article which reports on a drop inyouth crime which both acknowledges the problem of youth offending while notingthat it is improving.

In some cases it was possible to determine whether the tone of an article waspositive, negative or neutral from the article title alone. Overtly negative article titlesinclude:

CABBIE KNIFED IN BACK BY YOUTH

YOUNG OFFENDERS COSTING ECONOMY 11 BILLION POUNDS

TRIAL DATE FOR YOUTHS OVER MURDER BID

Positive article titles include:

YOUNG PUT NEEDS OF ELDERS FIRST

YOUNG CITY VOLUNTEERS AWARDS WIN

YOUNG SINGERS ARE A REAL HIT

With articles such as these the language and structure was generally straightforward.The crime related stories involved a simple reporting of the facts while the article onthe cost of youth crime painted a negative picture of both young people and the youthjustice system without offering any counter views. Similarly, the positive articles

generally showed young people in a positive light in a light-hearted and simplisticmanner.

To summarize, the tone of just less than three quarters of the articles included in thisstudy were classed as either neutral or positive. This would indicate that thenewspapers selected for this analysis tend towards offering a balanced portrayal ofyoung people. This clearly runs contrary to the commonly held view that the mediatend to portray young people as a blight on society.


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Focus of media coverage

Art icle Subject

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Employment/Economy

Violence/Crime/ASB

Projects/Services

Health/Lifestyle

Achievement

Education

Other

Subject

Frequency

Looking at the range of subjects covered in these articles is a further way of exploringhow young people are portrayed in the media. As the chart above shows half of allarticles focussed on either violence/crime/anti-social behaviour or the economy and

jobs.

The titles of some of the articles which focus on the economy and jobs include:

YOUTH JOBLESS FIGURE SOARS

YOUTH JOBLESSNESS INCREASES FOURFOLD

OUR LOST GENERATION

DOLE NIGHTMARE OF SCOTLANDS KIDS

In the current economic climate extensive coverage of youth unemployment andrelated matters is to be expected. As these article titles show newspapers tend toperpetuate an atmosphere of doom and gloom surrounding young people andunemployment. However, in these articles young people are generally portrayed asbeing out of work through no fault of their own.

The titles of some of the articles which focus on violence/crime/anti-social behaviourinclude:

KNIFE DEATH YOUTH NAMED

DISORDER BY YOUTHS HALVED IN THREE YEARS


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YOUTHS SUSPECTED IN WREATH THEFTS

CURFEWS MAKE CRIME WORSE

While there is a high volume of stories focussing on young people within the contextof disorder, the above article titles show that these are not always entirely negative.The Disorder By Youths Halved in Three Years piece charts significant gains thathave been made in tackling this problem while Curfews Make Crime Worse ismore a criticism of a specific deterrent than of young people.

Indeed when looking at the articles which focus on violence/crime/anti-socialbehaviour, these articles generally fall into one of two categories. Articles whichportray young people in a wholly negative manner tend to be concerned with theactions of one or two youths in relation to a specific crime or incident. Articles whichoffer a more balanced portrayal of young people on the other hand tend to be aboutyoung people as a whole.

As was noted earlier, stories concerned with unemployment and crime often portrayyoung people as being victims of circumstance. This perhaps explains why a highproportion of articles cover bad news subjects such as unemployment and crimewhile a lower proportion of articles were classed as having a negative tone.

The remaining articles were relatively evenly divided across four remaining subjectcategories in addition to the 15% which were placed in the other category.

Stories about projects and services were generally positive and were concerned withthe reporting of a new initiative or local fundraising activities:

YOUTH PROJECT SHRUGS OFF BREAK-IN TO RAISE 1000 POUNDS

YOUTHS BACK BID TO BEAT CYBER BULLIES

Health and lifestyle articles often adopted a slightly sensationalist tone:

OUR CHILDREN ARE FATTER THAN EVER

1 IN 3 KIDS SLEEPLESS

Stories on the achievements of young people were clearly positive:

YOUNG CITY VOLUNTEERS AWARDS WIN

YOUNG FILMMAKERS MAKE BIG SCREEN DEBUT

Education related stories often reported on diminishing opportunities for Scotlandsyoung people, often in the area of higher education:

TUITION FEES ARE JUST ONE OF THE FINANCIAL HURDLES FACINGYOUNG PEOPLE


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Word Frequency

Word Frequency

0 20 40 60 80 10

Year

School

Work

Care

New

Pound

Services

Police

Help

Age

Word

Frequency

0

An online text analysis tool was used to identify the ten most frequently occurringwords across all articles included in the study. A stop-list was applied in order to omitwords which would appear frequently but do little to assist in the process ofunderstanding how young people are portrayed in the media. This stop list includedfrequently occurring terms such as children, young people, Scotland and Glasgow.

The frequent appearance of the word year relates to the timeliness of theinformation being reported. The frequent use of this word along with new relates tothe theme of progress and the need for newspapers and the wider media toconstantly emphasise the fact that the stories they choose to report are newdevelopments.

The frequent appearance of work and school relate to the themes of employment,the wider economy and education outlined above. Interestingly, while relatively few

articles were judged to be about education schools are nevertheless clearly key tothe portrayal of young people in these newspapers.

The word care is generally used in the context of care services in relation to howeffective they are in caring for young people. This coupled with the regularappearance of the word help would suggest a theme of concern for the quality ofsupports that are available to young people who need them.

The appearance of the word pound in the top ten most frequently occurring termsagain emphasises the importance of the economy to the way in which young peopleare portrayed while services would indicate that young people are often defined inrelation to the services they receive.


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Police is the perhaps the only word which conjures up a negative image of disorderand crime. It must be acknowledged that this word is typically used within the contextof youth offending.

This word frequency count appears to support the notion that newspapers aregenerally neutral in their portrayal of young people. Just as the word cloudhighlighted earlier there is, with the exception of police, a noticeable lack of termsthat could be considered negative. Indeed there is none of the sensationalist orderogatory words sometimes associated with reporting on young people such asneds or yobs.

Similarly, there are no words which would be automatically associated with a positiveportrayal of young people.


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Portrayal of young people by Newspaper Type

The task now is to gauge how attitudes to young people vary according to the type ofnewspaper. It useful firstly to outline how the articles are divided across the threecategories of newspapers included in the study:

42% broadsheet

35% local,

23% tabloid

Broadsheet newspapers carry the most stories featuring young people followed bylocal newspapers while tabloid newspapers account for just less than a quarter of allarticles.

This would suggest broadsheet newspapers are the most engaged with issuessurrounding young people with tabloid clearly the least engaged.

Tone by Newspaper Type

Tabloids Broadsheets Locals

Negative 36% 18% 30%

Neutral 64% 68% 30%

Positive 0% 14% 40%

The table above shows local newspapers carry significantly more positive storiesabout young people than either broadsheets or tabloids. Tabloid coverage of youngpeople is the most negative while broadsheets carry the highest number of neutralarticles.


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Broadsheet Newspapers

Broadsheet Article Subject

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Employment/Economy

Education

Violence/Crime/ASB

Projects/Services

Health/Lifestyle

Achievement

Other

Subject

Frequency %

Just less than half of all broadsheet articles covered young people in the context ofeither jobs and the economy or education while a relatively small proportion (13%)focussed on crime and antisocial behaviour.

The high number of other broadsheet articles indicates that broadsheets are themost varied in their approach to representing young people, choosing to present

them within a range of contexts.


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Word Frequency - Broadsheet

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Services

Years

Education

Financial

Cuts

Social

University

Plans

Parents

Culture

Word

Frequency

Services is the most frequently occurring term across all broadsheet articlesincluded in the study. This suggests broadsheet newspapers are focussed as muchon what is being done foryoung people as on the actions and activities of youngpeople themselves:

CONCERN FOR YOUTH SERVICES AFTER CHARITIES UNVEIL PLANS TOMERGE

Frequent references to financial and cuts reinforce the notion that broadsheetnewspapers tend to discuss young people against the backdrop of the troubledeconomy.

The appearance of university and the lack of specific reference to schools wouldseem to indicate that broadsheets give more coverage to higher education than otherforms of education:

TARGET OF 50% OF YOUNG PEOPLE OBTAINING UNIVERSITY DEGREESHAS BEEN PROVED UNREALISTIC

The regular occurrence of parents shows broadsheets often seek to define youngpeople in relation to their family environment while specific reference to culturereinforces the stereotype of the broadsheet newspaper as being more high mindedthan any other type of newspaper.


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Local Newspapers

Local Article Subject

0 10 20 30 40 5

Violence/Crime/ASB

Employment/Economy

Achievement

Projects/Services

Other

Subject

Frequency %

0

Just under half of all local newspaper articles discussed young people within thecontext of crime and antisocial behaviour. This would suggest that local newspaperarticles are markedly negative in their coverage of young people; however, as washighlighted above, the local newspapers included in this study carried more positivearticles about young people than either tabloids or broadsheets. Therefore, some of

these articles while framed by a discussion on anti-social behaviour are positive intone:

The number of complaints about disorder by young people across the west ofScotland has more than halved in the last three years and has dropped more thananother fifth so far this year.

As with broadsheets and tabloids, local newspapers often focus on employment andthe economy as well as projects and services aimed at young people. However localnewspapers focus on achievement to a greater extent than either broadsheets ortabloids. These achievement stories largely focus on competitions and fundraisingactivities:

Youngsters at a Glasgow youth project have gone from the despair of discoveringtheir club had been raided to joy at raising 1000 pounds for the facility


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Word Frequency - Local

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Police

Games

Council

Community

Disorder

Project

areas

years

Jobs

Legacy

Word

Frequency

The high frequency of the words police and disorder further illustrates theemphasis that local newspapers place on anti-social behaviour and young people.

The regular appearance of the words games and legacy relate to theCommonwealth Games due to take place in Glasgow in 2014. Since these gamesare expected to have a lasting positive effect on deprived areas of the city they willinevitably receive regular coverage:

COMMONWEALTH BONUS: ALMOST 2000 YOUNG PEOPLE HELPED INTOWORK

Taken together the regular mention of council, community and projects fit theoverall local nature of the reporting while consistent reference to jobs as opposed tofinancial etc. indicates that local newspapers refrain from discussing the widereconomic situation and instead focus on employment in their area.


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Tabloid Newspapers

Tabloid Article Subject

0 10 20 30 4

Employment/Economy

Health/Lifestyle

Violence/Crime/ASB

Employment/Economy

Projects/Services

Subject

Frequency %

0

The bulk of tabloid articles cover young people in relation to either employment andthe economy (an ever present theme across all newspapers types) or health andlifestyle.

Stories on health and lifestyle perhaps lend themselves to the more extreme style of

reporting which can often be found in tabloid articles. Indeed these stories tend to beshocking and dramatic in tone:

A vitamin deficiency linked to a crippling bone disease caused a girl years of pain because she used factor 50 suncream.

The remaining tabloid articles are evenly divided across anti-social behaviour andcrime, employment and the economy and projects and services.


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Word Frequency - Tabloid

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Unemployment

Obese

Girls

Kids

Health

runaw ays

Government

Curfew s

Labour

Figures

Word

Frequency

Terms such obese and runaways reflect the sensationalist element of tabloidreporting. Consider the style of reporting used in the two examples below:

Unemployment is wrecking the mental heath of young Scots, a charity claims.

The number of 16 to 24-year-olds claiming unemployment benefit has risen fourfoldsince before the recession, costing the UK economy up to 155 million pounds aweek, according to a new report.

These opening sentences are taken from a tabloid and broadsheet respectively.These examples illustrate the differences between tabloid and broadsheet reportingstyles with the former short, informal and dramatic while the latter is sober andmeasured.

While tabloid newspapers generally cover the same range of subjects asbroadsheets and local newspapers the style in which they report tends to be more

extreme.


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Conclusions

The findings from this study have revealed that the Scottish press are largelybalanced in their portrayal of young people. Just less than three quarters of thearticles included in the study are either neutral or positive in their overall tone.

Yet, while the majority of articles do not seek to comment on young people in anegative way they often discuss young people from within a negative context such asunemployment or anti-social behaviour. In this respect young people are oftenportrayed as being hindered by forces out with their control such as economicinstability or failing services.

Moreover many articles portray young people both positively and negatively,ultimately creating an impression of young people which is neither wholly positive norwholly negative.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of overtly negative youth related stories

focussed on individuals and isolated incidents of crime and violence such asmuggings, stabbings etc. In this sense, it could be argued that bad news stories areby and large limited to individual young people whereas young people as a whole arepresented in a more balanced manner.

In terms of the focus of these articles across the board, exactly half were concernedwith both the economy (and the knock on effects on employment) and crime and anti-social behaviour. There can be little doubt that the global recession will haveincreased the volume of discussion on young people and employment and it ispossible to speculate that this may have reduced the volume of other subjects whichmay have ordinarily been the focus of youth related stories.

There are some key distinctions which can be made between the ways in which eachtype of newspaper presents young people to their readers. Broadsheet newspapersare on the whole the most balanced in their portrayal of young people while tabloidstend to be more negative. Local newspapers, while focussing many of their articleson crime and antisocial behaviour, also carry the highest proportion of good newsstories about youths.

In addition the findings of this study indicate that broadsheets are the most engagedwith youth issues while tabloids appear to be the least engaged.

In terms of style both tabloid and local newspaper articles tend to be written in amore emotive fashion than broadsheets with tabloids in particular employing a more

extreme and sensationalist style.

Interestingly less than 10% of articles featured quotes from young people themselveswhich means young people rarely get the chance to voice their opinions and feelingsthrough newspapers. Generally speaking quotes that were included involved adultseither speaking on behalf of young people or making some kind of comment on them.

In conclusion it is important to stress that this has been in large part a subjectiveprocess and newspaper articles could undoubtedly be interpreted in numerousdifferent ways. Nevertheless, it is hoped that this short study has shed some light onhow the media in Scotland choose to present young people to the public.

media portrayal of young people glasgow

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