A Comparative Analysis of European Media Coverage of Children and the Internet

2. A Comparative Analysis of European Media Coverage of Children and the Internet Leslie Haddon Department of Media and Communication LSE Email: LesHaddon@aol.com Gitte Stald Innovative Communication Group IT University of Copenhagen Email: stald@itu.dk

3. Agenda for presentation Media(ted) perspective? opportunities • Research context and media analysis • Aim of study • Hows and whys • Methodological challenges • Four stories: 1) Amount of coverage 2) Common: negative articles 3) International stories 4) Risk coverage varies by country • Summary or risks

4. Media analysis as part of WP2 – research contexts: • Which cultural factors and political, economic, and research strategies shape research in children’s and young people’s acces to and uses of online media? • 14 participating countries • Four newspapers – national, regional, popular • Two months – november and December 2007 Research contexts & media analysis

5. Aim of study • General patterns of media coverage, which applied in many countries if not necessarily in all. • Do certain aspects of the internet receive more media attention? • Do negative stories tend to be more newsworthy? • Are the voices and views of some groups more likely to be reported in the press than others?

6. Aim of study Questions relating to cross-national variation: • Might differences in media coverage help to explain some of the different perceptions across countries of the Internet as a ‘place’ where children can spend time, of the opportunities open to them and of the risks that they might encounter? • Are the experiences of children online simply less visible in some national media compared to others? • Do some national press provide a more optimistic picture of children’s life online? • Are any ‘problems’ portrayed as something that happens in other countries? Or is the media message, “could it happen here?”

7. ”how” is easy – ”why” is a challenge Answers to why we find differences and similarities and what they mean are difficult • Patterns of press coverage regarding extent, attitudes and impact depend on a complex combination of factors such as culture, traditions of public discourses and debate, communication and market strategies, reader interests, etc. These all make an uncertain foundation upon which to build a comparative analysis of causes and consequences.

8. ”how” is easy – ”why” is a challenge Methodological challenges to conducting this type of study • Attempts to be representative through balancing choice quality and popular/tabloid press, as well as regional press proved difficult. • Data gathering through paper or online versions may provide different results • Issues of inter-coder reliability across national teams

9. Story 1: Amount of coverage • Few countries with very similar levels of low coverage: Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece and Portugal, 8-9 articles per newspaper over 2 months. • The majority of countries had about 20. • Outliers: Italy (30) Spain (over 40).

10. Common levels of coverage • Bulgaria, Greece and Portugal had lower internet penetration rates. • Denmark is an anomaly • Apart from the outliers, where the internet is more established there appears to be a similar level of reporting

11. Story 2: Common: negative articles • A few countries were the cumulative coverage was positive • Some where it was balanced or mixed • There were many countries where coverage was negative, quite extreme in some cases

12. Why? • Different awareness raising campaigns? • National media find it newsworthy to show how the virtual world can be a dangerous place? • Bad news generally more newsworthy?

13. Importance of legal reporting • Overall and in most countries coverage was mostly dominated by court cases/police actions/ crime • Crime, court cases or police operations were clearly the most significant source and basis of the story • It is the police and legal representatives who are most often cited.

14. Risks vs opportunities • Far more on risks than opportunities • 2/3 risks • 1/5 opportunities • Content risks 50% • Conduct 30% • Contact: 20%

15. Cross-cultural variation • Denmark is the most outstanding case: only 14% crime, etc reporting • Is this because: (a) there is less crime/reported crime (b) there is less media coverage of the crime that exists To what extent do these two factors more generally explain cross-cultural variation?

16. Story 3: International stories • 2 major international stories in this time period • a) the hunt of and capture of a paedophile posting online images • b) a massacre in a Finnish school posted on YouTube

17. National coverage of these events • Coverage of both stories varied substantially • This would to an extent affect the overall statistics • To what extent do particular stories affect the cross-national pattern? • In some countries the proportion of international news is high that such stories have a large influence on the figures

18. Story 4: Risk coverage varies by country • Although content risks predominate in many countries, there is some variation • This may in part be accounted for by particular stories e.g. conduct risks were high in Norway because of the Finnish massacre

19. Variation in risk coverage • BUT it may also reflect media or wider values in different countries e.g. content coverage is low in Norway, including sexual content. • In Norway there is a notion of ‘natural childhood’ where sexuality is less of a risk (but where children’s rights are emphasised)

20. Consequences of variation • Apart from reflecting values, different media coverage in different countries helps to sensitise the different populations to different risks

21. Summary • There is more in the paper on other results, methodological challenges, how to proceed. • The 3 main stories covered here were: - Common levels of coverage - The significance of crime etc reporting - Reporting of international events - National variation in coverage of risks

22. A Comparative Analysis of European Media Coverage of Children and the Internet Leslie Haddon Department of Media and Communication LSE Email: LesHaddon@aol.com Gitte Stald Innovative Communication Group IT University of Copenhagen Email: stald@itu.dk