New Zealand has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Research has shown that modern mass media provide a mediated cultural forum through which policy responses to child poverty are socially negotiated and from which public support for children in need is either cultivated or undermined. This thesis focuses on the role of media advocacy by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) who attempt to widen public debate and legitimate options for addressing child poverty. I investigate the case of the Government's Working for Families package and the controversy surrounding the media release of CPAG's negative evaluation of the package in the form of a research report Cut Price Kids. Attention is given to competing ideological frames underlying the Government's package, in the form of neo-liberal emphases on distinctions between God's and the Devil's poor. Attention is also given to CPAG's response, in the form of communitarian notions of collective responsibility for all families in need. Specifically, I analyse the role of the mass media in framing child poverty as a social issue across three levels of mass communication - production, representation, and reception. At the production level interviews were held with six journalists involved with reporting on Cut Price Kids and two members of CPAG. Fifteen Government and 5 CPAG press releases were also explored to document media production processes and restraints on public deliberations. In addition, the ideological stances influencing the framing of coverage were investigated. At the media representation level 21 press, seven radio, and five television items were analysed to establish the scope of public debate, whose perspectives were included, and the ways in which differing perspectives are combined. At the reception level four focus group discussions with lower socio-economic status (SES) parent groups, as well as follow-up photo-based interviews with eight participants were explored in order to document the role of media coverage in the lives of families with children living in poverty. Across levels, findings suggest that journalists are restrained by professional practices which maintain the importance of balance and detached objectivity, rather than interpretations of appropriate responses to child poverty. Tensions between the Government's emphasis on restricting support to families with parents in paid employment and CPAG's emphasis on the need to not discriminate against the children of out of work families framed coverage. The lower SES parents participating at the reception level challenged the restrained nature of coverage, which excluded people such as themselves, and openly questioned media characterisations of them as bludgers who are irresponsible parents. Overall, findings support the view that media are a key component of ongoing social dialogues through which public understandings of, and policy responses to, child poverty are constructed. Specifically, psychologists need to engage more with processes of symbolic power which shape the public construction of child poverty in a conservative manner that can lead to victim blaming, and restrains opportunities for addressing this pressing social concern.

With the changing political, economic, cultural and environmental landscape of global societies, journalistic writings on social development issues and concerns have become more relevant in recent times. Through civic advocacy journalism (CAJ), the agenda and programs of social development movements, civil society groups, international development organizations and non-government organizations are promoted and advanced. It is essential to understand the forms and representations of CAJ in practice, concepts and theories in the light of its relevance to media practice and to society at large. However, there is very little literature on the scope and extent of CAJ knowledge and practice. A researcher needs to look into actual practice and connect this with available literature to establish the application of CAJ. For this study, a qualitative content analysis method was used to assess CAJ practice in online print media reports at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit.