The aim of this study was to investigate how the media portrays the social workers professional practice and to investigate how media reports on childcare issues. The method used to answer our questions was critical discourse analysis in which Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model was in focus. The study also contains the social constructivism as the science theoretical approach and media logic as the theory. The study's approach is based on reading news articles from the Swedish tabloid newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen. Relevant text from the news articles was extracted as quotes, which underlies the result presented. In our study we found, based on our questions, a pattern in the newspaper reports where there are links to attentive events such as children's deaths or inadequate interventions in a custody. From the knowledge gained from research and theory, it is easier for a newspaper to highlight drama and sensation of something that is negative, rather than positive. Based on our method and the result presented, we also identified a discourse that we chose to term as an acting discourse. Because on one hand, the tabloid newspapers criticizes social workers and their occupational role by questioning when a custody has taken place. On the other hand, the social workers are criticized when they have not intervened. It can be concluded that the underlying newspaper reports describe that the occupational role and competence of current social workers are a question of their behavior and non-action. From what we noted in the papers' reports, the image appears to be that the way newspapers portray/describe social workers is that, regardless of their actions social workers are perceived as not fulfilling the responsibility connected with their professional role.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-85173 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Petersson, Simon, Björkman Winther, Carl |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete (SA), Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete (SA) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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