DRUGS IN THE MEDIA

Drugs in the Media

Drugs in the Media

Introduction

Knowledge about media and illegal drugs is indisputably scant. We understand that illegal drugs (such as cannabis, heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and ecstasy) feature in thousands of news stories each year and remain one of the most popular motifs used in films, television, magazines and online chat rooms. Research suggests, for example, that 18-22% of popular television shows, movies and songs make quotation to illegal drugs. However no equivalent content analysis of illegal drugs has been undertook of newspaper coverage, or of other news mediums such as radio, television or online media.

The media analysis demonstrated that the dominant portrayals regarding illegal drug issues in the American publish media are inclined to focus on heroin or cannabis (with 27.0% and 24.5% respectively of the sample) and rarely on ecstasy (4.9% of the sample). Despite fears that positive portrayals of drugs in the media may encourage or peak interest in drug use, the sample showed that articles with a “good” moral evaluation of drugs were exceedingly rare and accounted for only 1.9% of the sample. Most articles were in writing with a neutral pitch (83.5%).

 

 

Discussion

The dominant portrayals depict law enforcement or criminal justice action, and emphasize the legal problems associated with drugs/use. For example, criminal justice action regarding users or traffickers amounted to 55.2% of articles inside the sample.

As anticipated, granted the dominance of criminal justice and law enforcement topics, the most routinely denoted consequence of illegal drugs/use in the sample was legal problems (59.9%). But health problems (14.2%), social problems (10.1%) and cost to society (10.1%) consequences accounted for small albeit significant proportions. (Wakefield, 2006)

Illicit drug frames differed somewhat between drugs, with for example greater emphasis for heroin articles on legal problems, greater emphasis for amphetamine articles on crisis and bad moral evaluation of drugs and greater emphasis for ecstasy articles on negative health consequences and “risks” from use. This illustrates the presence of subtle differences in how illegal drugs are portrayed in American publish media: in terms of what makes them news today and how illegal drug use is spoken of. (Saunders,1998)

There were also subtle shifts in the amount of articles published and framing of drug issues over time. Of note was a shift in the portrayal of non-legal consequences of use. Between 2003 and 2005 there was a shift away from describing drugs as leading to health problems or as a cost to society. Then from 2005 to 2007 there was another shift towards describing drugs as a health or social problem. This tendency reversed somewhat in 2008. This demonstrates that the in spite of the dominant portrayals, the way illegal drugs are framed can shift with changing events and agendas. (Taylor,2005)

Media portrayals on illegal drugs leveraged youth attitudes to drugs. With only one exclusion, the media portrayals affected the overall sample of youth in an “anti-drug” manner: that is, they increased perceptions of risk, decreased perceptions of acceptability, and decreased the described prospect of future drug ...