Good news: Mainstream media reporting is more likely to deter young people from using illicit drugs than encourage their use. Bad News: Types of reports most likely to have the strongest impact on young people are underrepresented in the media.
The revelation comes from a study conducted by the Drug Policy Modelling Programme (DPMW) at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at the University of New South Wales, Australia, which measured the impact of media reports on illicit drugs on the attitudes of over 2,000 young people aged 16-24. The study, Media reporting on illicit drugs in Australia: Trends and impacts on youth attitudes to illicit drug use, can be downloaded from the DPMP website.
Dr Caitlin Hughes, the study’s Chief Investigator and NDARC Research Fellow, said in a statement, “It is commonly assumed that news media can incite drug use. Our research has found that the opposite is the case. Most media portrayals appear to reduce interest in illicit drugs, at least in the short term. They increase perceptions of risk, reduce perceptions of acceptability and reduce the reported likelihood of future drug use. But the irony is that the messages that are most effective at deterring youth interest in drugs are currently under-represented in Australian news media."
Hughes and her team members Bridget Spicer, Kari Lancaster, Francis Matthew-Simmons & Paul Dillon first carried out a content analysis of newspaper reporting over 2003 to 2008. A total of 4,397 newspaper articles from 11 newspapers were coded on multiple elements of framing including topic, source and implied moral evaluation of illicit drug use.
Next, they conducted an online ‘drug media survey’ that included a randomised series of eight different media portrayals (denoting the two most commonly used illicit drugs – cannabis and ecstasy). Portrayals were drawn from newspapers, yet these portrayals could have appeared in any news media form e.g. online news or radio. A total of 2,296 youth aged 16-24 years completed the survey and reported the impact of each portrayal on their perception of the risk and acceptability of illicit drug use, and their likelihood of future use. In the end, the nature of media effects was explored using focus groups with 52 youths aged 16-24 years.
On analysing the articles, the researchers found that the Australian print media tend to focus on heroin or cannabis (with 27.0 percent and 24.5 percent respectively of the sample) and rarely on ecstasy (4.9 percent of the sample). Articles with a “good” moral evaluation of drugs were extremely rare and accounted for only 1.9 percent of the sample. Most articles were written with a neutral tone (83.5 percent).
Criminal justice action regarding users or traffickers accounted for 55.2 percent of the articles. The most commonly denoted consequence of illicit drugs/use was legal problems (59.9 percent). Health problems (14.2 percent), social problems (10.1 percent) and cost to society (10.1 percent) consequences accounted for much smaller proportions.
A substantial minority of respondents reported lifetime use of an illicit drug. The most frequently reported ones were cannabis and ecstasy, with 48.5 percent and 29.2 percent of participants respectively.
Between 66.4 percent and 86.5 percent reported that they had weekly or more frequent contact with television news, online news, radio news, and/or print newspapers. But the researchers subsequently found that only 36.2 percent saw media as a good source of information on illicit drugs. The worrying factor was that 59.0 percent said they could not trust journalists to tell the truth about illicit drugs.
Once the researchers narrowed down to the focus groups, they found that four key factors shaped how youth interpret media ― pre-existing knowledge and belief systems (including beliefs about drugs), media literacy skills, media framing, and the frequency of the media message. Some youngsters were more inclined to be affected, others likely to reject all messages. Some filtered and rejected messages according to the portrayal being depicted, the perceived credibility of the article, and the fit of the message with pre-existing schemas.
Hughes and her team found that youths were more likely to accept messages that were deemed credible (e.g. use evidence appropriately, cite expert sources and use a neutral tone). They were also more likely to accept messages that were deemed meaningful.
