The impact of political stance on UK newspaper coverage of child and family social work

Worthington, Jessica and Scourfield, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6218-8158 2024. The impact of political stance on UK newspaper coverage of child and family social work. British Journal of Social Work 10.1093/bjsw/bcae154

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that news coverage of the social work profession plays an important role in influencing public opinion, and can damage staff morale if negative, affecting recruitment and retention of staff. Relatively little research has been done to ascertain how factors such as political stance of news outlet influence the way social workers are portrayed. The focus of this research is how child and family social workers are portrayed in eight UK national newspapers between 2018 and 2021 and whether the political stance of the newspapers influenced this. All mentions of social workers in 257 articles from eight major UK national newspapers were coded as either positive, negative, or neutral portrayals. Each article was also categorised for the social work topic it was reporting on. Quantitative analysis of the data found that the political stance of the newspaper was associated with the type of social work it reported on and there was a significant difference in the rate of both positive and negative mentions according to political stance, with right-leaning newspapers having a higher rate of negative mentions than left-leaning and left-leaning papers having a higher rate of positive mentions.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE) Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0045-3102
Funders:	Health and Care Research Wales
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 September 2024
Date of Acceptance:	3 September 2024
Last Modified:	12 Nov 2024 11:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172390

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