Representations of child welfare services in Norwegian, Danish and German newspapers

Walter Schönfelder and Sanne Holmgaard

Children and Youth Services Review, 2019, vol. 100, issue C, 89-97

Abstract: Child welfare services are often scrutinized in media reports, but few comparisons of how services are represented in different countries are available. The aim of this article is to assess whether systematic differences in the representation of child welfare services in Norwegian, Danish and German newspapers can be documented. A content analysis of major newspapers in each country revealed considerable differences among the countries. While Norwegian and German child welfare services are mostly presented as implementing adequately severe and timed interventions, their Danish counterparts are heavily criticized for a complete lack of interventions and for implementing interventions too late or not at all. In none of the three countries, interventions of child welfare services are in the reviewed newspapers presented particularly as too severe or too early. The cooperation with other welfare services is described mostly as neutral or negative in Norwegian newspapers, as positive, neutral or negative in German ones and not at all in most Danish articles. Cultural sensitivity in interventions is in the newspaper coverage of all three countries characterized mostly by an omission of the topic altogether. The comparative indicators applied in this study are suggested as powerful tools for further comparisons.

Keywords: Media representation; Content analysis; Comparative research; Intervention; Cooperation; Cultural sensitivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740918309769
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:100:y:2019:i:c:p:89-97

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.02.037

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().