How do Australian news media depict illicit drug issues? An analysis of print media reporting across and between illicit drugs, 2003–2008

News Media Reporting on Substance Use Among People of African Ethnicity in Three Australian States, 2003-2013

“…This is consistent with broader evidence suggesting that alcohol and drug consumers are often excluded from discussions which concern them (Madden, 2008;McDonald, 2014). Further, the overrepresentation of law enforcement sources reinforces a criminal discourse, a finding which has been shown in broader analyses of alcohol and drug-related media reporting (Azar et al, 2014;Hughes et al, 2011). Attempts to engage community organisations (as cited in approximately half of the articles) are encouraging, but community organisation representatives may not represent the views of all community members, particularly the marginalised young people who are most likely to be using alcohol and illicit drugs.…”

“…While the legal and moral framing of news reporting on alcohol and drug use has also been shown in broader reviews of reporting (i.e. not focused on CALD communities) (Azar et al, 2014;Hughes et al, 2011;Lancaster et al, 2012), the potential implications for CALD communities are particularly worrisome. Combined with sensationalised media reporting on African crime and gangs, the type of reporting identified in this review has significant potential to contribute to negative stereotyping and marginalisation of African migrant communities, potentially contributing to social and economic exclusion.…”

“…It is possible that this selection process biased results through missing articles which may have been more positively focused and mentioned recovery from alcohol/drugs later in the article. Similarly, we did not include articles examining substance use among non-African communities in our methodological approach as previous studies of this nature have been recently conducted (Azar et al, 2014;Gelbart, 2012;Hughes et al, 2011) and we were limited in time and resources to conduct this work. We acknowledge that this limits our ability to effectively compare our findings to other communities.…”

“…Variables relating to article identification (publication title, article title, journalist name, article type, publication date) and content (article framing and tone, communities identified, consequences of substance use identified, sources [individuals or organisations cited in the article as giving information or opinions]) were extracted into a Microsoft Access database. Coding categories for article content were defined a priori, and were informed by previous media reviews of substance use issues (Gelbart, 2012;Hughes et al, 2011). Descriptive analyses of key variables were conducted using Stata Version 11.1 (Statacorp LP, TX, USA).…”

Moving beyond the other

“…Whilst some writers have identified the difficulty of attempting to generalise patterns in drugs discourse (Giulianotti, 1997;Hughes et al, 2011), particularly in the contemporary multi-mediated environment (Forsyth, 2012), a number of academics have highlighted themes in how political and media discourses 'do drugs'. It has been argued that governmental discourse around drug consumption is 'characterised by compulsion, pain and pathology ' (O'Malley and Valverde, 2004: 26) whilst the mainstream media compound this ideology with negative stereotypical representations of drug users (UKDPC, 2010).…”