‘Important, not media-worthy’ – the subject of social welfare in selected media from a message management perspective

Abstract

In this article, I present the results of content analysis, extended by discourse analysis, which covered communications thematically related to social welfare in three media groups (Rzeczpospolita, Gazeta Wyborcza, Fakt, Super Express; Onet, WP), published between 2019 and 2022. The analysis of media narratives constructed around social welfare and social integration institutions, as well as social workers, is currently an important research gap, especially as the academic discourse of social policy and the professional discourse of practitioners (workers) in the social welfare system has been dominated for almost two decades by a perception of a negative, unfavourable, inappropriate and/or unfair media image of welfare institutions. I decided to verify this ‘hypothesis’ through a systematic analysis. At the same time, the study made it possible to identify the main thematic and situational contexts, narrative patterns, and quantitative proportions of individual ‘welfare motifs’ in situational frameworks such as information, response to individual or collective tragedy or scandal and intervention. The analysis confirmed the thesis of a highly schematic character of media texts dealing with the subject of social welfare and the particular phenomenon of message content management, oriented towards the preferences and expectations of individual media audiences. There is also a tendency to strongly link the ways in which the subject matter is framed, including the emotional tinge of the texts and the choice of narrative strategy, adequately to the frame and convention.