Research project on the media debate about welfare completed
The way politicians and public welfare experts talk about substance abusers and single mothers, and how audiovisual media report on them, has changed fundamentally since the 1960s.
The researchers examined experts’ debates and audiovisual media reporting on single mothers and substance abusers in the Lake Geneva region and Italian-speaking Switzerland. While in the past these population groups were either “sensationalised” or “trivialised” in the media, today there is a tendency to no longer discuss them; rather, they are being made invisible. The media rarely address the question of how these people’s situations become precarious, and rarely ask questions about social responsibility.