L’enfant en danger à la Une: médias, discours et société

Abstract

This paper aims to present some early results from an ongoing project named Representations of Childhood - media discourses on children at risk. This multi-discipline research project, focused on children at risk, examines how this issue is portrayed on the media in terms of coverage and the kind of language used, as a process of social construction (Searle, 1998). The methodology involves both quantitative and qualitative analysis of a variety of media sources. Data here presented are based on the discourse analysis of the first page headlines of four Portuguese newspapers, during the first quarter of 2008. The choice of first page headings is supported by theoretical as well as empirical reasons, especially because headings are powerful devices to attract reader’s attention, they shape its understanding of events and facts and confront him with synthetic rhetoric. This study intends to explore first page headlines in order to search for any references to children at risk, the formal resources used and their framing of reality.