ERIC Number: EJ1065523
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jul
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1360-2322
EISSN: N/A
Good, Bad or Absent: Discourses of Parents with Disabilities in Australian News Media
Fraser, Vikki; Llewellyn, Gwynnyth
Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, v28 n4 p319-329 Jul 2015
Background: News media frames public perceptions. As such, news media becomes a useful source of analysis to understand the presence (or otherwise) of people with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, within parenting discourses in Australia. Method: Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this article examines major Australian newspapers over the period from January 2004 to December 2008, critiquing the construction of parenting and disability. A small number of articles are examined in close depth for tone, polarity syntactic and paradigmatic choice, deconstructing the underlying discourses that shape the article and thereby popular perceptions of parenting and disability. Discussion: Discourses of care and child protection are emphasized in news articles about parenting, creating perceptions that negate the role of people with disabilities as parents. Such perceptions result in a systematic symbolic castration of people with intellectual disabilities from the role of parent in Australian society. Conclusion: By providing a framework for understanding the public perceptions of parents with disabilities (particularly intellectual disabilities), this paper demonstrates that changes are necessary in Australian media reporting on parents with disabilities to bring such reporting more closely in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006.
Descriptors: Discourse Analysis, News Reporting, Foreign Countries, Public Opinion, Disabilities, Attitudes toward Disabilities, Parenting Skills, Parent Role, Child Care, Syntax, Guidelines, Civil Rights, Parents, Child Welfare
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Information Analyses; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A