Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 8:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Social Work Education and Practice

Social Workers' Perceptions of the Portrayal of the Profession in the News and Entertainment Media: An Exploratory Study

Purpose: The social work profession has long been concerned with how it is portrayed in the media (Franklin & Partin, 1991; Gabor, 1990; McGowan & Walsh, 2000). A positive image is important to the vitality and effectiveness of the profession (Reid & Misener, 2001). The more positive the image of the social work profession, the more likely students will be attracted to the field and the more likely practicing social workers will experience higher levels of job satisfaction. It is important for social workers to perceive that their image is accurately depicted in the media and understood by the general public, as it is the media that shapes much of the public’s knowledge of the profession of social work. This study explores how social workers perceive the social work profession is depicted in both the news and entertainment media.

Methods: This study reports findings from a mail survey of 665 MSW social workers that were surveyed regarding how they believed the social work profession was depicted in the news and entertainment media on a set of paired adjectives comprising nine semantic differential scales.

Results: Findings demonstrated that social workers perceived the profession to be depicted negatively in both news and entertainment media. T-tests revealed that three of the nine scales were significantly different for entertainment versus news media. Social workers perceived the profession depicted as significantly more caring, trained, and strong in the entertainment media. The overall means for entertainment and news media reflect a general perception of the media projecting more negative than positive images. A news and entertainment perception scale was constructed from the 9 differential items that demonstrated good reliability (9 item scale Cronbach’s Alpha = .8984 for entertainment items, .8963 for news items). The scale reliability values reflect the general agreement of the MSW respondents regarding the news and entertainment media’s portrayals of social work across the nine dimensions.

Implications for practice: It is important for the future of the social work profession for social workers to imprint a more positive image of itself on the public. The manifestation of the media’s reality of social work invariably affects how social workers perceive themselves and their work. Images that the media portrays of social work serve to formulate the perception of those who have no direct contact with the profession. Thus, if the media images of social workers are depicted erroneously, the public may never become aware of it as they are predominantly unlikely to acquire further contact with professional social workers. More importantly, the media also reach social workers, and exposure to negative images of their profession can have noxious effects on professional self-image as well as job performance. In this study, social workers agree that the media portrait of the profession is negative overall. These findings suggest that social workers should engage the media at every opportunity in an effort to better explain the education, ethics, duties, roles, and responsibilities that guide the practice of social work.

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