The concept mediahype is often used to criticize media performance, but its definition is very unclear. What is typical of mediahype: the media frenzy, the exaggeration, the trivialization or the lack of reliable facts? The debate about mediahype is dominated more by value judgments about the alleged negative consequences of news coverage than by a rational approach with clear definitions and criteria. This research tries to develop a new approach with a definition of mediahype that is based on the typical features of these suddenly occurring news waves.
Mediahype is defined as a media-generated, wall-to-wall news wave, triggered by one specific event and expanded by the self-reinforcing processes within the news production of the media.
This distinguishes mediahypes from other news waves in which not the media but the events itself are leading, as is the case with news about wars or disasters. Mediahypes interfere with the so-called correspondence assumption that the frequency of events and the frequency of media reports are synchronic phenomena.
During a mediahype the news seems to develop a life of its own, boosted several times by the same reinforcing process. The chain reaction is triggered by a key event that receives more attention than usual — for whatever reason. Once this event turns into a news theme, it will gain more coverage and rise on the news agenda, and because of that, get even more coverage, etcetera. Journalism is a self-referential system: news is what other media consider newsworthy. This leads to a high degree of uniformity in the news selection and a pressure on every news desk to join the pack. Mediahype is based on the lowering of the thresholds for any event or statement that can be related to the central news theme. This triggers a hunt for comparable cases: any recent incident that fits this theme will receive (renewed) media-attention. If the match is not perfect, comparable cases will be reinterpreted to fit in. In this way, the media create a wave of comparable incidents in the news, giving the public the impression that events accumulate and that problems get worse every day. Inevitably, this growing news wave will stimulate all kinds of reactions in society, which in turn will fuel the flames of the mediahype. The result is a strong reinforcement of one specific frame of reference, marginalizing other perspectives.
Mediahypes can be identified by using the following criteria.
To be considered a mediahype, a news wave should meet at least these criteria: a key event; a consonant news wave; a sudden increase in reports on comparable cases and a strong rise of thematically related news. Nevertheless, one can identify differences between the news waves that match these hype criteria. Sometimes the media go into one case in depth, reporting every detail; sometimes they widen the ground they cover by reporting all kinds of events under the umbrella of the same news theme. That is why a distinction is made between magnifying and enlarging mediahypes. Coverage of scandals belongs to the first category of mediahypes, and news waves on new social problems to the second.
The second chapter explores the role of mediahypes in the construction of social problems. Conditions first have to be defined as problematic before they are recognized by society as social problems. This collective definition is not a given, but an accomplishment based on the efforts of interest groups and social movements. As messengers and managers of the public arena the media play an important role in this process of social construction. Since mediahypes can magnify or enlarge specific problems in a short period, it is relevant to focus on the link between mediahypes and the different stages in the development a social problem.
First is the Framing Stage, in which claims-makers try to get recognition for a new social problem. Their aim is to get their specific frame accepted by society as a whole. Once this validation is a fact, the development will enter the second stage of Expansion, which is based on differentiation, aggregation and extension. Topic differentiation refers to a process in which repeatedly specific types of the same problem are (re-) discovered; issue aggregation consists of linking an existing social problem to new ones; domain expansion is the result of a growing sector of professionals discovering bringing peripheral cases under the denominator of the central social problem.
The result can be a spiral of amplification in which the problem seems to expand time and time again, despite strong efforts to deal with it.
This stage is followed by the stage of Controversy and Ambivalence, because the expansion reaches its limits and provokes countermoves. New competing frames are defined, challenging the dominant definition of the problem and offering new perspectives and solutions. After a period of controversy, a new consensus is reached, leading to the stage of Institutionalization. The new frame is institutionalized in laws and in government policy actions.
The media play different roles in all these stages of development; in the first stage there is a natural alliance between the media and the new claims-makers: the media get a dramatic topic; the claims-makers get media attention. In this stage, the media adopt the new frame as the basis for their news coverage. During mediahypes, extreme cases are linked to high estimates and broad definitions. In the second stage of expansion, the media stay interested in the topic because new shapes or aspects of the problem are revealed regularly, triggering mediahypes. In the third stage, the media switch sides, because the competing frames have higher news value. Mediahypes about scandals, conflicts and controversies are typical for the role of the media in this stage. During the next stage of institutionalization the topic becomes a regular news item without the mediahypes that were typical in the previous stages.
The tenability of these theories on mediahypes and the role they play in the construction of social problems is explored by analyzing media coverage in three different areas: violence, sexual abuse and health risks.
Chapter 3 applies the definition of mediahype to several news waves in the Netherlands about street violence between 1997 and 2000. The nation was shocked after the death of young people, who fell victim to what was labeled as senseless violence. They were innocent victims, apparently killed for no reason. The social outrage was expressed in silent protest marches, attended by thousands of people and covered live by national media. The first news wave – when the label senseless violence was born- took place in September 1997 after the death of 30 year old Meindert Tjoelker, killed in a nightly group fight; the second one after the trial against the offenders in January 1998; the third one in January 1999 after two girls were shot at random when someone fired at the door of a café, while the last case happened in January 2000 when a student died after being battered at a railway platform. Tjoelker became the media-icon in the coverage on senseless violence. Since this kind of street violence is not new at all, and since there was no sudden rise, it is clear that senseless violence is the product of a new process of social construction. Looking at the huge news wave the question is relevant whether the media played a defining and mobilizing role in this process. In other words: were these news waves in fact mediahypes? And what were the consequences for the public image of this new crime problem?
By dissecting the four news waves between 1997 and 2000 into different news flows, it was possible to analyze the role of the media. The content analysis of the news on this kind of violence in five Dutch national newspapers shows that three out of four meet the criteria of mediahype to a certain degree if not totally. There isa clear key event, triggering a wave of news in which all media participated. All media showed more or less the same frequency and number of articles. They offer a lot more thematically related than incident related news. Furthermore, the media all report more comparable incidents in the first weeks after the key event, thereby creating a wave of incidents in the news, suggesting a sudden increase. In one case, the role of the social actors — of sources creating news — turned out to be a relevant factor in the news wave. The last news wave, in 2000, was quite incident-focused and therefore cannot be regarded as a mediahype. Each news wave turned out to be bigger than the previous one, which suggests a cumulative effect. Senseless violence rose on the news agenda leading every time to even more news.
The second part of this chapter offers a detailed description of the content of media reports on senseless violence. It shows that the media indeed played an active role in the construction of this crime problem and a mobilizing role in the social outrage and the silent marches. The media created the threatening image of purely random, pointless violence that could hit anyone anywhere. The series of mediahypes added to the impression that this kind of violence is steadily getting worse. The facts on crime in the Netherlands show differently: this kind of violence is not new, it is not on the rise, and fights with fatal casualties (like the key events) are quite exceptional. Criminological research shows that in many cases attackers and victims are exchangeable roles.
Despite media attention for senseless violence between 1997 and 2000 not all fatal cases of street violence trigger a mediahype. By comparing three similar cases of senseless violence, each time leading to silent marches, it can be explored why some incidents become the object of a mediahype, while others are almost completely ignored. The main factor seem to be the initial framing of the incident as a typical example of senseless violence. This labeling immediately after the incident structures the journalistic follow-up. When authorities qualifyd a fatal incident as a traffic fight, there is hardly any reason for the media to pay much attention, in contrast with cases that are presented as typical examples of senseless violence. The fact that the ignored victims belonged to ethnic minorities might also play a role, not because of racism, but because the media have less access in these communities. This gives people less power to influence the framing of the incident of violence.
Between 1997 and 2000, more than fifteen silent marches were held to commemorate the victims and to protest against senseless violence. Only three of them received massive media attention and live coverage on national TV. The fact that tens of thousands attended these meetings made them exceptionally newsworthy for the media, but on the other hand the media created a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by the mediahype in the days before the march. Media coverage in these cases was huge, emotional, participating and activating, probably mobilizing many people to go. Public opinion polls after the first mediahype in 1997 showed a remarkable increase in the number of people saying they felt unsafe in the public domain. But in this kind of escalation processes there are no simple cause and effect chains. There is a constant interaction between media coverage and the activities of social actors. The emergence of a new social movement against this kind of violence also contributed to the series of mediahypes between 1997 and 2000.
This chapter deals with the role of the media and mediahypes in the social construction of sexual abuse of children. Do the media play different roles in the successive stages of social problems, as defined in the second chapter? Sexual abuse is chosen as a research topic because over the past twenty years this social problem was the object of many huge news waves. Each time new forms of abuse or other aspects of this problem were (re-) discovered, varying from large scale multi-offender, multi-victim abuse cases, Satanic Ritual Abuse, forced abortion and baby murders to kidnapping and sex-murders by pedophiles. What was the role of the media in these constant changes and developments? A detailed description of media coverage shows a clear link between the stage in the development of a social problem and the kind of media coverage.
The media played an important role in the first Framing Stage (1980-1989) by popularizing the new Collective Denial frame that society for a long time denied the existence of sexual abuse of children. Child abuse is linked directly to the subordinate position of women in society. In this first stage the media concentrate on the (extreme) stories of the victims of sexual abuse by relatives, which are linked to high estimates of the number of victims and expanding definitions of sexual abuse. There is a natural alliance between the media and the experience experts. The interaction between media, mediahypes and social movement results in an alarming picture of the problem of sexual abuse that seems to reach epidemic proportions.
The next step was not the Expansion Stage as sociological theory prescribes, but unexpectedly the third Stage of Controversy and Ambivalence. This period (1988-1996) showed a series of media fuelled scandals about children taken away from their parents and large-scale abuse cases that remained unsolved. A new frame structured media coverage concentrating on False Accusations and Official Misconduct. The abuse topic gets a new media image: accusations are made too easily and the child abuse industry operates on the presumption of guilt. In the second part of this period, new controversies developed about Satanic Ritual Abuse and repressed memories, recovered in therapy. This is a period of sharp antagonism between different actors and movements. An explanation for this stage of controversy might be the strong image of the abuse epidemic created in the first stage, eliciting all kinds of unexpected consequences like false accusations, oversensitive professionals and mass hysteria.
Nevertheless, the next stage can be defined as the Expansion Phase: regularly new aspects of sexual abuse were discovered, like for example abuse of pupils by teachers in schools or by coaches in sports. Each time, the same kind of mediahype takes place: there is a striking key event, within weeks many other comparable cases come to the surface, while the very definition of sexual abuse is extending. Acts that would ten years before have been regarded as inappropriate are now defined as sexual abuse. The huge (international) news storm after the Belgian kidnapper Dutroux was arrested in August 1996 triggered a change in focus: central to the topic now becomes the threat posed by kidnappers and murderers who are pedophiles. The focus is also on child prostitution and child pornography (Internet).
This new frame can be called the Stranger Danger-frame, which concentrates on the unknown perpetrator and not on relatives, neighbors and friends, which was typical for the Collective Denial frame in the first stage. In some cases sex-offenders are besieged by angry residents or even killed by relatives of their victims. By the end of the century the topic seems to reach calmer waters. After 2000 there were no more mediahypes, scandals or controversies. Abuse cases are reported by the media, but as individual cases not as part of an epidemic. That the problem seems to be under control was the angle of the frame typical for this period. This is an indication that this social problem was becoming an institutionalized problem: there was new consensus on definitions, there was new legislation and there was an effective infrastructure to deal with the problem. Statistical data on registered sex crimes between 1980 and 2000 are consistent with the different stages in the development of sexual abuse.
During the eighties the figures go up, during the stage of controversies they go down, but they show a strong increase in the second part of nineties. This research shows that mediahypes can play an active role in the framing and reframing of social problems like sexual abuse. They are capable of switching quite radically from one frame to another, changing accused into accusers and vice versa. Mediahypes can magnify a specific frame and make that the dominant image, but after a while this reaches the limits of social acceptance. The erosion of consensus creates a climate for new mediahypes establishing a competing frame.
Chapter 5 concentrates on the connection between media coverage (in 1998 and 1999) on the aftermath of the Bijlmer air disaster (in 1992) and the attribution process in which a growing number of people link their general (endemic) health problems to the supposed exposure to toxic agents during or years after the plane crash. On a Sunday evening in October 1992 an El Al cargo plane crashed into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam South, killing 39 inhabitants and four crewmembers.
Despite the fact that the cause was established quickly (bad locking pins caused two engines to break away), the disaster turned out to be a fruitful breeding ground for endless speculation, rumors and conspiracy theories. There were many unsolved questions about the cargo of the plane (toxic agents or perfume?); about the involvement of secret intelligence agencies (men in white suits); and about the disappearance of the depleted uranium used as counterweight in the tail of the plane. The chaotic and often contradictory actions by the government fuelled this process in which the media were challenged to solve the many so-called Bijlmer mysteries.
After a few years, a group of rescue workers and people living nearby the crash site reported health complaints which they linked to the disaster. Over the years this number of people rose from a few hundred to more than six thousand Bijlmer victims (as they are called) after the highly publicized parliamentary inquiry, that took place in 1999 to solve the unanswered questions about the crash.
Analysis of media coverage on the Bijlmer in 1998 and 1999 shows that mediahypes develop each time new pieces of information were revealed that seem to prove the link between the disaster and the health complaints. Each time the same media dynamic occurred: on the basis of dubious facts, the media created a news wave about the growing number of Bijlmer victims, the distrust and all the unanswered questions, thus reinforcing time and again a Cover-up frame about toxic agents causing health problems. Opposite information was often neglected or trivialized and never triggered comparable mediahype. Each time mediahypes took place, new groups of people came forward; they too wanted to participate in the general health check because they related their complaints to the crash years before.
Several health research projects showed no identifiable disease linked to the crash. According to the latest reports (2002), about 25 percent of the Bijlmer victims turned out to have stress-related complaints, probably linked to the disaster, while the remaining 75 percent showed very general and diffuse complaints, endemic for any normal population. They developed a so-called functional somatic syndrome, based on the clustering of endemic symptoms and labeling them as a new disease. The repetition of media-hypes based on the Cover-up/Toxic Agent frame in 1998 and 1999 seemed to have played a decisive role in this process in which more and more people tended to attribute their problems to the disaster, denying any kind of caused by stress diagnosis. There are two important indications for this hypothesis:
– Mediahypes preceded the coming out of new groups, allegedly suffering from Bijlmer-related health problems.
– In many cases the stories of the people who come forward directly referred to the worrying messages in the media.
The news on the disaster and its aftermath stimulated the development of (stress-related) health complaints among the original group of Bijlmer victims and the attribution of all kinds of other health problems to the disaster. There seems to be a direct link between mediahypes and the development of functional somatic syndromes.
The final chapter explores the question whether mediahype is in conflict with the professional standards of a socially responsible press such as: reliability (attribution to sources and verification of facts); fairness (to sources and the public), balance (give a voice to different perspectives), independence (no commercial or political dependency); distance (impartiality), relevance (inform on relevant developments and social problems) and social responsibility (self-reflection and accountability).
This research shows that in many cases mediahypes violate these journalistic standards. Mediahype is based on self-reinforcing processes in which one specific frame guides the media hunt for ever more confirming facts and opinions. Dissenting information is ignored or trivialized. These positive feedback loops lead to a reinforcement of the original frame, making this perspective the only one that seems socially relevant. In fact due to the huge news wave this frame will become the most dominant frame in the public domain.
Mediahypes are based on pack journalism: every news desk is forced to join the pack, which leads to a high degree of uniformity in the news selection. This clashes with the professional standard of independent news choice.
Typical for mediahypes is the wave of comparable incidents in the news, which creates the false impression that events accumulate and the problem gets worse. This kind of reporting is conflicting with standards like reliability and balance. Reporters should know that such a wave of incidents creates the impression of deterioration, while the facts may show a different perspective.
Due to mediahype a social problem can get crisis proportions, forcing social actors, especially the authorities, to take drastic but hasty action. This, again, reinforces the concern among the public, because the action confirms the existence of a real crisis. And this, of course, triggers a new wave of media attention. This chain reaction will fuel the amplification again and again, leading to the well-known paradox that the more action society takes the more visible the problem will get, reinforcing social concern. Reporters should be aware of the fact that mediahype gives a boost to this often uncontrollable amplification process, which might not be a rational way for a society to deal with social problems.
This research shows that mediahypes can create unrealistic images of immediate threat and risk, be it senseless violence, pedophile killers, or risk issues like depleted uranium. This image is based on broad definitions, exaggerated estimates and the projection of one extreme case (key event) on a whole range of events. Hype coverage leads to an inflation of catch-all concepts like senseless violence creating the impression that the social problem rises to epidemic proportions. The professional standards expect the media to give a thorough estimate of the scope of a problem.
The chapter on sexual abuse (1980-2000) shows that the media can create alternating images of a problem, by switching radically from one frame to another. What was seen as a major threat yesterday may not be important for the media the next day when a new frame is adopted. These radical switches do not assist the trustworthiness of the media. In addition, these changes create the impression that yesterday’s problems have disappeared, while only media coverage of these problems has disappeared.
The conclusion must be that mediahypes often conflict with the professional standards of journalism. This should push the media to more self-reflection and more social responsibility.
Although this research was not about the alleged increase in the number of mediahypes in recent years, several developments indicate that this might be the case. More than in former years coverage seems to be dominated by an endless series of scandals, affairs and media-events, every time triggering even larger news waves. Also breaking news about for example disasters gets bigger and bigger.
Another development (in the Netherlands) is the growth in the number of competing media struggling for the same news. The result is huge increase in the magnitude of the coverage on a specific topic. Increasing competition leads to more uniformity, not more diversity, in news coverage. The 24-hour news cycle with many deadlines forces the media to act immediately and report news without thorough fact checking. This easily leads to the domination of one frame in the coverage while others are ignored. Another development is the rise of media outlets based on a mix of news and entertainment. For these media, the hunt for commercially interesting news becomes more important than journalistic standards like truthfulness and reliability. This competition forces the traditional journalistic media to pay more attention to topics like crime, celebrity and lifestyle, and to bring the news with more emotion, human interest and primary reactions. More research is necessary into the factors promoting the frequency and intensity of mediahypes.
Too often, mediahypes go by without reflection on the content of the news and the consequences for public opinion and political decision-making. Founding a permanent news monitor covering mediahypes as well as long-term issues in the news is essential for a balanced debate on the role of the media in society.