Adolescent and Parent Emotions and Perceptions Regarding News Media Stories About Bullying: a Qualitative Study
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Adolescent and Parent Emotions and Perceptions Regarding News Media Stories About Bullying: a Qualitative Study Megan A. Moreno 1
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Reese H. Hyzer 1
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Maggie E. Bushman 1
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Aubrey D. Gower 1 & Karen H. Pletta 1
Accepted: 16 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract News articles covering bullying have often focused on tragic situations. The purpose of this study was to understand adolescents’ and parents’ emotions and perceptions related to bullying news media coverage. Participants were recruited as adolescent-parent dyads from pediatric clinics. During qualitative interviews, participants read and commented on two news article excerpts: (1) a tragic “fear-based” individual bullying news story and (2) a public health-oriented bullying news story. Qualitative analysis used the constant comparative approach. Our 50 participants included 25 adolescents with mean age 16.1 years (SD = 0.97), 44% female and 72% Caucasian, and 25 parents with mean age 49.2 (SD = 6.7) years, 80% female and 76% Caucasian. After reading the fear-based news excerpt, 19 adolescents (76%) and 18 parents (72%) responded that they felt negatively. For the public health-oriented excerpt, 12 adolescents (48%) and 20 parents (80%) felt positively. Further, over half of participants felt the news articles related to their lived experiences. Our data support that fear-based articles were associated with feelings of sadness and hopelessness, while public health-oriented news articles contributed to positive feelings and perceptions. This finding supports the potential of news media about bullying to serve as a venue for education or empowerment for families. Keywords News media . Bullying . Adolescent . Parent . Qualitative . Emotions
Bullying is a preventable public health problem that can have long-lasting health, academic, and social consequences (Arseneault et al. 2006; McDougall and Vaillancourt 2015; Wolke and Lereya 2015). Both bullying and cyberbullying have been associated with depression, anxiety, substance use, and school failure (Campbell et al. 2012; Goebert et al. 2011; MacDonald and Roberts-Pittman 2010; Perren et al. 2010; Schneider et al. 2012; Selkie et al. 2014; Sjurso et al. 2016). Current estimates support that school-based bullying affects 18–31% of youth and cyberbullying affects 7–15% of youth (CDC 2014). Targets of bullying often experience negative emotions such as sadness, hopelessness, and anger (Borg 2006). Further, some targets of bullying and cyberbullying report symptoms that suggest post-traumatic stress disorder (Sjurso et al. 2019). Cyberbullying has been associated with serious negative consequences such as depression, substance * Megan A. Moreno [email protected] 1
Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2870 University Ave, Suite 200, Mailcode 9010, Madison, WI 53705, USA
use, and school failure (Goebert et al. 2011; MacDonald and Roberts-Pittman 2010; Perren et al. 2010; Schneider et al. 2012; Selkie et al. 2014). Similar negative consequences are
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