Child welfare and protection agencies play an important role in bringing concerns about children and young people to public attention. The press release is a key tool within this. This article reports on findings from an analysis of press releases from selected UK child welfare and protection agencies in 2012. It demonstrates that the information contained in press releases is neither neutral nor dispassionate. Instead, press releases are found to be political artefacts, whose purpose is to galvanise and shape opinion and garner support for a particular standpoint, campaign or the agency itself. In this respect, they must be understood as ‘claims-making’ activities. Because of this, they should, it will be argued, be subject to the same critical scrutiny that we would expect to bring to the presentation of all ‘evidence’.
Altheide, D. (2002). Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
2.
BestJ. (1987) Rhetoric in claims-making: Constructing the missing children problem. Social Problems34(2): 101–121. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/800710.
3.
BestJ. (2003) Audiences evaluate statistics. In: LosekeD.BestJ. (eds) Social problems: Constructionist readings, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 43–50.
4.
BradshawJ. (2011) The well-being of children in the UK, 3rd ed. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press.
5.
BromleyM. (2010) “All the world’s a stage.” 24/7 News, newspapers and the ages of Media. In: CushionS.LewisJ. (eds) The rise of 24-hour news television: Global perspectives, New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 31–49.
6.
BuckinghamH. (2009) Competition and contracts in the voluntary sector: Exploring the implications for homelessness service providers in Southampton. Policy and Politics37(2): 235–254. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557309X441045.
7.
ButlerI.DrakefordM. (2003) Social policy, social welfare and scandal: How British public policy is made, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
8.
CarmelE.HavelockJ. (2008) Instituting the ‘third sector’ as a governable terrain: Partnership, procurement and performance in the UK. Policy and Politics36(2): 155–171. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557308783995017.
9.
ChenotD. (2011) The vicious cycle: Recurrent interactions among the media, politicians, the public, and child welfare services organizations. Journal of Public Child Welfare5(2–3): 167–184. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcs120.
10.
ClaptonG.CreeV.SmithM. (2013) Moral panics, claims-making and child protection in the UK. British Journal of Social Work43(4): 803–812. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bct061.
11.
CohenS. (2002) Folk devils and moral panics, 30th Anniversary ed. London, UK: Routledge.
12.
CreeV.ClaptonG.SmithM. (2014) The presentation of child trafficking in the UK: An old and new moral panic?British Journal of Social Work44(2): 418–433. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcs120.
13.
FranklinB.PartonN. (1991) Social work, the media and public relations, London, UK: Routledge.
14.
FurediF. (2013) Moral crusades in an age of mistrust, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
15.
GoodeE.Ben-YehudaN. (1994) Moral panics: The social construction of deviance, Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
16.
GusfieldJ. (1989) Constructing the ownership of social problems: Fun and profit in the welfare state. Social Problems36(5): 431–441. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3096810.
17.
Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? London: Harvard University Press.
18.
HammondJ. (1995) Public relations in the non-commercial sector. In: BlackS. (ed.) The practice of public relations, 4th ed. Oxford, UK: Butterworth Heinemann, pp. 87–99.
19.
HolmesJ.KiernanK. (2013) Persistent poverty and children’s development in the early years of childhood. Policy and Politics41(1): 19–42. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557312X645810.
20.
HolsteinJ.MillerG. (2007) Reconsidering social constructionism: Debates in social problems theory, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
21.
HuffD. (1954) How to lie with statistics, London, UK: Gollancz.
22.
IbarraP.KitsuseJ. (2007) Vernacular constituents of moral discourse: An interactionist proposal for the study of social problems. In: HolsteinJ.MillerG. (eds) Reconsidering social constructionism: Debates in social problems theory, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 25–58.
23.
JacobsG. (1999) Preformulating the news: An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases, Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
24.
JagannathanR.CamassoM. (2011) The crucial role played by social outrage in efforts to reform child protective services. Children and Youth Services Review33(6): 894–900. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.12.010.
25.
JenkinsP. (2009) Failure to launch: Why do some social issues fail to detonate moral panics?British Journal of Criminology49(1): 35–47. doi:10.1093/bjc/azn016.
26.
JohnsonJ. (2003) Horror stories and the construction of child abuse. In: LosekeD.BestJ. (eds) Social problems: Constructionist readings, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 267–271.
Spector, M., & Kitsuse, J. (1977). Constructing Social Problems. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
37.
Traverse-HealyT. (1995) Public relations in action. In: BlackS. (ed.) The practice of public relations, 4th ed. Oxford, UK: Butterworth Heinemann, pp. 1–12.
38.
WaltersT. N.WaltersL. M.StarrD. P. (1994) After the highwayman: Syntax and successful placement of press releases in newspapers. Public Relations Review20: 345–356. doi:10.1016/0363-8111(94)90095-7.
39.
WoloshinS.SchwartzL. (2002) Press releases: Translating research into news. Journal of the American Medical Association287(21): 2856–2857. doi:10.1001/jama.287.21.2856.
40.
Woolgar, S., & Pawluch, D. (1985). Ontological Gerrymandering: The Anatomy of Social Problems Explanations. Social Problems, 32(3), 214–227. doi: 10.2307/800680.
