The media’s role in shaping the public debate on education: A frame analysis of externalisations in the Portuguese media

• In Event: Informing and shaping policy reform

Proposal

The media have a strong influence on what is discussed by the generality of citizens and on the path of development of these discussions. Indeed, what is published in the media is the main vehicle for people to get informed about all sort of topics and events; in consequence, whether intentionally or not, media have a significant role in shaping the public opinion (Jasperson et al., 1998).
Like other social and political actors, people publishing in the media use diverse tools to legitimise the arguments they build, externalisation to world situations (Schriewer, 1990) is one of them. Being that “Externalisation is a discursive formation that (…) lends itself easily to the purpose of producing legitimacy” (Waldow 2012, p.418), references to international organizations (IOs), their instruments of assessment and guidance and practices in their member countries deemed as successful are strong examples of such externalisations that are used as authoritative elements in the all kind of arguments. Thus, these references to the exterior of the nation are particularly useful to support arguments on hot topics of the moment or to validate arguments that are not consensual.
Being education a topic that concerns a large percentage (if not all in some way) of the population, print media articles focusing on education tend to gather a high amount of attention. In this article we use frame analysis (Entman, 1993) to answer the question “How are externalisations to world situations used in framing the national education public debate in the print media in Portugal?”. Despite of (arguably) attempting to be neutral, journalists often take specific perspectives of tthe story they tell (Entman, 2010), this is obviously more evident in journalistic pieces that express opinions (such as editorials, chronicles or opinion articles) they present issues in light of specific global events, cultural values (Entman, 2010) and elite pressions which frequently results in all but neutral journalistic pieces. Frame analysis is, therefore, a useful tool to identify the different ways in which journalists writing in the print media frame issues and events while the topic of education.
PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment) is one of the most referenced ILSAs and we analyse print media articles on education focusing or referencing PISA results. The articles analysed were published within 2 months after each PISA results launching, within the timeframe of December 2001 - December 2017 (from the 1st PISA results launch until the data collection). In addition, we analyse how other IOs, ILSAs and practices in other countries are referenced in relation to PISA and its results. We performed qualitative content analysis (e.g. Scheier, 2012; Mayring, 2000) using the software Atlas.ti to identify and label aspects of the data such as the kind of article, authors, targets of external reference and the specific frames used in each argument in each article.
The 132 articles that constitute our data were collected from one weekly magazine, one weekly newspaper and two daily newspapers which actively discuss public policy. The data consist in a representation of all kind of articles published in the Portuguese print media (e.g. news articles, editorials, opinion, interviews).
This article contributes to the field of comparative and international education because of its focus on the intertwinements between the local and the global, more concretely, how local actors adopt international entities and events as tools that are skillfully used to frame local (in this case national) issues in ways that are specific of certain stand points.
The preliminary conclusions of the analysis bring to light the increase not only on the number of articles focusing or referencing PISA results but also other external elements such OECD, EU and countries associated with these organizations. Also, as the survey gains more relevance by being seen by the audience as an ILSA proving reliable knowledge and evidence that is be used to justify arguments when discussing issues the Portuguese education system, specially commenting and justifying the Portuguese PISA results, comparing these with the ones of other countries, and, simultaneously, identifying the issues (mainly policies) which lead to such results. Interestingly, quiet often the same external references legitimize arguments framing education in different and opposite ways, which proves the strategic and versatile use of externalisations.

Authors

• Iris Santos, Tampere University

• Luis Miguel Carvalho, University of Lisbon, Portugal