Introduction

From both historical and theoretical perspectives, many have argued that media representations provide significant symbolic resources for the construction of public and political agendas and that dominant media frames are powerful in defining social problems and shaping public discourses (Griswold, 1994; Critcher, 2003; Kitzinger, 2004). When it comes to young people's engagement with the internet and how society is dealing with this, the interconnection and congruence among the public, policy and research agendas are noticeable.

Based on a systematic content analysis of news coverage in European papers, this chapter examines how the press reports children's positive and risky or harmful contacts with online technologies. Drawing on agenda-setting theories and on contemporary theories on the construction of childhood, it discusses patterns of representation of internet-related risks and opportunities, considers which social actors are given voice and investigates which role and level of agency are attributed to young people in these news narratives.

Agenda setting and conflicting discourses on children

In 2008, a survey showed that, after their closest relatives, parents see the mass media as the second most influential source of information on safer internet use (EC, 2008). Policy makers and researchers also seem to be sensitive if not susceptible to the media's discourses on young people and the internet. The case of happy slapping – ‘discovered’ by the British press in 2005, and now perceived as a social problem in most European countries (see Chapter Twelve, this volume) – is paradigmatic here.

The tradition of agenda-setting studies provides a useful framework to understand the effects of the news media coverage on public, policy and research agendas. Focusing mostly on the role of the media in political and public agendas, research has shown that the news media promote public and political awareness of certain issues (McCombs, 2005). Contemporary agenda-setting studies consider the effects of media coverage at two levels. Whereas the ‘first level’ is focused on the relative salience of issues or subjects, the ‘second level’ examines the relative salience of attributes of issues (Weaver, 2007: 142). Hence, the news media are first of all powerful in selecting a set of issues that resonate in the public sphere and tend to become of public concern. But they are also influential in establishing how to depict and discuss these issues. They actively set the frames of reference on the issue, employ a particular perspective and voice certain values.