Session Information
23 SES 04 C, Education, Policy-Making and the Media
Paper Session
Contribution
National governments appear to be spending more time and money on evaluation and checking than ever (Van Thiel & Leeuw 2002). As a result of increasing efforts of evaluation and other forms of output control, in Sweden as well as in the rest of Europe, indicators, benchmarks, statistics and other data connected to measuring performance of education systems are produced at an astonishing speed and length (c.f. Ozga et. al. 2011).
The media also hold access to these data, and make use of them in their reporting – not the least at the local level (c.f. Hanberger et.al. 2005). Supported by the Swedish legislated principle of openness in which such results are public, the media commonly publishes for instance school inspection results, results on national tests and grades from individual schools for their readers, often summarized in ranking lists. The logic of these activities, i.e. the identification of winners and loosers, appears to fit very well with the format of ‘the media logic’ (Atheide & Snow 1979).
One important ‘data producer’ in the Swedish context is the National Agency for School Inspection. The Agency actively interacts with the media as it issues press releases for each inspected site, and has as its task to communicate its findings and conclusions to the public. Indeed, media is not merely a channel for transmitting the data, but the data is repeatedly interpreted and formatted both the media and the data producing Agency, with different purposes and consequences. In this paper, it is argued that the process of medialization of education governance has not been sufficiently studied in the Swedish education policy context.
The aim of the paper is to empirically explore and discuss relations between school inspection activities, Swedish local newspaper coverage and local school governance/policy. The research questions concern how inspection is represented and conveyed in the studied texts and the message sent by scrutinizing what is said and not said, and who get to speak and who are made silent in articles, press releases and inspection reports. In so doing, important processes of how public and professional conceptions and representations of inspection are shaped are unveiled. As the underlying problematic of transparency, scrutiny and shaping the public conception through the media are general issues relevant to other national contexts and settings, the paper also facilitate a discussion reaching beyond the national case in question and attempts to speak out to a European audience.
The analysis is theoretically informed by literature on the role and function of the media in the wider ’audit society’ (Power 1997; Hadenius et. al. 2008; Strömbäck 2008; Anderson 2007; Levin 2004). The paper elaborates on metaphorical ideal types in order to discuss the media and Inspection Agency relationship, namely the ‘watch dog’, ‘mad dog’, ‘lap dog’ and ‘guide dog’ (Clarke 2008, drawing on Hackett 2001 and Downe & Martin 2007). The empirical findings have been analyzed with reference to the above stated conceptual ideal types in order to further the discussion and outline possible implications.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Altheide, D. & Snow, R. P. (1979). Media Logic. Beverly Hills: Sage. Anderson, G. L. (2007). Media’s impact on Educational Policies and Practices: Political Spectacle and Social control. Peabody Journal of Education, 82 (1), 103-120. Bergström, G. & Boréus, K. (2005). Textens mening och makt. Metodbok i samhällsvetenskaplig text- och diskursanalys. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Clarke, J. (2008). Performance Paradoxes: The politics of Evaluation in Public Services (pp. 120-134) in H. Davis & S. Martin (Eds.) Public Services Inspection in the UK. Research Highlights in Social Work 50. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Downe, J. & Martin, S.J. (2007). Regulation Inside Government: Processes and Impacts of Inspection in Public services. Policy and Politics 35 (2), 215-232. Gerring, J. (2007). Case study research. Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hackett, R. (2001). News Media and Civic Equality: Watch Dogs, Mad Dogs or Lap Dogs? In E. Broadbent (ed.) Democratic Equality: What Went Wrong? Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hadenius, S., Weibull, L. & Wadbring, I. (2008). Massmedier: press, radio och TV i den digitala tidsåldern. Stockholm: Ekerlids. Hanberger, A., Khakee, A., Nygren, L. & Segerholm, C. (2005). De kommungranskande aktörerna. Slutrapport från ett forskningsprojekt. UCER Research Reports no 1, Umeå: Umeå University. Levin, B. (2004). Media – government relations in education. Journal of Education Policy, 19 (3), 271-283. Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen, P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H (Eds.) (2011). Fabricating Quality In Education. Data and Governance in Europe. London: Sage. Power, M. (1997). The Audit Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strömbäck, J. (2008). Folkets röst eller redskap för journalistiken? (pp. 168–200) in O. Petersson (ed.) Medierna: folkets röst? Demokratirådets rapport 2008. Stockholm: SNS. Van Thiel, S. & Leeuw, F. L. (2002). The Performance Paradox in the Public.Sector. Public Performance and Management Review, 25 (1), 267–281.
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