ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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Delimiting Democracy? Media representations of volunteerism.
by
Georgina Grosenick
University of Calgary

This paper is based on an analysis of how volunteerism was represented in Calgary newspapers and in a sample of Canadian national print media over a period of the last 20 years. Specifically my research evaluated all print stories from two local newspapers and two national newspapers that included the term “volunteer*” or “voluntary” during Volunteer Week for the years 1983, 1993 and 2003. The study tested a number of hypotheses; whether volunteerism has received greater and/or more favourable coverage over time; whether national and regional media outlets reported volunteerism differently; and whether certain kinds of volunteerism received greater publicity and more sympathetic coverage than other types of volunteer activity. In its broadest sense the paper seeks to understand how volunteerism is constructed by the news media and the implications that this might have for the voluntary sector. It has direct consequences to Third sector research as voluntary organizations rely heavily on the news media to promote their activities – to rally volunteers, to inspire donations and to place the issues that they advocate on the public agenda. Without a cooperative news media they are unlikely to be successful.

This study classified the voluntary sector in alignment with van Til’s (1988) typology (service volunteering, self-help volunteering and advocacy/grassroots volunteering), however for the analysis of media stories, collapsed the categories of service and self-help volunteering. It identified, through content analysis methodology, the frequency and types of framing devices used for the different classifications of volunteerism and voluntary organizations. It then extended these findings through the theoretical perspective of critical discourse analysis (the study of how language constructs meaning) to suggest the implications of these representations to the different types of organizations and to the voluntary sector as a whole. This paper is based, to a small degree, on the findings of a U.K. study which identified patterns of inclusion and exclusion in media representations based on the type of voluntary activity that was being reported on (Deacon, 1999). The U.K. study suggested that service and advocacy groups are treated differently with service activity receiving far greater and more positive coverage. This paper is the first attempt to replicate at least some aspects of the U.K. study in the Canadian context.

This paper contributes to the call for enhanced interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary scholarship in the area of third sector research (Smith, 1999) through approaching the study of volunteerism from a communications perspective – a perspective that to date in North America has contributed little to third sector research. It addresses the conference theme – “new forms of exclusion: struggles for recognition, rights and identities” drawing a link between the exclusion of certain groups and causes based on media reporting and the exclusion of these groups from public discourse and consciousness. The paper reiterates a theme forwarded by Todd Gitlin (1980) that the media have the power to “name the world’s parts” and “to certify reality as reality”.

Works Cited: Deacon, D. (1999). Charitable images: the construction of voluntary sector news. In B. Franklin (Ed.), Social Policy, the media and misrepresentation. (pp. 51-68). London: Routledge.

Gitlin, T. (1980). The whole world is watching. Berkeley: University of California Press Smith, D.H. (1999). Researching volunteer associations and other nonprofits: An emergent interdisciplinary field and possible new discipline. American Sociologist, 30(4), 5-35 Van til., J. (1988). Mapping the Third Sector. New York: The Foundation Centre

Date received: September 28, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # camk-59.