Evaluation of the Events Reported in the Media about Violence in Schools

Abstract

This research was carried out to examine the place of the concept of violence in schools as one of the major problems in social life and how the violence-related news reflects in a variety of newspapers. In this study, questions were searched for the answer about: how the news headlines containing violence in schools are given; how the definitions and notions used in school-related violent headlines are given; which pages the reports of violence are published in; how the pictures used in violent news in education are given; what types of violence take place in the news; the forms of psychological violence used in schools; the reasons of violence in schools; the status of the settlements which the violence in schools takes place; which tools are used during the violence in schools; the gender ratios of individuals who are subject to reports about violence in school, the distribution of perpetrators according to the ages. According to the results of the study, between the years of 1998 and 2004, the harassment cases in schools increased from 5.97% to 9.15%; Stabbing incidents in schools increased from 1.49% to 4.23% ; the news about the drug events that took place in press as a source of violence in schools increased from 4.48% to 10.56%. In the news published in newspapers, among the reasons of violence
in schools, while the attitude of the teachers took the first place in 1998, the attitudes of the parents and the socio-economic problems took the first place in 2004.