19. Media reporting on illicit drugs in Australia: trends and impacts on youth attitudes to illicit drug use

The authors of this monograph had the following aims:

1. To identify the dominant media portrayals used to denote illicit drugs in Australian news media and dominant portrayals by drug type (cannabis, amphetamines, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin);
2. To identify the extent to which media portrayals have changed over time (from 2003-2008): measured in terms of the number and type of media reports on illicit drugs;
3. To explore the impacts of different media portrayals on youth attitudes to illicit drug use: namely their perceptions of the risks and acceptability of use and their likelihood of future use; and
4. To determine if the media differentially affects sub-populations of youth, and if so, to identify the sub-populations of youth that are most responsive to media reporting on illicit drugs.