Representations of Disability in Greek School Newspapers : A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

In a school newspaper children act as reporters, as editors and designers simultaneously. Their texts – linguistic and visual – highlight and manifest what they think is important to be published. Apart from that, the images that have been chosen, they convey signifieds/symbols/signs. This study searches the representations of disability in Greek school newspapers in order to reveal the necessity of this information in a school medium of communication. The proposed mmethodology is content analysis and social semiotic. It seems that school newspapers deal with disability issues rather peripherally, as all pages and front pages do not provide relevant issues. This research records aspects, trends and attitudes of school journalism regarding disability issues which clarify the need for school provision and encouragement concerning the subject in question.


Introduction
The newspaper is a form of news communication that presents a display of codes that should provide the reader with information of the world.The medium itself produces signs that the reader can interpret: this means that we can take time to interpret the codes and therefore give the information more scrutiny.News is expressed in a newspaper through linguistic, typographic and graphic codes which are defined by the medium itself.
The mass media have an effect on the way a society perceives disability and people with special needs and if we wish to change attitudes and stereotypes regarding disability we need to deconstruct the messages coming from the media (Byrd and Elliott, 1988;Longmore, 1987;Mu and Válková, 2007).As Wall (2007) argues news media play an important role both in reflecting public attitudes regarding disability, and also in hosting public deliberations regarding the role of people with disability in various spheres of public life, and appropriate public responses to peoples' needs (Hafferty and Foster, 1994).In addition she points out (ibid, 2007) that the volume and content of press coverage regarding disability can be seen as a reflection of the importance journalists place on disability issues and the assumptions these communications professionals have regarding disabled persons (Neuendorf, 1990).
Studies have shown that the media portray the disabled people in various stereotypical roles, such as being weak, powerless and helpless, incapable, as victims, or even as charismatic/brilliant individuals, as superheroes (Tait, 1992), as objects of pity, humour and ridicule, and often as dangerous/ aggressive people (Bogdan, Biklen, Shapiro and Spelkoman, 1982;Byrd and Elliot, 1988;Wall, 2007).
At the same time, research (Entman, 1993;D'Angelo, 2002;Tewkesbury et al, 2000) has pointed out that the media organizations/ transmitters are in a position to influence matters and issues that readers, viewers and listeners regard as important.This is achieved by the conscious highlighting of certain roles/certain issues, by toning down the importance of others, by "burying" them in the inside pages instead of exposing them at the cover page (Green and Tanner, 2009).
The Guidebook for Journalists -disability issues and Mass Media (2006) mentions that the maintenance of journalistic ethics regarding the representation of disability (Note 1) is not related to the existence of good or bad intentions, but to the existence or not of basic knowledge about each disability and its characteristics, its needs and peculiarities.It is also directly related to the demystification of disability and the liberation of thought from long years of deeply rooted stereotypes and prejudices that hinder focus on a person rather than disability.At the same time emphasis is placed (ibid, 2006) on the fact that the way Media highlight disability issues (Note 2) is disproportionate to the actions and claims of the disabled that demand from the Media to be portrayed as people of the common population with abilities and distinctive personalities.
It is as early as the first school age that children form attitudes towards the different, the others (Gerber, 1977;Jones and Sisk, 1970;Mu and Válková, 2007) and often this attitude is negative or dismissive (cf.Horne, 1985;Jones, 1984Yuker, 1988in Mu and Válková, 2007).Researchers have also noted that "as a kind of indirect experience, a typical children's newspaper is a very important instrument for the formation, knowledge and education of children, including their attitude towards persons with disability" (Mu and Válková, 2007).
Within this theoretical field, in the research conducted on the Representations of disability (Note 3) in Greek school newspapers, we attempt to answer the following questions: 1) How is disability represented in school journalism?
2) Which particular disability issues do young reporters choose?
3) Which disability images do they prefer?
The examination of these questions leads to research observations regarding school journalistic practice and stereotypes about disability issues.We chose to examine disability issues in the school newspapers, because a school newspaper constitutes a medium of children's communication.According to Marshall McLuhan the best way to get acquainted with a culture is to study the communicative ways it develops (Postman, 1998).Young editors write, so that their thoughts can reach places that their voices cannot (Freinet, 1977), beyond the school limits: they write for their classmates, their parents, for children from other schools, for the local community and after that their texts become a reason for discussion and communication.According to French pedagogist Freinet (1977), a newspaper with the texts, the drawings and children's icons constitutes a network of natural interests for pupils.He considered that its mission in the school and wider community/society bestows a maximum of intensity to the desire to be heard at a distance, which is truly important to children.
For the needs of the newspaper, children become active reporters and indirect observers of school and social life.In this way they participate in a social "dialogue" and then choose to expose on the newspaper what according to them would be interesting to communicate to the people of their immediate environment.Through the newspaper, children make an effective use of a communicative discourse that aims at convincing, moving, entertaining and all of the above at the same time depending on the occasion.Pupils write various texts for the school newspaper they publish, with the purpose of externalizing their sensitivities, their apprehensions and troubles.All of the abovementioned occasions are real instances that form a part of social and school life by extension (Adaloglou, 1994).
In a school newspaper children act as reporters, as editors and designers simultaneously.Their texts -verbal and visual -highlight and manifest what they think is important to be published.Apart from that, the icons they use convey signifieds/symbols/signs, since an icon as a photograph, a drawing, a sketch, a design, visual material or static image refers to the representational image and can be used as a sign, picture or symbol (Arnheim, 1969).

The Research
School newspaper as a multimodal, communicative product constitutes the research material.
The sample includes 83 newspaper issues (Table 1) coming from 21 Primary School newspaper titles from all over Greece (Appendix I), that were published in 2004-2006.We randomly selected 4 issues from each newspaper title and 3 issues from a certain title (Note 4) that were published in the above period and we examined the following: (a) verbal publications concerning disability, both on the front page as well as the inside pages, which were 61 altogether (b) visual material as icons regarding disability, both on the front and the inside pages (Table 2).
Eighty-nine (89) images were recorded: 65 photographs, 6 children's drawings-sketches and 18 standardized images/sketches (emblems, signs) from a computer.The examined images were 71 in total, that is 65 photographs and 6 children's sketches and they were selected because they refer to representations of disabled people or representations of disability.For obvious reasons we excluded the standardized signs/emblems of the Paralympics.
All in all, our research material comprised of 132 verbal and visual "texts".

Method
3a.The method we try to apply is the content analysis (Berelson, 1952;De Sola Pool, 1959;Krippendorff, 1980;Weber, 1990;Palmquist, 1990), and the theme was chosen as a content unit.As a research tool, content analysis presents the following advantages (Curley, 1990): -it allows the combination of quantitative and qualitative operations on the data -through discourse analysis it traces and records certain aspects of social interaction -it is a useful tool for the documentation and study of social conceptions.
Firstly, we classified the verbal publications of the sample, that means all the articles and the verbal signifies of the newspapers.Then this verbal material about disability has been analysed according to it's appearance on the newspaper columns: (a) Regular columns, (b) Random publications and (c) Feature articles.After that, publications were thematically categorized according to their content and title: 3b.The analysis of the visual material -photographs and sketches -comes from the social semiotic method.In The Grammar of Visual Design written by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) we read about the methodology that is based on the theory of the Systemic Functional Grammar proposed by M.A.K. Halliday (Halliday, 1994).According to this approach, the "meta functions" in an image may be the following: a) the ideational meta function, that is the representation of objects / aspects of the empirical world and their relationship with it, where the portrayed individuals may have an active or passive role.b) the interpersonal meta function, which is related with the presentation of the relationship between the producer and the receiver/reproducer of a sign or complex sign, when it becomes a case of interactive meanings of the icons.The direct visual contact, that is the direction of the portrayed individual's look straight to the viewers constitutes a "demand" for attention and forms an interpersonal relationship with them on an imaginary level.On the other hand, when the look is not directed to the observers, the icon constitutes an "offer", because it is "offered" to them impersonally.c) the textual meta function which is related to the arrangement of the icons on the page and the separate projection of the elements of the synthesis: the elements that appear on the left constitute the "given", whereas on the right they are the "new", those that are placed at the top constitute the "ideal" and the ones at the base are the "given/real".Finally, the elements that are depicted at the centre of the page form the core of the information (Kress andvan Leeuwen, 1996, Baldry andThibault 2006).

Verbal material
The classification of the publications as regards the position they have on the front/inside pages led to the formation of Table 3 in which we observe that the publications about disability have a low appearance on the front page -only 3 publications (4.9%) -and the two of them focus entirely on images, whereas the third publication is a verbal text.
All three texts refer to sports and the Paralympic Games.The significance of this observation is about the myth behind the Olympic Games as a time of unity, peace and harmony for the world.Nevertheless in the specific material we can read the importance of the participation in a public, athletic spectacle.The classification of the publications in relation to their appearance in (a) regular columns, (b) random publications and (c) feature articles is recorded in Table 4 which shows a clear numerical supremacy of the publications in Feature articles by a percentage of 75.4%.Those in Random articles follow by 24.6%, while there are no publications in Regular columns.
The analysis of the publications by content and title is demonstrated in Table 5.A careful examination reveals that the category of Sports and disability -Games/Paralympic Games contains the largest number of publications, 40 publications and a percentage of 65.5%, versus the category of Issues of the disabled people that includes 21 publications and a percentage of 34.4%.
More specifically, the category of Games-Paralympic Games and the subcategory Paralympic games Athens 2004 includes 23 publications (a percentage of 37.7%) and 9 publications in particular that refer to views/comments and feelings expressed by pupil editors about the Paralympic Games and the athletes that participated in them.
Five publications refer to Paralympic athletes' distinctions and the medals they won.Two publications have to do with the organization of the Athens 2004 Paralympic games.Two publications involve the mascot and the emblem of the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games.Two publications involve the Paralympic flame and its itinerary.Two publications refer to the sports and one more publication is about the Paralympic village, its facilities, layout and the possibilities offered to disabled people.
In the subcategory of Paralympic Games we recorded a total of 13 publications (a percentage of 21.3%), that involve the historical data (10 publications) and are related to the history of the Paralympic Games, the International Paralympic committee (2 publications and its emblem.Also, the values of the Paralympic Games (2 publications) and the athletes' Paralympic oath.
In the subcategory of Athlete-idols of Games/Paralympic Games we recorded a total of 4 publications (a percentage of 6.5%) that refer to 4 interviews, 3 of male athletes and only 1 of a female athlete.
The athlete-idols that emerged are Despoina Batzianouli, gold medal for the deaf, Paralympic medal winner Thanassis Tsivilis, deaf champion Vyronas Thomaidis and world champion in ball throwing for the disabled, Tassos Tsiou.
The category of Issues of the disabled people and the subcategory Social life includes a total of 10 publications (a percentage of 16.3%) and in particular: 6 publications that have to do with views/comments/messages expressed by the young reporters about disabled people/children, 3 publications that focus on the infrastructure of buildings and spaces and the accessibility of the disabled and one publication that refers to the integration of disabled children in school.
Eight publications (a percentage of 13.1%) involve School life, where 5 of them refer to pupils' visits to Special schools, while 3 publications focus on information provided by special education teachers in the school premises.
We recorded two literary items (a percentage of 3.2%), a poem and a piece of prose, that refer to disabled children and 1 medical issue that focuses on Dyslexia, its definition and characteristics.

Visual material
Both in the photographs and in children's sketches there is a prevalence of an anthropocentric model, since the representations of forms are found everywhere in a realistic field of reference (Note 5), except one sketch where human hands appear.
The semiotic model focuses a) on the channel-medium-newspaper, b) on the message itself, as it is perceived by us as a material-subject, an absence or a presence, the colour, the movement, the gaze.The next step is to explore for the signifieds, which we perceived from the choices of signifiers, as they have been chosen by the children and the teachers.
Front -inside pages.Thirty-six icons (a percentage of 50.7 %) are presented in the inside pages and 35 (a percentage of 49.3%) photographs on the front pages.Thirty of them constitute an art craft as a photo collage and the other 5 are also found together on one front page.In both cases the photographs contain sports signifiers and depict athletes of the Paralympic Games Athens 2004.This observation agrees to the previous one about the athletic linguistic signified which reveal the necessity of disabled people for a public life.
Type of icon -65 photographs were counted (a percentage of 91.5%), 5 children's sketches (a percentage of 7%) and 1 sketch (a percentage of 1.5%).These all icons construct a visual representation of the disability.
Colour of icon -36 of the icons are black and white (a percentage of 50.7 %) and 35 of them are coloured (a percentage of 49.3%).This observation refers mainly to children's' artistic and aesthetic level.
Location -In 69 of the icons the location is identified: 8 of the icons portray an interior space (a percentage of 11.6%), 3 of them portray an external location or natural landscape (a percentage of 4.4%) and 58 of them a sports facilities location (a percentage of 84%).In 2 of the pictures there is no representation of the location or the environment.These spatial elements of the images signify the importance of the exterior vs interior activities for the disabled people.
Concealment of disability / focus on disability -All 70 icons do not conceal disability, while at the same time the transmitter does not focus on disability in 66 icons (a percentage of 94.3%).In 4 of the icons, however, (3 photographs and 1 sketch) the focus is clearly on disability (a percentage of 5.7%).We believe that the photographs that focus only on the face of the athletes of the Paralympic Games (29 in total) do not aim at hiding disability, but at focusing on the emotions of joy and pride, brought by participation or victory during the Games.
Position -We counted 56 icons, where the disabled individuals are placed at the centre (a percentage of 80%), 2 icons where they are positioned on the right (a percentage of 2.8%), 1 icon where they are positioned on the bottom right (a percentage of 1.4%), 3 icons where they are placed on the left (a percentage of 4.5%), 4 icons where they are placed on the bottom left (a percentage of 5.7%), 2 icons where they are positioned on the bottom both right and left (a percentage of 2.8%) and 2 icons where they are presented at the central upper part (percentage 2.8%).
The value of this information according to the grammar of visual design at the level of the textual metafunction, is focused on the "given-stable" cognitive material, which is presented at the left part of the drawing, the "new" material being presented at the right part, the material found at the upper point constitutes the ideal, or "what could be", the material found at the bottom represents the given/real, that is to say objectively given facts, "what is", while at the centre the focus is on the core of information.Consequently, in the case we examine, the majority of the representations become the core of information in the newspaper.
Position / Motion -In 39 icons, we observed movement (a percentage of 55.7%), while in 31 icons there was an absence of motion (a percentage of 44.3%).Motion refers to the Paralympic Games Athens in 2004 and to certain gestures of salutation or triumph on the pedestal.
Gaze / Direction -In 39 icons the gaze is turned sideways (a percentage of 55.7%), in 19 it is straightforward (a percentage of 27.1%), in 2 upwards (a percentage of 2.8%), in 8 pictures downwards (a percentage of 11.4%), while in 2 of the icons the disabled individuals are photographed from behind (a percentage of 2.8%).
Regarding human symbolism and its attitude within the iconistic text, the repetition of a human figure in another position is determined in the "Grammar of visual design" as a demand for recognition or offer, if they are in a front or side position respectively (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996).Therefore in the case we study the rendition of profiles refers to an offer and familiarization with the public, without "fabricated positions" for the purpose of recognition and self-promotion.
From 6 children's sketches, 5 reveal the gender of the producer, which is female: 3 girls of the sixth and 2 of the fifth grade of primary school.In 2 of the sketches there is a message concerning disability, while in another there exists a title and information about the author, inside the sketch.This observation is important because the placement of the signature and/or another piece of information on the upper part of the drawing presents the "ideal" of the composition; the truly specialised elements of the composition are given at the bottom, while the linguistic signifiers, wherever they are located as a signature and/or words, highlight the image of the subject that produces the icon.
On the front pages -sports' signified are found in 35 icons, 35 content references on sports issues and specifically on the Paralympics of Athens in 2004 (a percentage of 49.3%).
In the inside pages -sports' signified, with 26 content references on athletes and on the Paralympic Games of Athens in 2004 (a percentage of 36.7 %).
Social signified, with 6 content references on friendship, abilities, school integration as the experiential representation of disability (a percentage of 8,4%).School life signified, with 4 content references on school visits of disabled children or on visits of special education teachers (a percentage of 5.6%).
All in all, we recorded a percentage of 86%, that is 61 icons with signifieds of sports and athletes of the Paralympic Games of Athens in 2004 and it appears that these Games constitute a public medium of calling attention to disabled people.This observation also agrees to the social model analysis of the disability vs the personal and the medical one.

Discussion
Inter alia, the publication of a school newspaper constitutes a training process, that is based on the principle of problem solving (Abercrombie, 1979, Barrows, 1996;Boyd-Bell, 2005, Boyd-Bell, 2002, Burns, 1997;Burns and Hazell, 1999) and as such it can be evaluated based on the special and general principles of the education sciences (Valsamidou and Kyridis, 2009).Apart from this, the school newspaper embellishes the extra curricular space, where students and authors write about what interests/ sensitizes them, what worries them and what makes them happy.At the same time and through these publications students try to obtain a wider social recognition (Poslaniek, 1990).
As we observed, only the 20% of the newspapers that we examined contains publications related with disability.By the classification of publications according to their position in the newspapers, we recorded a minimal presence of linguistic and visual "texts" about disability on the front page, a policy practice that concurs with that of the political newspapers.A very small percentage, almost 5%, on the front pages refers only to the Paralympic Games of Athens in 2004.
The classification of linguistic articles regarding their appearance in the columns of school newspapers highlights the overwhelming majority of feature articles (75%) which means that disability issues find their place in the school newspapers mainly with thematic Feature articles and not in Regular columns.On the contrary, random articles show a very low rate of appearance, only 24.6%.
The same observations are also hold for the images, as they are related with the linguistic material and accompany them.The analysis of these texts are based on the title and the content which highlight and manifest the editors' preference for the sports subjects of the Paralympic Games with a percentage of 65.5%, versus a 34.4% that concern publications on other disability issues.
The analysis of the images marked an overwhelming majority of sports icons -86% and particularly photographs of the Paralympic Games of Athens in 2004, with 49.3% of them found at the cover page.
The images with social signifieds are very few, barely 8.4%, while the same happens with the images of school life, with only 5.6%.However, in the total visual material there is no tendency to conceal disability, or to give any emphasis on it, as only a minimal percentage of 5.7% focuses on disability.
In addition, the overwhelming majority of the disabled people (a percentage of 80%), are positioned at the centre of the images, which means that they are the core of information, according to the model of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996).
Of special interest are the images (55.7% vs 44.3%),where the disabled people appear to be in motion and in a side position, a fact that implies their offer to the viewers.With regard to the colour of the icons, black and white ones slightly outnumber colour pictures -with a percentage of 50.7% versus 49.3% -since the majority of school newspapers is printed or copied in black and white, in order to minimise the production cost.
We observed that school newspapers deal with disability issues rather peripherally, as all pages and front pages in particular do not provide relevant issues.This research records aspects, trends and attitudes of school journalism regarding disability issues which clarify the need for school provision and encouragement concerning the subject in question.
The teachers, who are responsible animators of a school newspaper, can direct and sensitize the children on issues concerning disability.
We agree with Paletz and Entman (1981) that the Media play an important and decisive role in the creation of the mass culture of our time, because they a) solidify prevailing views, they b) set priorities, c) they enlarge subjects and facts, d) they sometimes change opinions and e) finally determine our stereotypes and thus we consider that the school newspaper plays a decisive role in the formation of school culture as well.
According to Gaye Tuchman (1978), "the news aims to tell us what we want to know, need to know and should know" and thus the choices of children and teachers can contribute to the social demand of education for the limitation of social exclusions.The signifiers and the signified of disabilities together, make up the sign as the smallest unit of meaning, anything that can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).Weber, R. (1990).Basic Content Analysis.(2 nd ed.).Newbury Park: Sage.Xohellis, G. ( 2007).(Ed.)Pedagogical Dictionary.Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis (in Modern Greek).Yuker, H. (1988).Attitudes toward persons with disabilities.New York: Springer.Zervos, G. (2002Zervos, G. ( -2003)).Disability and its dimensions.The educationals, [65][66].Zoniou-Sideri, A. (1998).The disabled and their education.Athens: Greek Letters (in Modern Greek).

A
. Category: Sports and disability, Special category: Games -Paralympic Games Subcategories: A1.Paralympic Games A2.Paralympic Games Athens 2004 A3.Athlete-idols of the Games / Paralympic Games B. Category: Disabled individuals, Special category: Issues of the disabled people Subcategories: B1.Social life B2.School life B3.Literature B4.Medical issues.

Table 1 .
Classification of the sample

Table 3 .
Classification of the publications -their position -front page/inside pages

Table 4 .
Classification of publications about disability based on appearance in newspaper columns

Table 5 .
Publications about disability according to title and content