Zealous or Uncommitted? : A discourse analysis on how the social services are portrayed in the media.

The aim of this essay was to deepen the knowledge of how child-protection-work is illustrated by massmedia. The essay takes it stand in discourse analysis to explain what image is displayed of social work concerning child-protection that is published in news media during 2007 in one of Sweden’s most read evening-papers. The result of the study is that social workers involved in child-protection-work often are categorized as either too zealous or too uncommitted, in the media. The result reflected the current discourse concerning how social workers do their duties in the modern society