Girls in Crisis Newspaper Coverage of Adolescent Girls

Within the past several years. a growing body of scholars have exposed the media-generated crisis discourse surrounding youth - a discourse resulting in the construction/ definition of youth as a problem. Informed, in part, by this scholarship and grounded in frame theory, this study analyzes how U.S. newspapers covered the lives of adolescent girls during a particularly noteworthy period - the mid- to late 1990s, a time when a number of high-profile studies of girls' lives were published. During this time, the press, through the choice of topics covered, sources quoted, and overall organizing themes employed, perpetuated a discourse that constructed girls as a social problem in need of a solution. The authors argue that this construction of girls as weak and vulnerable denied them any form of agency and presented to the reader a dire situation in which adult intervention was needed to save these girls in crisis.