An Analysis of Italian Newspaper Article on the Bullying Phenomenon

This paper focuses its attention on two Italian daily newspapers circulated nationwide: La Stampa and La Repubblica. By measuring the space dedicated to this issue on these two newspapers, the study evaluates the importance newspapers attribute to this phenomenon along with the journalists’ viewpoints. We studied the headlines and articles of the daily newspaper La Stampa, starting from the year 2000 up to September 10, 2007. We analyzed a total number of 891 articles or headlines which contained the term bullying. Articles published during the same years by the newspaper La Repubblica were also studied. The complete texts were taken from a selection of 245 articles. The articles of La Stampa underwent a quantitative analysis with the software SPSS 12.0. The research took into consideration the page number, the edition and the year of publication of a number of articles that mentioned the term bullying/bully in its title or body of the text. The articles of La Repubblica, were instead subjected to a textual analysis with the software T-Lab, to identify the words used and their association to the term bullying. We reached the conclusion that during the last two years, bullying has become a highly relevant social and political theme. An increasing number of articles on bullying is not only confined to news reports, but is also found in theoretical analyses of the phenomenon and preventive measures. Without mentioning the the public interest in the phenomenon, even politics has made its moves to create permanent observers and lay down guidelines for action on the territory.