The contribution of personality traits and characteristics of the social worker's job to his perception of the media as a tool to promote social issues

One of the unique characteristics of the social worker’s role is being an agent of social change. Being an agent of social change includes the social worker’s involvement in various policy levels, from organizational policies to government policies. Furthermore, it includes advancing the social work profession. One of the most useful methods to promote social change is utilizing the media, but social workers seldom use this tool. Moreover, their appearances in the media are mostly common after traumatic events, such as murders in the family.

The current study is based on Folkman and Lazarus’s “Theory of cognitive appraisal” (1980), which states that a person’s behavior is affected by his personal assessment of the risks and chances in a situation with which he has to cope (cognitive appraisal), by personal and personality traits and by environmental factors. In accordance with this perception, the current study examined whether the social worker’s locus of control (as a personality trait), professional position, field of work, main working method, professional self-image and cognitive appraisal (threat, challenge and ability) are connected to his attitudes towards using the media as a measure to promote social workers’ work and their vocational image.

201 social workers participated in the study. They were sampled using snowball sampling method and personal connections. After the participants had agreed to take part in the study, they answered quantitative questionnaires.

The findings show that junior social workers have reported lower professional self-image and they evaluated using the media as more threatening than senior social workers. Additionally, social workers who mainly work with individuals have reported less media involvement by responding to news coverage. They have evaluated their ability to use the media as less challenging and their ability to use the media as inferior, more commonly than social workers who use other working methods.

The study’s findings also suggest that there is a distinct positive correlation between cognitive appraisal of using the media as a challenge and as a task the social worker can cope with, and positive attitudes towards using the media. Social workers with positive self-professional image and social workers with internal locus of control have reported more positive attitudes towards using the media. Moreover, the frequency of responding to news coverage has been found to be distinctly positively correlated with the attitudes towards using the media for the purpose of promoting professional agendas. Finally, testing the interactive correlations between the variables has shown that social workers’ education has a moderating effect on the correlation between cognitive appraisal of challenge and ability and the attitudes towards using the media: the correlation is stronger when the social worker has higher education.

This study is important first and foremost because it contributes to the empirical knowledge on social workers’ use of the media, a field which has hardly been studied. Furthermore, it has identifying variables through which social workers could be assisted in order to be more involved in the media. This new data can help to develop suitable interventions and curriculums that will increase social workers’ use of the media, that, in turn, will help achieve their professional agendas and improve their vocation’s image.