Shocking Numbers and Graphic Accounts: Quantified Images of Drug Problems in the Print Media

Abstract

This paper examines how journalists and graphic artists in the national print media used statistical results from annual surveys of student drug use to construct quantified claims about a cocaine epidemic and other drug problems in 1986 and in subsequent years. Editorial and creative decisions entailed in transforming modest yearly changes in time-series data into a dramatic graphic image of “a coke plague” early in 1986 are reconstructed. The changing character of quantified images in the print media during the summer and fall of 1986 provides additional insights into how the rise and decline of a media “feeding frenzy” altered the claims-making activity of media workers. Finally, a recent case of the construction of a “new” drug problem on the eroding foundation of the cocaine epidemic is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of how competitive conditions in the journalistic arena affect the production and distortion of quantified images of drug problems.

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