A Million Centimetres a Year: Quality newspaper coverage of 'leisure' in Australia

Abstract

Many claims are made about the emergence of a 'leisure society', some focusing on the so-called 'leisure shock' and others on the 'end of work'. In much of this writing, definition of the core concept of 'leisure' is problematical. Many see leisure as 'time left over' after obligatory commitments have been met. From this perspective, leisure, recreation and tourism are viewed as components of 'leisure time', defined on the basis of the location of the activity in question (home, day trip, overnight stay). This actor-based approach to defining leisure is widely used but has drawbacks. The paper explores an alternative approach. It focuses on how leisure is socially constructed in the media. This is an enormous topic and the paper limits attention to a quantitative content analysis of the coverage of 'leisure' in the main 'news' section of a quality broadsheet (the Sydney Morning Herald) in 2004. Adopting the agenda-setting approach to media impact, the paper gives an insight into the aspects of leisure covered by Australia5 largest selling broadsheet.