iSentia numbers demonstrate media fascination with “alcohol-fuelled violence”

Alcohol-fuelled violence dominated the media in the new year with media monitoring service iSentia reporting the term was used a staggering 25,808 times during January compared to only a few hundred mentions in January 2013.

The media’s focus on the issue follows on from the deaths of Thomas Kelly in 2012 and Daniel Christie earlier this month from “king hits” which the media rebranded as a “coward’s punch”.

Source: iSentia

iSentia group communications manager Patrick Baume told Mumbrella: “Clearly most of the coverage was in the first couple of weeks. Initially around the sentencing of Russell Packer and then (the incident involving) Daniel Christie so while it still remained a fairly big issue just in the last week the 21st to the 28th it wasn’t quite as big as generally.”

Packer, a Newcastle Knight rugby league player, was jailed for two years for assault after pleading guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm after he bashed a man during an alcohol-fuelled night last year, with the court hearing he had stomped on his victim’s face as the man lay motionless in Martin Place in Sydney’s CBD.

It was Christie’s family who coined the term ‘coward’s punch’, with the Daily Telegraph reporting the family’s statement which included the term on January 1:

“We don’t agree with the popular term “king hit”. We have heard it referred to as a coward punch, which seems to be more appropriate,” said the family.

However, while the term coined by the Christie family quickly replaced the term ‘king hit’ it has since been overtaken as the media coverage died down.

iSentia reports the term was used nearly 15,000 times across the media at the start of January, however it has now dropped to 634 mentions.

“The way king hit dropped off pretty quickly after the first week and coward’s punch had a bit of a boost but it seems most of the media didn’t want to use the Tele’s term and started to use the ‘one punch’ and that obviously took over as by far the most commonly used term,” said Baume.

“From those figures  you probably won’t hear ‘coward’s punch’ much at all from now on, that it was a bit of a short-lived campaign and that you may see some outlets go back to ‘king hit’ but most of them will probably use ‘one punch’ in the future,” he added.

The term ‘one punch’ was mentioned 3,639 at the end of January compared to only 1,358 times from January 1 to January 7.

Similarly to ‘coward punch’ usage of the term ‘king hit’ by the media had declined to just over 800 mentions by the end of the month from being used by the media nearly 6,000 times at the start of the year.

Baume said: “Probably most have decided to use ‘one punch’ attacks, they took on board getting rid of the term ‘king hit’ but most news rooms decided they’d go for something a little more neutral than ‘coward’s punch’.”

He also told Mumbrella while he believed the issue had been the victim of media hype due to a lack of other news stories, that it would have been a big story at any other time in the year.

“It would have been fairly big at any time of the year but the fact that there wasn’t any as much other news around maybe pushed it a little higher then it would have been. I think it would have been a big issue at any time of the year, particularly with a series of incidents close together,” he said.

“I also think there’s no doubt that there was a pretty concerted campaign from print and radio in particular to address the issue and that definitely kept it pretty high,” he added.

On radio the term coward’s punch was mentioned 282 times at the beginning of the month, peaking at 636 mentions around the middle of the month (5 to 21 Jan) before dropping away to 188 mentions at the end of the month. The term king hit peaked at the beginning of the month with 1572 mentions before slowly dropping away to 125 mentions by the end of the month as the ‘coward punch’ term rose in popularity. By the end of the month, ‘one punch’ was mentioned 1,550 times after peaking at 2,710 times around the middle of the month. While in the press, the term ‘coward’s punch’ peaked at the end of the month with 113 mentions, up from 78 at the beginning of January, ‘king hit’ dropped from 246 mentions to 118 mentions and the term ‘one punch’ climbed from 61 mentions to close to 300.

However, while the issue captured the audiences of more traditional media, it struggled to gain traction on social media.

The iSentia numbers, which exclude Facebook, saw ‘king hit’ mentioned 2,880 times since January 1 by Australia users while the media coined ‘coward punch’ saw less than half the activity with only 1,224 mentions.

“It’s interesting that it wasn’t nearly as big an issue on social media which much more focussed on asylum seekers, welfare cuts and wasn’t nearly as swept along as radio talkback and the print were. It still got quite a lot of comments on social media but relatively wasn’t as big,” Baum said.

Comparatively, ‘asylum seekers’ was mentioned over 11,000 times according to iSentia.

“Perhaps paradoxically it was of more concern to an older demographic and not so much to a younger demographic,” Baum added.

The coverage of the alcohol-fuelled violence issue resulted in NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell introducing tougher laws to combat the problem including a minimum eight-year jail sentence for one-punch attacks with a 25-year-maximum where drugs and alcohol were involved. The reforms also include a 1.30am lock-out at licensed premises and last drinks at 3am across a newly declared Sydney CBD precinct stretching from the Rocks and to Kings Cross in the east and along George Street to Haymarket but excluding the planned casino complex at Barangaroo.

“The interesting thing was there wasn’t a huge backlash to the curfew on social media either, perhaps people were keeping their opinions to themselves on it or they didn’t think it would make too much difference or basically young people didn’t notice the issue as much that it was pretty heavily skewed towards print and radio which perhaps have an older demographic reading them and listening,” Baum said.

iSentia’s breakdown of the alcohol-fuelled violence coverage: 

Miranda Ward 

Miranda Ward

Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.

Linkedin

topics iSentia

Share Tweet Share

Comments: 4

Anon. 29 Jan 14

You may want to correct the reference to ‘sentencing of Daniel Christie’ here, given that he was the victim of a fatal attack.

User ID not verified.

Nic Christensen 29 Jan 14

Hi Anon,

Patrick Baume’s quotes have been adjusted in brackets to more clearly reflect that Christie was the victim of an assault and not the perpetrator.

Cheers

Nic – Mumbrella

Joh 29 Jan 14

These numbers are mostly made up.

User ID not verified.

steve kokette 30 Jan 14

It would be nice if coward punch put an end to the term king hit, which sounds like something respectable that everyone should do. One Punch is most descriptive and says what it means. A new documentary – One Punch Homicide -was made to reduce punching incidents.

User ID not verified.

---