The working class in the Australian mainstream media

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63
Author(s):  
Sarah Attfield

The Australian mainstream media is dominated by middle-class voices, and this shapes the way working-class people are framed within the media. Working-class people have tended to be represented as responsible for their poverty, or ridiculed for their lack of sophistication. But could very small shifts be occurring, as some outlets acknowledge the impact of neo-liberalism on working-class people and point to some of the structural causes of inequality? This article looks at some examples of working-class representation in Australian newspapers, television news and current affairs programs, and considers the ways in which working-class people are presented. The article also asks whether the Australian mainstream media provides a place for working-class voices?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Joyce Belle

This MRP examines the impact that ableist media representations have on youth living with disabilities in the GTA. More specifically, it seeks to answer three essential questions, (1) How have ableist representations of disability in media impacted the way youth with disabilities see themselves? (2) What representations of disability would youth with disabilities like to see in mainstream media? (3) What is social work’s role in changing these ableist media tropes and stereotypes? Using a narrative research methodology, this researcher collected the stories of three Torontonian youths between the ages of 18 to 29 years old, who self-identify as living with a disability. Episodic interviews and thematic data analysis were used to reveal several significant findings. Overall, participants felt that the media does not accurately represent their experiences of disability, often relying on stigmatizing stereotypes that influence their interactions with others, ultimately impacting the way they feel about themselves.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Joyce Belle

This MRP examines the impact that ableist media representations have on youth living with disabilities in the GTA. More specifically, it seeks to answer three essential questions, (1) How have ableist representations of disability in media impacted the way youth with disabilities see themselves? (2) What representations of disability would youth with disabilities like to see in mainstream media? (3) What is social work’s role in changing these ableist media tropes and stereotypes? Using a narrative research methodology, this researcher collected the stories of three Torontonian youths between the ages of 18 to 29 years old, who self-identify as living with a disability. Episodic interviews and thematic data analysis were used to reveal several significant findings. Overall, participants felt that the media does not accurately represent their experiences of disability, often relying on stigmatizing stereotypes that influence their interactions with others, ultimately impacting the way they feel about themselves.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110217
Author(s):  
Marion Dalibert

By questioning the media coverage of the seven feminist movements that have received most publicity in the French mainstream media since the 2000s, this article shows that the media narrative regarding feminism perpetuates the national metanarrative produced in generalist newspapers. This metanarrative reinforces the power of majority groups by portraying them as inherently egalitarian, while those with the least economic, social, political and cultural power, such as Muslim men, are portrayed as the most sexist. It also highlights that racialised collectives are still socially invisible or limited to a visibility that is framed by representations rooted in a (post) colonial imaginary. Non-white women are in fact presented as fundamentally submissive, while (upper)-middle-class white women are the only ones associated with emancipation, which is significant of white and bourgeois hegemony at work in the French news media.


Modern Drama ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-457
Author(s):  
William McEvoy

This article argues that the work of Welsh theatre director and playwright Peter Gill occupies a unique place in post-1960s’ British playwriting. It explores Gill’s plays as – using theatre critic Susannah Clapp’s phrase – the “missing link” between kitchen-sink realism and more self-consciously poetic forms of theatre text. Gill’s plays make an important contribution to the history of working-class representation in UK theatre for three main reasons: first, the centrality he gives to Wales, Welsh working-class characters, and the city of Cardiff; second, his emphasis on the experience of women, especially mothers; and third, his focus on young male characters expressing and exploring the complexities of same-sex desire. The plays make advances in terms of realist dialogue and structure while also experimenting with layout, repetition, fragmentation, poetic description, and monologue narration. Gill’s work realistically documents the impact of poverty, cramped housing conditions, and social deprivation on his characters as part of a political project to show the lives of Welsh working-class people on stage. While doing so, Gill innovates in his handling of time, perspective, viewpoint, and genre. His plays occupy a distinctive place in the history of British, working-class, gay theatre, helping us to rethink what each of these three key terms means.


2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Jayeon Lee

The role of the media in informing the public has long been a central topic in journalism studies. Given that social media platforms have become today’s major source of news, it is important to understand the impact of social media use on citizens’ knowledge of current affairs. While people get news from multiple platforms throughout the day, most research treats social media as a single entity or examines only one or two major platforms ignoring newer social media platforms. Drawing on news snacking framework, this study investigates how using some of today’s most popular social media platforms predicts users’ current affairs knowledge, with particular attention to Snapchat and its news section Discover. A survey conducted in the United States (N=417) demonstrated that each of the platforms is distinct: Twitter is a strongly positive predictor of knowledge, Facebook a marginally significant negative predictor, Reddit a significantly negative predictor and Instagram not a significant predictor. Overall Snapchat use has no significant association with users’ knowledge of current affairs, whereas Discover use has a negative relationship. Further analysis revealed that mere exposure to Snapchat is positively related to soft-news knowledge and attention to Discover is negatively related to hard-news knowledge.


2019 ◽  
pp. 100-122
Author(s):  
Francis L. F. Lee

This chapter reviews the relationship between the media and the Umbrella Movement. The mainstream media, aided by digital media outlets and platforms, play the important role of the public monitor in times of major social conflicts, even though the Hong Kong media do so in an environment where partial censorship exists. The impact of digital media in largescale protest movements is similarly multifaceted and contradictory. Digital media empower social protests by promoting oppositional discourses, facilitating mobilization, and contributing to the emergence of connective action. However, they also introduce and exacerbate forces of decentralization that present challenges to movement leaders. Meanwhile, during and after the Umbrella Movement, one can also see how the state has become more proactive in online political communication, thus trying to undermine the oppositional character of the Internet in Hong Kong.


2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Rapp

The film era in Britain commenced in early 1896, but its moral impact on viewers was not considered very much during its first decade. This was primarily because film was dispersed in a variety of venues like music halls and fairgrounds where other entertainment was provided, or in unused shops and other premises that were temporarily rented. Film thus had no permanent, separate identity as a leisure activity that took place in one particular type of public space, hence it was difficult for moralists to recognize, much less discern and evaluate its moral influence. Moreover, many of the middle class (from whom most moralists came) dismissed the early film industry as a passing, vulgar fad of the working class that need not be taken seriously.But moralists did begin to notice the impact of the industry when film acquired a conspicuous new identity of its own in the years after 1906 when thousands of purpose-built cinemas were constructed. The tremendous growth of both the cinemas and their mostly working-class, youthful audiences led some middle-class moralists to focus their attention on film for the first time. They soon concluded that the cinemas undermined the morality of their young audiences and launched a crusade against the film industry. The general outlines of the campaign are well known. Moralists charged that the darkened cinemas provided cover for couples to court and for some men to abuse children. They also asserted that many films were sensational ones about sexual indecency, crime, and violence. Such fare, they contended, encouraged immorality and incited juvenile delinquency among youth who imitated the crimes they saw enacted on screen. The moralists therefore demanded censorship of the films, brighter lighting in the cinemas to discourage sexual misbehavior, and police action against indecency. Moreover, Sabbatarians opposed the opening of the cinemas on Sundays as a further desecration of that holy day of rest.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1433
Author(s):  
Rahmiati Lita ◽  
Yoon C. Cho

Culture affects every part of our lives, every day, from birth to death, and everything in between (Cateora, Gilly, and Graham 2011). This study discusses the way in which customers acceptance of cultures and products has been greatly affected by the media. This study also investigates how customers acceptance leads to attitudinal and behavioral changes. In particular, this study measures the impact of a cultural wave to examine the attitudinal and behavioral changes it causes. This study explores the causes that affect the willingness of people to change their behavior after exposure to the media. In particular, this study investigates 1) how a cultural wave influences product and cultural awareness, 2) the relationship between perceptions of a cultural wave and peoples attitudes and behavior, and 3) the relationship between the strength of peoples attitudes toward acculturation and changes in attitude and behavior. By applying various statistical analyses, this study identifies managerial and theoretical implications.


Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

This chapter examines how ideas about class, community, and individualism figured in the modernization of the Labour Party in the 1980s and 1990s. It examines the development, under Kinnock and Blair, of a new imagined constituency for Labour—a ‘new working class’ or, as Blair put it, ‘new middle class’. The sources of this vision lay partly in academic theorizing, but also in the backgrounds of key modernizers, and in new polling and focus group techniques for researching social attitudes. Modernizers understood the new majoritarian constituency in society as united by aspirations, and reoriented socialism to emphasize the use of community action—through the state—to secure a wide distribution of opportunity and security throughout society, in order to enable individuals to achieve those aspirations. The chapter concludes by examining the impact of these beliefs on policy relating to poverty, inequality, trade unionism, and community.


Author(s):  
Mario S Staller ◽  
Benjamin Zaiser ◽  
Swen Koerner

Cognitive biases have been identified as drivers of the excessive use of force, which has determined current affairs across the globe. In this article, we argue that the police are facing serious challenges in combating these biases. These challenges stem from the nature of cognitive biases, their sources and the fallacies that mislead police professionals in the way they think about them. Based on a framework of expert decision-making fallacies and biases, we argue that these fallacies limit the impact of efforts to mitigate cognitive biases in police conflict management. In order to achieve a systemic understanding of cognitive biases and their detrimental effects, the article concludes that implementing reflexive structures within the police is a crucial prerequisite to effectively reflect on external influences and to limit bias and fallacies from further unfolding in a self-referential loop.


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