Social Class - Media Representations

How are the Upper Classes represented according to Neo-Marxists?

Mass media representations of social class tend to celebrate hierarchy and wealth

• hardly ever portray the classes in a critical light, or pay attention to inequalities in wealth and pay or the overrepresentation of public-school products in positions of power

However - new media doesn’t represent upper class as kindly anymore e.g. Prince Andrew scandal

The Monarch - Nairn

Monarchy has successfully converted much of the modern mass media

• rare to see criticism presented as ‘like us’, but, ‘not like us’ - Queen was just an ‘ordinary’ working mother doing an extraordinary job

• reinforces national identity

Representations of Wealth - Newman (Marxist)

Media overwhelmingly spotlight the affluent lifestyle, fixating on luxury goods

• disproportionate coverage despite limited public ownership - impact on wealthy

Criticising Media’s neglect of Capitalisms injustices

Representations of Wealth - Pluralist

Representations of the rich, their lifestyles and the business world are justified:

• UK as meritocracy - media represents the idea that talented people are deserving of high rewards

• Stories motivate people to work hard - attain these rewards - benefits the economy

• Focus on finance, stocks and shares may merely reflect the importance of these sectors for the economy

Representations of the Middle Class

3 types

• Over-represented - targets middle-class

• Dominant - Owen Jones: ‘we are all middle class now’

• Anxiety - anxious about contemporary society and prone to moral panic (e.g. immigration, youth)

Representations of the Working-Class - Newman

often represented and stereotyped as a problem in the media - marginal and problematic

• e.g. Jeremy Kyle Show: they are the problem!

Representations of the Working-Class - Glasgow University Media Group

Representation of industrial struggle with workers represented as awkward and a problem

• in contrast, employers are presented as reasonable

e.g. miner strikes 1980s

Representations of the Working-Class - Jones

Media coverage of W/C people constitutes a M/C assault on W/C values

• journalists: “liberal bigotry” - fleckless, promiscuous, foul-mouthed racists

• issues of poverty, unemployment and single-parent families suggest personal inadequacy of the W/C - rather then gov policies and poor business practice as the main cause of social problems

Representations of the Working-Class - Curran and Seaton

W/C often assume they’re not interested in serious analysis of political or social issues

• simplified into conflicts between personalities for their consumption (e.g. Sun & Star)

• presented unintelligent or as violent and prejudged

Representations of the Working-Class - Salt of the Earth

W/C people as simple but decent “normal people”

• significant quantity of media products out there that represent W/C life positively or realistically, often produced by writers and filmmakers with a pro W/C political message

Coverage of Poverty and Underclass - McKendrick et al

poverty was marginal in the media

• little exploration into the causes

(Poverty is often dealt with in the media in a very impersonal way, focusing on statistics rather than individual stories of living with poverty)

Coverage of Poverty and Underclass - Cohen

Media “trumpeting the good fortune” of British capitalism - less attention to its ‘causalities’

• media revels in the suffering of the poor by commissioning shows that deliberately portrays the poor as parasitic scroungers

Media reinforces the popular view that the poor are poor because of their own depravity and weakness

• media fails to see the connection between deprivation and wealth

The Stigmatisation of the Poor - Shildrick and McDonald

Media labelling suggests that the poor are undeserving of public sympathy

The Stigmatisation of the Poor - Hayward and Yar

Label ‘chav’ is now used by newspapers and websites as a familiar and amusing term of abuse for young people

The Stigmatisation of the Poor - Lawler

Media uses discriminatory and offensive form of language to utility and socially stigmatise what they depict as a peasant underclass or white trash

• symbolised by stereotypical forms of appearance

Social Class Representations - Marxists

Media representations of poverty serve to suggest that this economic status is self-inflicted rather than caused by the social organisation of capitalism

• profit and wealth needs to be justified as deserved

Mass media are an ideological agency that function to maintain, legitimise and reproduce class inequalities

Social Class Representations - Pluralists

Representations reflect the reality of capitalistic society

• reported because they fit news values of what is newsworthy

If W/C people didn’t like them, they would not invest in the types of the media in which these representations are mainly found