Disability

Question 1

ACRONYM

Answer 1

Shakespeare’s- Shakespeare, disability is a social construct
Big- Barnes, negative representation in media
Ghostly- Goffman, impression management
Book- Becker, master status

Question 2

Shakespeare

Answer 2

• believes that disability is a social construction that is created by the attitude of society and not the state of the body
• The stereotype in any society of a ‘normal’ or acceptable body will generate a disabled identity among those who do not conform to this image.

Question 3

Barnes

Answer 3

• suggested stereotypes of disability particular those generated by the mass media, include ideas or inexplicable behaviour- ways in which disabled people are portrayed in the media:
• Pitiable
• An element of atmosphere or an object of curiosity
• victims, vulnerable to bullying, helpless
• As sinister or evil eg: Oddjob
• As a burden
• non - sexual
• Incapable

Question 4

Cumberbatch and Negrine (1992)

Answer 4

• identify the 3 broad categories of disability that were stereotyped in cinema
  1) The criminal
  2) subhuman
  3) powerless or pathetic character

Question 5

Symbolic Annihilation of disability in the media

Answer 5

• 25% of all adults and about 8 million people of working age (20% of the working age population) in the UK were covered by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) definition of disability in 2011
• Yet these disabled people are so seriously under-represented in the media
• Sancho (2003) reported on the representation and portrayal of disabled people in the peak time programmes (5.30pm to Midnight) on the five UK terrestrial TV channels using content analysis, focus groups and questionnaires

Question 6

Negative representations of Disability

Answer 6

• Briant et al (2011) (GMG) found in a study comparing media coverage of disability in 5 newspapers in 2010-11 with a similar period in 2004-5 that there had been a reduction in the proportion of articles describing disabled people in sympathetic terms particularly those with mental health related disabilities
• Philo et al (2010) (GMG) found such negative stereotypes were also applied to people with disabling mental health conditions
• 63% of references to mental health were negative in the sense of being critical and unsympathetic.