Social Class Flashcards
Key point to note…
Mass media representations of social classes rarely focus on the social tensions or class conflict that some critical sociologists see as underpinning society.
Representations of the Monarchy…
Nairn (1988) notes that contemporary media coverage of the monarchy has focused positively on every trivial detail of their lives, turning the Queen and her family into an on-going soap opera, but with a glamour and mystique far greater than any other media personality.
Furthermore, mass media representations of the Queen are also aimed at reinforcing a sense of national identity, in that she is portrayed as the ultimate symbol of the nation.
Consequently, the media regards royal events, such as weddings and funerals, as national events.
Representations of the upper class and wealth…
Neo-Marxists argue that mass media representations of social class tend to celebrate hierarchy and wealth.
Those who benefit from these processes, i.e. the monarchy, the upper class and the very wealthy, generally receive a positive press as celebrities who are somehow deserving of their position.
The British mass media hardly ever portray the upper classes in a critical light, nor do they often draw any serious attention to inequalities in wealth and pay or the overrepresentation of public-school products in positions of power.
Newman - media focus on concerns of the wealthy…
Newman (2006) argues that the media focus very positively on the concerns of the wealthy and the privileged. He notes that the media over-focuses on consumer items such as luxury cars, costly holiday spots and fashion accessories that only the wealthy can afford.
He also notes the enormous amount of print and broadcast media dedicated to daily business news and stock market quotations, despite the fact that few people in Britain own stocks and shares.
Representations of the middle classes…
Four broad sociological observations can be made with regard to mass media representations of the middle classes.
> Over-represented
> Newspaper audience
> Anxious
> The expert
Over-representation - middle classes…
The middle class are over-represented on TV dramas and situation comedies.
Newspaper audience - middle classes…
Part of the British newspaper market is specifically aimed at the middle classes and their consumption, tastes and interests, e.g. the Daily Mail.
Anxious - middle classes…
The content of newspapers such as the Daily Mail suggests that journalists believe that the middle classes of middle England are generally anxious about the decline of moral standards in society and that they are proud of their British identity and heritage.
It is assumed that their readership feels threatened by alien influences such as the Euro, asylum seekers and terrorism.
Consequently, newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, often crusade on behalf of the middle classes and initiate moral panics on issues such as video nasties, paedophilia and asylum seekers.
The expert - middle classes…
Most of the creative personnel in the media are themselves middle class. In news and current affairs, the middle classes dominate positions of authority – the ‘expert’ is invariably middle class.
Representations of the working class…
Newman argues that when news organisations focus on the working class, it is generally to label them as a problem, e.g. as welfare cheats, drug addicts or criminals.
Working class groups, e.g. youth subcultures such as mods or skinheads, are often the subject of moral panics, whilst reporting of issues such as poverty, unemployment or single-parent families often suggests that personal inadequacy is the main cause of these social problems, rather than government policies or poor business practices.
Studies of industrial relations reporting by the Glasgow University Media Group suggest that the media portray ‘unreasonable’ workers as making trouble for ‘reasonable’ employers.
Working classes as uninterested…
Curran and Seaton (2003) note that newspapers aimed at working class audiences assume that they are uninterested in serious analysis of either the political or social organisation of British society.
Political debate is often reduced simplistically to conflict between personalities.
The content of newspapers such as The Sun and the Daily Star assumes that such audiences want to read about celebrity gossip and lifestyles, trivial human interest stories and sport.
Representations of poverty…
Newman argues that when the news media turn their attention to the most destitute, the portrayals are often negative or stereotypical.
Often, the poor are portrayed in statistical rather than in human terms by news bulletins that focus on the numbers unemployed or on benefits, rather than the individual suffering and personal indignities of poverty.
McKendrick et al. (2008) studied a week’s output of mainstream media in 2007 and concluded that coverage of poverty is marginal in British media, in that the causes and consequences of poverty were very rarely explored across the news, documentaries or drama.
Dramas such as Shameless presented a sanitised picture of poverty, despite featuring characters who were economically deprived, whilst family issue-based programmes such as The Jeremy Kyle Show treated poverty as an aspect of entertainment. Cohen notes that the media often fails to see the connection between deprivation and wealth.
Underclass…
Coverage tends to focus on the poverty of individuals rather than the structural features of society such as government policy which created the underclass.
Media coverage of the underclass is generally negative and they are often scapegoated for society’s problems. Benefits Street is a good example of this.
Benefits Stigma in Britain study…
‘Benefits Stigma in Britain’ analysed a database of 6,600 national press articles between 1995-2011.
Baumberg et al found an extraordinarily disproportionate focus on benefit fraud: 29% of news stories referenced fraud. In comparison the government’s own estimate is that a mere 0.7% of all benefits claims are fraudulent.
Common language used to describe benefits as ‘undeserving’ included:
> Fraud and dishonesty (including those such as ‘faking illness’)
> Dependency (including ‘underclass’ and ‘unemployable’)
> non-reciprocity/lack of effort (e.g. ‘handouts’, ‘something for nothing’, ‘lazy’, ‘scrounger’)
> outsider status (e.g. ‘immigrant’, ‘obese’)
GUMG…
The GUMG did research that showed that those working class protestors we unreasonable and their bosses were reasonable and will negotiate.
The GUMG conducted a content analysis of of those on the picket line they, studied the terminology used to distinguish between the bourgeoisie (Bosses) and the proletariat (the workers). Firstly working class protestors, were seen as violent and terminology such as aggressive and resistant was used, this begins the process of scapegoating and creates a negative media representation of the working class. Where as in reports relating to the bourgeoise terminology such as negotiations were key showing they were rational and fair.
