Abstract

Research on the news coverage of poverty has largely overlooked the agency of the actors involved. This study addressed this gap by combining ethnographic fieldwork in a poor neighborhood with an analysis of television news about the neighborhood and interviews with the journalists who produced this news. The analysis shows a relationship between journalists and poor people significantly more complex than the relationship described in previous research: Journalists and poor people marketed the neighborhood's misery collaboratively. They shaped news in ways that could be stigmatizing, but that served their converging interests. By acknowledging that structure and agency presuppose each other, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of journalism, as well as to efforts to address poverty's symbolic injustice.

, , , , , , ,
doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12124, hdl.handle.net/1765/77350
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC)

Awad Cherit, I. (2014). Journalism, Poverty, and the Marketing of Misery: News From Chile's “Largest Ghetto". doi:10.1111/jcom.12124