ABSTRACT

This book brings together a vast range of pre-eminent experts, academics, and practitioners to interrogate the role of media in representing economic inequality. It explores and deconstructs the concept of economic inequality by examining the different dimensions of inequality and how it has evolved historically; how it has been represented and portrayed in the media; and how, in turn, those representations have informed the public’s knowledge of and attitudes towards poverty, class and welfare, and political discourse.

Taking a multi-disciplinary, comparative, and historical approach, and using a variety of new and original data sets to inform the research, studies herein examine the relationship between media and inequality in UK, Western Europe, and USA. In addition to generating new knowledge and research agendas, the book generates suggestions of ways to improve news coverage on this topic and raise the level of the debate, and will improve understanding about economic inequality, as it has evolved, and as it continues to develop in academic, political and media discourses.

This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike in the areas of journalism, media studies, economics, and the social sciences, as well as political commentators and those interested more broadly in social policy.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

The media and inequality

part I|73 pages

Understanding inequality

chapter 2|13 pages

Wealth inequality in the UK

chapter 3|12 pages

Social Mobility

chapter 4|14 pages

Racial economic inequality

The visible tip of an inequality iceberg?

chapter 5|14 pages

Homeownership

The key to wealth inequality?

part II|79 pages

Framing poverty and inequality

chapter 6|13 pages

Poverty and the media

Poverty myths and exclusion in the information society

chapter 7|19 pages

The rhetoric of recessions

How British Newspapers Talk About the Poor When Unemployment Rises 1896–2000 *

chapter 8|18 pages

Factual television in the UK

The rich, the poor and inequality

part III|75 pages

Public opinion, inequality, and the media

chapter 12|16 pages

Debating inequality

The case of Piketty's capital in the 21st century

chapter 13|19 pages

The media and austerity

chapter 15|12 pages

Stuck in a feedback loop

Why more inequality leads to lower levels of concern *