ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an interdisciplinary collection of essays on media and poverty. Poverty is a problem because it has a marginal place on the news agenda despite its implications for social inclusion, political participation and global cooperation across a range of issues. This is the case even though poverty is more visible around the world due to extreme income inequality. Furthermore, when the news media pay attention to poverty, the coverage tends to be fragmented, superficial and stigmatizing even when well intentioned. The representations circulated by the news media tend to distance target audiences from those who experience poverty for ideological, economic and aesthetic reasons. And those who experience poverty rarely get to represent themselves. On the theoretical side, new prospects for an integrated approach to studying poverty have emerged, thanks to the new interdisciplinary field of poverty studies and the “ethical turn” that inspired it. But research on news coverage of poverty remains mostly scattered across different fields, making this collection an unusual one in its scope and depth. The chapter closes with an overview of the book’s organization and content.
