ABSTRACT
Media representations of disabled people are rare, and those that do exist are grounded in stereotypes, often falling into one of two standard narratives: tragic victim or inspirational Supercrip. The influence of such media representations on both outsider perception of disability and disabled individuals’ self-conceptions means the unbalanced portrayals of disability are surely harmful. But is this sufficient to show that the media has a duty to do better? I argue that it does, but that this cannot be grounded in the impact on disabled individuals’ well-being. Rather, we must show how current representations of disability constitute, or contribute to, their unjust treatment – and specifically, here, to epistemic forms of injustice. Media producers are, I argue, responsible for failing to give appropriate credibility to disabled individuals’ testimony and for not working to rectify their wilful hermeneutic ignorance by listening to disabled individual’s own understandings of their lives and circumstances. Further, by maintaining stereotypes of disabled individuals as lacking the competence or sincerity to be credible, and of disability as nothing but a tragedy, they further contribute to disabled individual’s epistemic exclusion in wider society. Ultimately, my goal is not to propose a new model of disability representation, but to show that the widely-articulated demand for disabled people to be visible in the public sphere as “’regular’ people performing ‘regular’ tasks” (Kama 2004: 462) is a demand of justice. As such, it is not one the media can choose to ignore.
