Living in the Disadvantaged end of “Dual Cities”

This chapter examines the various ways the dominant corporate media have represented, framed, and made sense of the poverty, economic precarity, slums, and increasing inequalities of wealth and income that are such salient features of contemporary neoliberal cities around the globe. Such representations are important because they influence debates around public policies concerned with issues like persistent urban poverty. The chapter also explores the grassroots media that the oppressed, economically and racially marginalized populations of these cities have produced “from below” in response to dominant media narratives. It begins by examining the recent global trend toward widening economic inequality and its impact on cities before moving on to dissect how these developments have been portrayed in the media.