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THIS IS WHAT DISABILITY LOOKS LIKE DEPICTIONS of PEOPLE with DISABILITIES in MASS MEDIA and BLOGS of PEOPLE with IMPAIRMENTS (Master's Thesis)

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THIS IS WHAT DISABILITY LOOKS LIKE DEPICTIONS of PEOPLE with DISABILITIES in MASS MEDIA and BLOGS of PEOPLE with IMPAIRMENTS (Master's Thesis) MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY THIS IS WHAT DISABILITY LOOKS LIKE DEPICTIONS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN MASS MEDIA AND BLOGS OF PEOPLE WITH IMPAIRMENTS (Master's Thesis) STUDENT: Bc. et Bc. Beáta Révayová SUPERVISOR: Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D. Spring 2013 I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgment has been made in the text. Date: Signature: 2 First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D., for all the kind words of advice and encouragement. Second but also important, my thanks goes to the disability bloggers who, unwittingly, made this study possible, for giving me a precious new perspective. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 6 The goals and structure of the thesis ........................................................................... 8 WHAT IS DISABILITY/ WHAT IS DISABLING/WHO IS DISABLED ...................................... 10 Delineating disability – problems and definitions ...................................................... 10 Medical (individual) model of disability ................................................................. 13 (British) Social Model of Disability .......................................................................... 14 Critiques of medical and social models of disability .............................................. 15 Ableism ....................................................................................................................... 16 What´s media got to do with it? ................................................................................. 18 The impact of media content on cultural imagery ................................................. 19 MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF DISABILITY ..................................................................... 21 Beggar ..................................................................................................................... 24 Object of entertainment, ridicule and fun ............................................................. 25 Supercrip or “Batman” ........................................................................................... 25 Own Worst Enemy .................................................................................................. 26 The person with disability as burden ..................................................................... 27 Disability as an emblem of evil ............................................................................... 28 Childlike .................................................................................................................. 29 Person with disability as sexually abnormal ........................................................... 30 STUDYING DEPICTIONS OF PEOPLE WITH IMPAIRMENTS IN BLOGS OF DISABLED PEOPLE ............................................................................................................................ 31 Giving voice to disabled people: the use of blogs .................................................... 31 METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................. 32 Research questions ..................................................................................................... 32 Setting the criteria and searching for the data source ............................................... 32 4 Analyzed websites ...................................................................................................... 35 Content analysis ......................................................................................................... 38 Content analysis as a method ................................................................................ 39 Visual content analysis? ......................................................................................... 39 Critiques and dangers ............................................................................................. 41 Advantages ............................................................................................................. 42 Categories taken in focus ........................................................................................... 43 Semiotic analysis ......................................................................................................... 47 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS ................................................................................................. 49 Summary of Findings .................................................................................................. 49 SuperCrip Comics ........................................................................................................ 51 Wheelchair Problems ................................................................................................. 54 This Is What Disability Looks Like ............................................................................... 56 Disabled People Are Sexy/Gorgeous Amputees/F*** Yeah Prosthetics! .................. 57 Disabled people as sexual beings – Nothing special about these needs ................... 59 Disabled people as active, willing and able ................................................................ 62 Fighting the inspiration porn ...................................................................................... 63 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 65 ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... 67 ANOTÁCIA ....................................................................................................................... 68 LITERATURE .................................................................................................................... 70 ATTACHMENTS, 1 ........................................................................................................... 76 5 INTRODUCTION “(…) And many times, when I´m in a pub with friends, drinking beer or so, you know, there are people who come to me asking if they can take a picture. And sometimes they don´t even ask. They just do. Disabled person drinking beer. Now THAT goes on my Facebook!” (from an interview with a wheelchair-user, 24) Wheelchair problem n. 127: When people are surprised how “normal” you are.” (wheelchairproblems.tumblr.com) As quotes above illustrate, the impairment is more than a mere medical condition in the realm of everyday social interactions. It is a sign being read and interpreted, rooted in the web of constantly negotiated cultural meanings, which transcend from the impairment to the person who is believed to have it. People with disabilities are a group which is intensively stereotyped and encounters prejudice complicating their inclusion into “mainstream” non-disabled society. What this means in the realm of social interactions is that, to cite the words of Michael Pickering (2007: 4781), “instead of being considered and treated as particular and distinctive, they are represented simply through their category assignment and the essentialized and naturalized attribute this is made to carry.” Although socialized human being always works with a set of mental schemas and preconceptions, stereotyped views differ from the usual cognitive maps we create about the world in their resistance to flexibility and change. Stereotypes arise when our assumptions become rigid, not easily modified or updated as our lives develop and move on (Pickering 2007). People with disabilities face both positive and negative kinds of stereotyped expectations, being idealized as well as demonized and afraid of. Although the particular form and content of these perceptions evolve in time and in conjunction with broader ideologies and belief systems; physical, sensorial and psychological impairments continue to inspire judgments transcending the biological sphere and frequently result in cultural myths and social stigmatization. Interestingly enough, 6 person with disability can be a stranger inside the borders of her very own group, be that the one of gender, race, class, sexual orientation or professional affiliation, or even all those combined. There is probably no other person, who could share all these characteristics with us, vote for the same political party, prefer the same television shows, live in the same neighborhood and up to the same values, and still put us in unease when we meet her, not being sure how to react - or, when being sure, be wrong about it. In many occasions, impairment becomes what Erving Goffman (2003) referred to as a “master status,” a decisive element based on which a person is judged in social interactions. Biological difference or medically diagnosed abnormality tends to overshadow the rest of the directly observable social attributes of a person, becoming a filter through which we process and form our expectations about the person in case. Interpretation of his acts and personal features may be influenced by the same principle. We can paraphrase an athlete with disability cited by Goffman (2003: 25): If an able-bodied stumbles and falls, it can be for a variety of reasons.
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