Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media, and Politics discusses the influence of the increasing use of digital technologies on media and political responses to poverty in the United Kingdom and Canada. Considering poverty politics at symbolic and structural levels, Joanna Redden uses a frame analysis of mainstream and alternative news content to identify which narratives dominate poverty coverage, what is missing from mainstream news coverage, and what can be learned by looking at alternative sources of news and information. The Mediation of Poverty argues that news coverage privileges and embeds neoliberal approaches to the issue of poverty in Canada and the United Kingdom. Interviews with journalists, politicians, researchers, and activists enable discussion, on a micro level, of the changing nature of news, politics, and activism, and how these changes influences poverty politics. Redden raises concerns about how the speed of digitally-mediated working environments is reshaping--even foreclosing--opportunities for communication, reflection, and contestation in a way that reinforces the dominance of market-based thinking, and limits political responses to poverty.
Synopsis
The Mediation of Poverty examines the impact of digital technologies on poverty politics in Canada and the United Kingdom. As the first transnational comparison of poverty coverage, this book provides several research contributions, including an inside account of how digital technologies are changing media as well as political and activist working practices. The book effectively treats the influence of the neoliberal context on communication processes, specifically as related to poverty politics.