Media Representations of Poverty

Abstract

The subject of the article revolves around the media-created images of the social inequalities, determining the positions of individuals in the social structure —to be more precise — focuses on the media representations of the poor. Important questions emerged as to which conceptual network should be used with reference to the poor? The author examines the media coverage (Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza) of the issue of “defective consumers” (according to the proposal by Zygmunt Bauman) against the media representations of the “social normals” who stabilises the socio-political system, but also conservative behaviours. Are the rich consumers, “the winners” overrepresented in the media, as an example to follow? Does a discursive strategy that stigmatised poverty dominate the pages of the most popular Polish daily newspapers. Generally speaking, the discourse on consumers of unequal status was diversified depending on the ideological orientation of the journalists in a given medium. It happened that poor people were presented as “the ones to blame for their own situation” and unlawfully receiving social benefits or as treated unfairly by external circumstances. The macrostructural area of the differences in the discourse on the poverty was also determined on the ideological axis of interventionism (conservatism) versus liberalism.