Construction of social problems in mass media and people representations (with special reference to poverty)

Abstract

The results of empirical study aimed at comparison of poverty interpretations within the social representations of poor people and treatment of this phenomenon in newspaper (Argumenty i Facty) publications are presented in the article. The content of mass media discourse on poverty is found to be different from that of representations in subjects under study. In subjects’ representations, the assessments of poverty risks important for the subjects and their social group prevail, moral modality of poverty representations and negative emotional experience are expressed. In Argumenty i Facty publications, such information policy methods as deproblematization of negative feelings of the poor, lessening difficulties of struggle with poverty and attribution of responsibility for crime rate growth to the poor prevail.