Description
| Product ID: | 9781786992147 |
| Product Form: | Hardback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | Scroungers |
| Subtitle: | Moral Panics and Media Myths |
| Authors: | Author: James Morrison |
| Page Count: | 332 |
| Subjects: | Media studies, Media studies, Poverty and precarity, Sociology, Welfare and benefit systems, News media and journalism, Poverty & unemployment, Sociology, Welfare & benefit systems, Press & journalism |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating An examination of the disturbing rise of 'scrounger-phobia' in the media and society at large, and how this has fuelled popular hostility towards benefit claimants. Scroungers, spongers, parasites …These are just are some of the terms that are typically used, with increasing frequency, to describe the most vulnerable in our society, whether they be the sick, the disabled, or the unemployed. Long a popular scapegoat for all manner of social ills, under austerity we’ve seen hostility towards benefit claimants reach new levels of hysteria, with the ‘undeserving poor’ blamed for everything from crime to even rising levels of child abuse.While the tabloid press has played its role in fuelling this hysteria, the proliferation of social media has added a disturbing new dimension to this process, spreading and reinforcing scare stories, while normalising the perception of poverty as a form of ‘deviancy’ that runs contrary to the neoliberal agenda. Provocative and illuminating, Scroungers explores and analyses the ways in which the poor are portrayed both in print and online, placing these attitudes in a wider breakdown of social trust and community cohesion. |
| Imprint Name: | Zed Books Ltd |
| Publisher Name: | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2019-02-15 |
