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Literature Review - Coggle Diagram
Literature Review
Media Literature
Agenda-Setting Theory
- Jordan uses the media to educate and inform society of what is happening around the country.
- Jordanian media invoke emotions out of their audiences by focusing on the dominant themes of victim and hero.
- Argued that instead of benefiting the Jordanian society as gatekeepers of information, the Jordanian media are benefiting their own agendas and pockets by focusing on the relationship between the emphasis that the mass media place on issues and the importance that the media audiences attribute to those issues.
- Maxwell McCombs & David Shaw: the media does not tell us what attitudes or opinions we should have and do not set out to engineer public opinion, but they do tell us which issues we should be focusing on.
- Walter Lippmann: the media's agenda sets out the public's agenda as the degree of emphasis placed on issues in the mass media influences the priority accorded these issues by the public.
- McCombs & Shaw: object and subject of a story in which the public will talk about are important for the agenda-setting process.
- The Jordanian media disseminates news on disability to feed their own agendas to gain more revenue and clickbait. This poses a threat as they forget to focus on their duty as gatekeepers of information and educate the public.
- Kurt Lang & Gladys Lang: mass media force attention on certain issues and are constantly presenting objects suggestion what individuals in the mass should think about.
- Akiba Cohen, Hanna Adoni & Charles Batz: psychological proximity relates to the zones of relevance people have when determining the relevance or importance of news to their lives. This also relates to journalists' decisions in the news selection process.
- Christiane Elders: relating to proximity and newsworthiness of a story the journalist possesses a cognitive catalogue of criteria that make events more or less newsworthy. Journalists use proximity as part of the catalogue to see whether a story is relevant to their audience's lives.
- Kate Scott: journalists will use this clickbait strategy to arouse curiosity of their readers. The Jordanian media know their audience as they are part of that audience (Jordanian society) and thus know what type of content will gain more attention.
- Rodgers Brubaker: the assumption that people are receiving a common media agenda, and thus acquiring a common public agenda is questionable in a new media world.
- McCombs: with the emergence of digital media, there is no indication of how clicks, shares and likes on different mediums will have an impact on agenda-setting.
Media Effects Theory
- The media has the power to affect perceptions of specific narratives, events and characters during exposure.
- The Jordanian media's focus on representing PWDs under the dominant themes, they are affecting society's emotions, thoughts, ideologies by suggesting that the only way to think and perceive PWDs is as victims and heroes and not citizens with human rights,
- Porismina Borah: theory that explains how the mass media influence the attitudes and perceptions of audience members.
- James Potter: a change in an outcome within a person or social entity that is due to mass media influence following exposure to a mass media message or series of messages.
- Considering disability representation in the media, the media triggers specific emotions, attitudes and actions resulting in Jordanians engaging with PWDs in a pitiful, charitable, or inspirational way.
- Jordanian media uses persuasion.
- Norbert Seel describes persuasion as the act or procedure that has the potential to change the mind and attitudes of someone.
- Carl Hovland: coined the term persuasion states that attitude is first an individual's response to communication of messages of varying degrees of persuasion.
- The media can alter and change a person's attitude to a certain topic depending on the persuasive message.
- The question stands on how much does the media affect its audiences?
- Richard Reeves & Robert de Vries: the media has the power to persuade people to change user's attitudes when they are exposed to different media messages.
- Joseph Kiapper: the media has minimal effects on attitudes in conversational settings.
- Pippa Norris: the media does not change attitudes but rather reinforces pre-existing attitudes.
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Framing Theory
- Journalists are the ones who write and choose topics depending on their audiences, including the words being used to construct and frame the story.
- Laura Collins: the act of framing is the process of how things are constructed and perceived through communication and in the context of the media framing is how things are presented wwhen relaying information to others.
- Laura Collins: the media present stories using frames to define situations in alternate ways and create different versions of an event.
- The Jordanian media focus on disseminating news that will engage its target audience. Framing does this by using words, phrases, images, and presentation styles to represent people, events etc such as through the different language like repetition or evocative description.
- Laura Collins: using framing when writing and constructing stories, the media can pose a threat to audiences. The media is not a factual representation of reality but rather a biased version where those painted favorably became more powerful, and the lesser favorable became weaker.
- The Jordanian media uses framing to influence what information should be disseminated, the way this information should be consumed by its audiences and how these audiences should think about a certain topic.
Disability Literature
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Inspirational Porn
- Disability representation comes in the form of stereotypical misguided public perception and also many deception in the media that generate and perpetuate limiting assumptions of what persons with disabilities can accomplish.
- Stella Young: an image of a disabled, often a kid, doing something ordinary like playing, running, talking, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball with a caption attached saying 'before you quit, try'.
- Jan Grue: the purpose of inspirational porn is based on glorifying aesthetic attitudes towards its subjects and their physical prowess, and partly by its exhortatory attitudes towards its viewer.
- Manipulate audiences i.e. non-disabled people.
- Makes disabled people objects for viewing not successes whether big or small.
- People with visual impairments and physical disabilities are the target of inspirational porn.
- Jan Grue states there are two types of inspirational porn:
1) Fantasy porn: an act that can be desired, yet it is impossible to happen in real life. PWD or PWI becomes 'representational fantasy'.
2) When non-disabled people use content featuring PWDs as 'psychological funhouse mirror': PWDs and PWIs are objectified by non-disabled people for doing 'normal tasks' so they can feel better about themselves.
- Inspirational porn comes in the form of images and language on social media.
- Critics believe that inspirational porn has connections with the social, medical and cultural models of disability.
- Inspirational Porn objectifies and glorifies the physicality of PWDs and PWIs. This results in unrealistic expectations of the abilities of PWDs and PWIs.
- David Mitchell & Sharon Snyder: disability lends itself to a character differentiating it from the norm. This adds to the unrealistic expectations but also can add motivations to a person's character.
- Mitchell and Snyder align with Young's view that inspirational porn can devalue and degrade PWDs and PWIs by objectifying or glorifying them.
- Inspirational porn uses an 'optimistic device' - the PWD and PWI - to represent an optimistic or positive narrative. This affects the way PWDs and PWIs are engaged with and understood.
- Critics argue whether this is inspirational, empowering, or dangerous for PWDs and PWIs. While having a label helps PWDs identities, inspirational porn declines to highlight the unpleasantness of disability.
- Peter Conrad: problematic as it showcases obstacles as overcoming physical challenges attracting stereotypes. It is hard to portray disability in a positive way without objectifying disablity.
- John Swain & Sally French: affirmation model of disability as a pathway to presenting positive identities for disability.
- Two problems emerge:
1) There is no concrete perimeters for what is positive representation of PWDs.
- Mitchell & Snyder: there will always be the risk of shifting towards glorifying PWDs even when done intentionally.
2) While the affirmation model portrays disability positively, disability and impairments are perceived negatively by disabled people.
- Lennard Davis: people are capable of different things and so if non-disabled people are capable of doing things so do disabled people.
- Inspirational porn gives the illusion that PWDs can achieve the impossible.
Supercrip
- Heroic imagery of PWDs is attributed to being represented as heroic by virtue of his or her ability to perform feats normally considered not possible for people with disabilities.
- Ronald Berger: happens to those who have inspirational stories of courage, dedication and hard work who prove that it can be done that one can defy the odds and accomplish the impossible.
- PWDs are labelled as superhero or super-human.
- The Jordanian media objectifies PWDs in their success stories.
- Tobin Siebers: the media masquerades disability for the benefit of the able-bodied viewer. Here the image of the disabled hero is exaggerated and the masquerade is done to tell a story. This causes the viewer to see disability as supernatural.
- Due to the low expectations society has of PWDs and PWIs, positive praise becomes counterproductive.
- Jenny Morris: supercrip narratives can be an expression of society's low-level expectation placed upon people with disabilities which undermines their existence and poses a problem.
- Silva & Howe: supercrip lends itself to stereotypical narratives as PWDs get praised by non-disabled for completing normal tasks.
- Rodger Berger: these success stories will foster unrealistic expectations of what persons with disabilities can do and what they should be able to achieve if only they tried harder.
- Baseline for cultural understandability hence people stem away from what is different or abnormal.
- Tobin Siebers: use of language magnifies differences and undervalues similarities hence disabled people become the other, the freak, the exotic.
- James Charlton: supercrip is dangerous as PWDs are judged through the traditional views of able-bodied people. If a PWD has succeeded or had a good life, the person is seen as brave or courageous or special or brilliant.
Oppression Theory
- Internalized oppression in a society occurs when an individual within a marginalized group in society internalize the prejudices held by the dominant group.
- Differences can cause people to be oppressed in society.
Oppression occurs to PWDs on a subconscious level affecting their self-esteem.
- Deborah Marks: connection between oppression theory and models of disability.
- Valerie Sinason: non-disabled people living in oppressed societies feel guilty for being 'normal' in front of PWDs resulting in an attempt to disguise differences.
- PWDs are not regarded as equal human beings.
- Michelline Masori: we all encounter some form of oppression.
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Models of Disability:
- The models of disability were used as markers to understand what constitutes as representation and which representations are evident in the media in Jordan.
- These were then used when designing my research as they become the building blocks used to create the categories which representation fell under when analyzing the different news stories and Facebook comments relating to this research.
- These were used to analyze the language, terminology and underlying meaning behind representations to help decipher which representations are dominant in Jordan.
- The literature also aids in understanding the reason behind the Jordanian media representation of PWDs as either victim or hero. The main reason that emerges with these models reverts back to cultural and societal factors which was evident in interviews and focus group testimonies.
Theoretical Framework
- My research acknowledges that the models of disability are present in Jordanian society and the media's representation of PWDs and fall under both victim and hero themes. Since there was no literature on how to conduct content analysis on Facebook comments only Twitter, I had to create my own codes using the models for reference in order to decipher which words, language, terms, scope of thinking, meaning behind the whole comment related to the dominant themes.
- Other disability literature and tropes were analyzed and used to further understand the different disability representation in Jordanian media and analyze different Facebook comments under the news stories representing PWDs.
- While I hope my research helps bridge that gap, it showcases that disability needs to be a priority for the media's agenda which, my research emirates is not the case.
- It is evident that the social model of disability is the most dominant model of disability in Jordan when it implicates that society imposes disability on the person by excluding them through the environment that they are in, It does not specify the perimeters of that environment. It brings to light how the social model does not focus on culture, society, or family dynamics. These are evident in Jordan as not only are lack of accommodations, ramps, accessible bathrooms affecting PWDs but, it is also family dynamics that can exclude PWDs from society as in Jordan as mentioned in the historical context families hide PWDs out of fear of bringing shame to the family name but also from societal exclusion.
- My research aligns with McCombs and Shaw's agenda-setting theory as the Jordanian media does this by setting the public's agenda with a huge focus on their own agenda i.e. higher audience engagement, clickbait and revenue.
- While my research agrees with Borah's definition of the media effects theory when it comes to the Jordanian media's influence when it comes to disability, it challenges Seel's argument that the media can affect mindsets and attitudes. This links back to the Jordanian culture and its perception of disability and the lack of education on the topic in the country.
- My research acknowledges that the Jordanian media does affect the Jordanian society's attitudes, emotions, thoughts and perceptions when it comes to disability representation. However, it poses the question of to what extent is this effect and agrees with Pippa Norris' argument about the media enforcing pre-existing attitudes such as that of the culture's perceptions of disability.
- Research aligns with what the audience engagement theory states about audiences engaging with the content the media disseminates and this is evidenced in the data I have collected on media's representation of PWDs in Jordan. This theory has a significant impact in understanding how the Jordanian society reacts towards disability content shared by the media.
- Research aligns with Neelam Dey's assertion that the media has the power to shape societal norms in regards to disability as they derive from the society they disseminate the news to and due to this bring their ideologies into the newsroom with them.
- Research aligns with Laura Collin's argument that the media use framing to disseminate news with the use of framing. The Jordanian media accomplish this by using certain words, phrases and presentation styles to represent different people, events such as with disability representation.
Gaps in Literature:
- There is a gap in the literature on how the media affects its audiences relating to disability representation. More research needs to be done by Jordanian researchers on how they feel the media is affecting their emotions, thoughts, perceptions and ideologies.
- My research also points to a gap in the literature. While analyzing this literature, it surprised me how there were little to no theorists from the MENA region that researched on disability representation in the media. This research gives a nudge to the MENA region that disability is an important research field that needs to be prioritized,
- Another gap that is seen in the literature is the coalition between culture and disability representation. It poses the question of whether there is a cultural model of disability where PWDs are represented under the perimeters of culture and societal factors.
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