Reporting disability in the age of austerity: the changing face of media representation of disability and disabled people in the United Kingdom and the creation of new ‘folk devils’

Abstract

Following its election in 2010 the UK’s Coalition Government has sought to implement radical restructuring of disability-related benefits justified by reference to the financial crises of 2007/08. In this article we examine how these changes have impacted on coverage of disability in the UK media comparing and contrasting coverage of disability in newspapers in 2010/11 with a similar period in 2004/05. Our analysis suggests that disabled people have become a ‘folk devil’ and that there has been a significant change in the way that disability is reported. Newspaper coverage in 2010/11 was less sympathetic and there was an increase in articles that focused on disability benefit and fraud, and an increase in the use of pejorative language to describe disabled people. An audience reception study suggests that this coverage is having an impact on the way that people think about disabled people.

Keywords:

• content analysis
• folk devils
• media representation

Acknowledgements

This research was commissioned by Inclusion London and their financial sponsorship and administrative backing is gratefully recognised. In particular we would like to acknowledge the help and collaborative support of Anne Kane who provided us with very valuable and helpful advice throughout the research.

Notes

1. The changes include tests on people who receive Employment Support Allowance carried out by ATOS (introduced by the previous administration and continued by the current one). The introduction of a ‘Universal Credit’ benefit, the change in indexation of uprating benefits from the higher Retail Price Index to the lower Consumer Price Index, changes to entitlement to Disability Living Allowance and a range of other benefits and service cuts will all impact adversely on disabled people.

2. Duplicates, pictures, stories relating to Republic of Ireland and weekend editions were filtered from the sample, which included news items, features, opinion, reviews, sport, and letters.

3. The political leanings of the papers is based on the party they supported in the last UK General Election.

4. Number of documents after filtering.

6. Numbers in The Guardian were too small for analysis.

5. Interestingly, disability benefit recipiency rates, while high, have remained pretty stable for the United Kingdom since the 1990s, whereas in many countries, including the United States, France and Germany, rates have increased (OECD 2009, 14).