Negative to the extreme: the problematics of the RNIB’s See the Need campaign

Abstract

This article reports the findings of research about the RNIB’s recent advertising campaign. Under the methodological rubric of Critical Discourse Analysis, two paradigms were applied as research instruments: an advertising aesthetic was used in the primary analysis; and the tripartite model of disability was used in the secondary analysis. This analysis of various texts culminated in the conclusion that the RNIB’s campaign is fundamentally contradictory, in danger of contributing to problematic social attitudes and thus hindering the very people it sets out to help – an issue greatly complicated by the organisational involvement of people registered as blind and partially sighted.

Keywords:

• Blindness
• tripartite model of disability
• charity
• RNIB
• advertising
• petition comments

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to everyone who has contributed to the work of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, especially my ever-loving partner, Heidi Mapley; my Support Worker, Pippa Leddra; and Head of the Department of Disability and Education, Dr Claire Penketh.

Notes

1. Bradbury Fields is an organisation that provide services for people who are registered as blind or partially sighted in the Merseyside area of the United Kingdom.

2. Disability Now is a magazine for disabled people published in the United Kingdom by the charity Scope.

3. Such methodological work on using online petitions in secondary analysis is particularly relevant here but some interesting research also has been done in less obviously related areas. Critical discourse analysis has been applied productively in, for instance, research on the comments elicited by YouTube videos (Kennedy 2010). Posting comments on the news, moreover, has been described as ‘one of the most popular forms of user participation in online newspapers’, although the full potential ‘arises only when several users participate in commenting and when their communication becomes interactive’ (Weber 2014, 941).

4. Note that, while I started the petition, the comments considered in the secondary analysis are exclusively those of other signatories.