Mediation of Poverty

The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media, and Politics discusses the influence of the increasing use of digital technologies on media and political responses to poverty in the United Kingdom and Canada. Considering poverty politics at symbolic and structural levels, Joanna Redden uses a frame analysis of mainstream and alternative news content to identify which narratives dominate poverty coverage, what is missing from mainstream news coverage, and what can be learned by looking at alternative sources of news and information. The Mediation of Poverty argues that news coverage privileges and embeds neoliberal approaches to the issue of poverty in Canada and the United Kingdom. Interviews with journalists, politicians, researchers, and activists enable discussion, on a micro level, of the changing nature of news, politics, and activism, and how these changes influences poverty politics. Redden raises concerns about how the speed of digitally-mediated working environments is reshaping—even foreclosing—opportunities for communication, reflection, and contestation in a way that reinforces the dominance of market-based thinking, and limits political responses to poverty.

The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media and Politics by Joanna Redden offers a study of how digital technology in Britain and Canada impacts news coverage of poverty issues. Redden uses a frame analysis of mainstream and alternative news content to identify which narratives dominate poverty coverage, what is missing from mainstream news coverage, and what can be learned by looking at alternative sources of news and information. She argues that news coverage favors 'neoliberal' approaches to poverty in both nations. Her interviews with journalists, politicians, researchers, and social activists support a discussion of the changing nature of news, politics, and activism, and how this mix influences 'poverty politics.' She raises concerns about how the pace of digital working environments (and deadline-driven news) impacts reasoned consideration in a way that reinforces dominant market-based thinking, thus limiting the range of political responses to dealing with poverty., This book helps to explain how the neo-liberal ascendancy is being maintained despite mass unemployment. It shows that the media tend to explain poverty in terms of individual responsibility rather than structural cause, and to discuss its relief in terms of public cost rather than social justice. Neither the internet nor new social movements have been able to dislodge, so far, this ‘common sense’ understanding . This is a book for our times, written by a rising young star among media scholars., The Mediation of Poverty is a rich empirical study, a substantial contribution to the growing comparative literature in media studies. Not least of the book's contributions is further evidence of the importance of 'alternative' media to diversifying public policy discourse. Joanna Redden extends the tradition of critical media analysis into the new media environment, bringing with her a healthy dose of skepticism about the Internet's impact on the quality of journalism. She has produced a key reading for anyone interested in the journalism of poverty, the poverty of journalism, and the prospects for democratic change in media and politics.

Joanna Redden is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Infoscape Research Lab, Ryerson University.