This book tells the stories of disabled people who have been influential in creating modern mass media. Through the voices of key disabled media makers and collaborators, the author highlights the ways in which their contributions are changing society’s understanding of disability and shaping mass media and culture. Spanning a range of media formats – television/streaming productions, performances, podcasts, TED Talks, films, reality TV, graphic novels, and social media channels – the book illustrates how disabled people are confronting the marginalization they have faced in mass media for decades. Modern disabled media creators are leveraging new media platforms to recognize the lived experiences of disability and their authentic place in media culture. This innovative and thought-provoking volume will be an important read for scholars, disability advocates, and students of Disability Studies, Mass Communication/Media Studies, as well as mass media production faculty, disabled people, and their allies The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Advertising Disability invites Cultural Disability Studies to consider how advertising, as one of the most ubiquitous forms of popular culture, shapes attitudes towards disability. The research presented in the book provides a much-needed examination of the ways in which disability and mental health issues are depicted in different types of advertising, including charity 'sadvertisements', direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements and 'pro-diversity' brand campaigns. Textual analyses of advertisements from the eighteenth century onwards reveal how advertising reinforces barriers facing disabled people, such as stigmatising attitudes, ableist beauty 'ideals', inclusionism and the unstable crutch of charity. As well as investigating how socio-cultural meanings associated with disability are influenced by multimodal forms of communication in advertising, insights from empirical research conducted with disabled women in the United Kingdom and the United States are provided. Moving beyond traditional textual approaches to analysing cultural representations, the book emphasises how disabled people and activists develop counternarratives informed by their personal experiences of disability, challenging ableist messages promoted by advertisements. From start to finish, activist concepts developed by the Disabled People's Movement and individuals' embodied knowledge surrounding disability, impairments and mental health issues inform critiques of advertisements. Its critically informed approach to analysing portrayals of disability is relevant to advertisers, scholars and students in advertising studies and media studies who are interested in portraying diversity in marketing and promotional materials as well as scholars and students of disability studies and sociology more broadly.

Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality explores how journalists from historically marginalized groups have long felt pressure to conform when performing for audiences. Many speak with a flat, “neutral” accent, modify their delivery to hide distinctive vocal attributes, dress conventionally to appeal to the “average” viewer, and maintain a consistent appearance to avoid unwanted attention. Their aim is what author Elia Powers refers to as performance neutrality—presentation that is deemed unobjectionable, reveals little about journalists’ social identity, and supposedly does not detract from their message. Increasingly, journalists are challenging restrictive, purportedly neutral forms of self-presentation. This book argues that performance neutrality is a myth that reinforces the status quo, limits on-air diversity, and hinders efforts to make newsrooms more inclusive. Through in-depth interviews with journalists in broadcasting and podcasting, and those who shape their performance, the author suggests ways to make journalism more inclusive and representative of diverse audiences.

Representation of Disability in Children’s Video Games looks at how children’s engagement with characters and stories in video games helps create the perception of disability they have as teens and adults. Drawing on child development theory supported by neuroscience, the book shows how the scaffold of information, the schema, adults have of disability is first created at a very young age as they interact through game play with characters with disabilities. Positing that early video game play experiences should provide exposure to narrative schemas that add understanding and help create meaning about the disability represented, the book presents how such representation in children’s video games maps against cognitive development, and the psychomotor and cognitive needs and abilities of children ages 3 to 12. Close reading of over 40 PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 (ESRB E, 10+) games and analysis of games as diverse as Backyard Baseball and Sly Cooper helped define broad categories of representation: representation can be cosmetic, providing exposure but not gameplay utility; it can be incidental, used as a device that provides purpose for the narrative; or it can more authentically represent the disability as integral to the character and their life. The book provides readers with an overview of contemporary games that betters their understanding of how children’s games present disability and how children create their perceptions through interaction with characters and stories. This book will be of interest to academics and students of game studies, in particular topics such as behavioural science, ethics, and HCI, as well as sociology, communications, and digital media.

Disability impacts everyone in some way. Approximately 10-20% of the world’s population live with disability, and the associated issues affect not just these individuals but also their friends, family, and colleagues. When looking at it this way, it is strange that disability continues to be thought of as an anomaly—either as a medical problem located in a damaged body or something that exists exclusively outside the body, in a society that takes little account of non-normative bodies. Critical disability studies both questions these existing notions of disability and interrogates how they have become a part of the academic attitude towards the field. As the first comprehensive handbook on critical disability studies, this volume provides an authoritative overview of the subject. Including 32 chapters written by established scholars and emerging, next-generation researchers it also includes contributions from activists, writers, and practitioners from the global north and the global south. Divided into three parts: Representation, art, and culture; Media, technology, and communication; and Activism and the life course, it offers discussions on core critical disability studies topics including the social model, technology studies, trauma studies, representation, and queer theory, as well as ground-breaking work on emerging and cutting-edge areas such as neurodiversity and critical approaches in the Middle East, United States, Australia, and Europe. It is required reading for all academics and students working in not just critical disability studies but sociology, digital accessibility and inclusion, health and social care, and social and public policy more broadly.

The changing pattern of contemporary media is one of the most striking and important transformations of our age. This major new work seeks to understand the implications of a series of mediated processes in relation to public cultures and modern identities. In The Transformation of the Media the author leads the reader through a number of complex theoretical issues, connecting the nature of modern communication to the affects this has on our common moral and ethical lives. Most significantly, he argues that a number of perspectives as diverse as Marxism, post-modernism, liberalism, communitarianism and technological determinism can all be found wanting in this regard. The Transformation of the Media attempts to situate the media, and more theoretical concerns, within a broad sociological framework. The volume adds to our shared understanding of the media's relation to contemporary cultural transformations including globalisation, the development of informational capitalism, the changing nature of the public sphere and the impact of new social movements. More specifically, through a discussion of the 'new media order' and the Rwandan genocide a critical prism is held up to existing debates concerning the globalisation of the media. Key features: an extremely topical and accessible analysis of the media's implications for contemporary cultural transformations combines a theoretical and empirical approach presents complex theoretical ideas in an accessible way This book will be essential reading for students studying globalisation, the global media, new media technology, identity and cultural development in cultural studies, media studies, and sociology and politics courses.

An authoritative and indispensable guide to disability and media, this thoughtfully curated collection features varied and provocative contributions from distinguished scholars globally, alongside next-generation research leaders. Disability and media has emerged as a dynamic and exciting area of contemporary culture and social life. Media–– especially digital technology––play a vital role in disability transformations, with widespread implications for global societies and how we understand communications. This book addresses this development, from representation and audience through technologies, innovations and challenges of the field. Through the varied and global perspectives of leading researchers, writers, and practitioners, including many authors with lived experience of disability, it covers a wide range of traditional, emergent and future media forms and formats. International in scope and orientation, The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media offers students and scholars alike a comprehensive survey of the intersections between disability studies and media studies This book is available as an accessible eBook. For more information, please visit https://taylorandfrancis.com/about/corporate-responsibility/accessibility-at-taylor-francis/.

In an era of rapid technological change, are qualitative researchers taking advantage of new and innovative ways to gather, analyse and share community narratives? Sharing Qualitative Research presents innovative methods for harnessing creative storytelling methodologies and technologies that help to inspire and transform readers and future research. In exploring a range of collaborative and original social research approaches to addressing social problems, this text grapples with the difficulties of working with communities. It also offers strategies for working ethically with narratives, while also challenging traditional, narrower definitions of what constitutes communities. The book is unique in its cross-disciplinary spectrum, community narratives focus and showcase of arts-based and emerging digital technologies for working with communities. A timely collection, it will be of interest to interdisciplinary researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students and practitioners in fields including anthropology, ethnography, cultural studies, community arts, literary studies, social work, health and education.