Dr Jessica Begon jessica.e.begon@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Dr Jessica Begon jessica.e.begon@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Carl Fox
Editor
Joe Saunders
Editor
Media representations of disabled people are rare, and those that do exist are grounded in stereotypes, often falling into one of two standard narratives: tragic victim or inspirational Supercrip. The influence of such media representations on both outsider perception of disability and disabled individuals’ self-conceptions means the unbalanced portrayals of disability are surely harmful. But is this sufficient to show that the media has a duty to do better? I argue that it does, but that this cannot be grounded in the impact on disabled individuals’ well-being. Rather, we must show how current representations of disability constitute, or contribute to, their unjust treatment – and specifically, here, to epistemic forms of injustice. Media producers are, I argue, responsible for failing to give appropriate credibility to disabled individuals’ testimony and for not working to rectify their wilful hermeneutic ignorance by listening to disabled individual’s own understandings of their lives and circumstances. Further, by maintaining stereotypes of disabled individuals as lacking the competence or sincerity to be credible, and of disability as nothing but a tragedy, they further contribute to disabled individual’s epistemic exclusion in wider society. Ultimately, my goal is not to propose a new model of disability representation, but to show that the widely-articulated demand for disabled people to be visible in the public sphere as “’regular’ people performing ‘regular’ tasks” (Kama 2004: 462) is a demand of justice. As such, it is not one the media can choose to ignore
Begon, J. (2023). Tragedy and Inspiration: The Epistemic Injustice of Stereotypical Media Representations of Disability. In C. Fox, & J. Saunders (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Media Ethics. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003134749-24
Online Publication Date | Nov 13, 2024 |
---|---|
Publication Date | Nov 13, 2023 |
Deposit Date | Jan 4, 2024 |
Publicly Available Date | May 14, 2025 |
Publisher | Routledge |
Book Title | Routledge Handbook of Media Ethics |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003134749-24 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1730690 |
Publisher URL | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003134749-24/tragedy-inspiration-jessica-begon |
Contract Date | May 2, 2022 |
This file is under embargo until May 14, 2025 due to copyright restrictions.
Disability Through the Lens of Justice
(2023)
Book
Disability: a justice-based account
(2020)
Journal Article
Sexual Perversion: A Liberal Account
(2019)
Journal Article
Disability, Rationality, and Justice: Disambiguating Adaptive Preferences
(2018)
Book Chapter
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2025
Advanced Search