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This study aims to analyze and assess 21 years of media coverage (2000–2020) of Flix, a small industrial village located in an rural area on north-eastern Spain, which has endured in these years a severe environmental and industrial crisis, with a strong potential for stigmatization of the place.

The research is conceptualized under the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, a theoretical/conceptual approach aimed at accounting for the huge gaps that often arise between public perception of technological or environmental risks of some technologies, products and places and the expert estimations of these risks. The authors studied the coverage on Flix by a local, a regional and a national newspaper through a content analysis where the corpus (1,524 news pieces) was coded for several variables, including tone, genre and thematic area.

The studied coverage was in general overwhelmingly negative and strongly focused on “bad news” relating to pollution and deindustrialization, although this was much less the case in the local newspaper than in the regional and, in particular, the national newspaper. Thus, a territorially escalated pattern clearly emerges from our research concerning the stigmatization potential of news media coverage for the specific case under scrutiny.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time such a longitudinal study of media coverage and its potential for place stigmatization is performed with this specific territorial perspective.

In this chapter, I focus on stigmatization exercised and experienced by local residents, comparing two socially-diverse areas in very different contexts: the Cabrini Green-Near North area in Chicago and the La Loma-La Florida area in Santiago de Chile.

Data for this study were drawn from 1 year of qualitative research, using interviews with residents and institutional actors, field notes from observation sessions of several inter-group spaces, and “spatial inventories” in which I located the traces of the symbolic presence of each group.

Despite contextual differences of type of social differentiation, type of social mix, type of housing tenure for the poor, and public visibility, I argue that there are important common problems: first, symbolic differences are stressed by identity changes; second, distrust against “the other” is spatially crystallized in any type and scale of social housing; third, stigmatization changes in form and scale; and fourth, there are persisting prejudiced depictions and patterns of avoidance.

Socially-mixed neighborhoods, as areas where at least two different social groups live in proximity, offer an interesting context for observing territorial stigmatization. They are strange creatures of urban development, due to the powerful symbolism of desegregation in contexts of growing inequalities.

The chapter contributes to a cross-national perspective with a comparison of global-north and global-south cities. And it also springs from a study of socially-mixed areas, in which the debate on concentrated/deconcentrated poverty is central, and in which the problem of “clearing places” appears in both material (e.g., displacement) and symbolic (e.g., stigmatization) terms.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how two kinds of UK-based media positioned investment banking as dirty work during the financial crisis, thereby engaging in moral enterprise (Becker, 1963) and contributing to the shaping of society's normative contours (Cohen, 1972).

The authors employ rhetorical analysis to explore how newspaper editorials and an online blog portray investment banking as tainted between April 2008 and October 2009.

These media sources construct the values and behaviours of investment bankers, rather than the tasks of their occupation, as morally tainted. Through specific rhetorical strategies the authors advance three key arguments: bankers are morally tainted because their wealth is excessive; because their wealth is not earned; and because they are selfish and materialist.

In investigating media designations of investment banking as dirty work, the paper addresses two aspects of dirty work which are underexplored. First, it examines a high-prestige occupation and second, investigates the construction and attribution of taint to a previously untainted occupation. It makes two methodological contributions to the literature: contributing to the nascent interest in the media's construction of dirty work (e.g. Grandy and Mavin, 2012); and using rhetorical analysis to study the construction of taint.

Purpose – This chapter examines the problem of belonging for Muslims in the United States in a political environment where Muslims are increasingly represented as a threatening ‘other’ by conservative politicians and right-wing media. The goal is to demonstrate how an emotionally charged event, the murder of three middle class Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2015, was taken up by the media in ways that reflected sharply contested political agendas and constituted divergent stories and biographies of belonging and stigmatization for the victims, their families and the broader Muslim community.

Approach – The research draws on a wide range of media representations of the murder, including local, national and international news sources and social networking sites. The analysis is based on close readings of this range of stories.

Social Implications – The analysis demonstrates that this murder drew widespread attention in the Muslim community because these particular victims readily became representative of a Muslim ‘model minority’. Despite the ambivalence associated with belonging on such terms, the families and Muslim community used the stories of these murder victims to speak out against negative stereotypes and to remind the American public of the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric.

Originality – The chapter takes an original approach to the problem of belonging by tracing in detail how a single event can generate divergent stories that mark their narrators as belonging in ways that are contested by others, vividly demonstrating the process of différance articulated by Derrida.

Malta is a small, densely populated, and dominantly Catholic island republic not too far off the North-African coast. Before 2002, Malta never had to deal with many irregular immigrants. Nevertheless, negative stigmas toward “southerners” were pre-existent and seemed to have been around for centuries. This stigmatization was caused by a historical identification of the self of Maltese citizens as Christian Europeans. By 2002, irregular migration patterns changed and thousands of African irregular immigrants started arriving by boat every year. Keeping in mind the smallness of the island, this had a considerable impact on its ethnographic landscape. Pre-existing stigmas strongly persisted, additional stigmas were created, and many supposed inconveniences were fabricated by the Maltese citizenry. The title “outsiders as invaders” is quoted from an interview with a Maltese expert on irregular migration. This brings attention to the fact that stigmatized persons who are living in Malta are still regularly demonized and seen as “the others” by mainstream society. Even today barely any effort is made by Maltese society, institutions, or even its government to support integration and acceptance of non-European outsiders.

Taking an intersectional approach, this chapter makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of mothers’ movements in the context of social welfare cutbacks in Israel. I argue that the political use of the maternal identity provides an important cultural resource to women’s social movements, yet all women cannot access this advantage equally. By adding an intersectional perspective to the literature on women’s movements and media debates, this empirical study shows that the ability of different groups of women to politically mobilize their maternal identity in the news is impacted by their class and racial backgrounds. I focus on Israel as an ambiguous case that reflects both the political relevance of maternal identity as mobilized by different political actors, as well as the intersectional dynamics of marginalization of women’s movements within contentious media debates about austerity policies. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed 268 newspaper articles that discuss the Israeli Single Mothers’ Movement, a welfare rights movement of low-income women of color (Mizrahi). I find two competing frames converging across the newspapers analyzed: the first draws on a nationalist discourse of the “mother of the nation” to present a positive image of a heroic “mothers’ movement”; the second draws on racist and sexist images to negatively frame activists as a “Mizrahi movement” of undeserving poor mothers. I show how the contested construction of the Single Mothers’ Movement in the news media is directly connected to hegemonic Israeli discourse on motherhood and ethnicity, and demonstrate how this shapes the movement’s public image and its political and feminist value.

This article aims to focus on deaths by suicide in relation to UK welfare reform as a case study to question one of suicidology’s most dominant theories – the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (Joiner, 2005) and its influential ideas on “perceived burdensomeness” – as well as wider ideologies on suicide and mental health reflected in this approach.

This article draws on evidence from disabled people’s campaigning groups (primary sources) and research literature (secondary sources), which shows the negative psychological impact of burden discourse and how this shows up in people’s accounts of feeling suicidal, in suicide notes and in family accounts of those who have died by suicide. It uses this evidence to problematise the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (Joiner, 2005), specifically its ideas about “burden” as an individual misperception, and the assumption that suicide is always the outcome of mental health problems.

The findings highlight the systemic, intersectional and cumulative production of suicidality by governmental “welfare reform” in the UK, through positioning welfare claimants as “burdens” on society. They show that by locating the problem of burdensomeness in individual “misperceptions”, the Interpersonal Theory allows the government’s role in crafting stigmatisation and conditions of suicidality to be overlooked and to be reproduced.

The article raises urgent ethical questions about the application of approaches, such as the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide, to benefits-related suicides and calls for approaches to benefits-related harm and suicide to be rooted in social and disability justice.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that there was a need for a psychometric measure to assess attitudes specifically towards offenders with mental health problems. The “Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill” scale (CAMI; Taylor and Dear, 1981) was adapted to create a new psychometric measure; the “Police and Community Attitudes towards Offenders with Mental Illness” scale (PACAMI-O).

A sample of police and community participants (n=178) completed this scale through the online surveying system, Psychdata. The new psychometric measure utilised the same 40 items featured in the CAMI; although, the wording was adapted.

The internal reliability for the combined sample was high (α=0.929), which implied very good internal reliability. An exploratory factor analysis identified four new factors: Self-Preservation, Societal Reservation, Mental Health Awareness and Treatment Ideology. A t-test revealed there was a significant difference between the scores of the police and community sample, with the effect size depicting a large magnitude between the means (t(176)=p=0.019, η2=0.16).

The PACAMI-O scale appears adequate for measuring attitudes towards its targeted sample and has shown utility with; a professional group (police officers and custody sergeants) who potentially face such offenders (primarily in the context of using Section 136 of the Mental Health Act). It therefore has practical implications in assessing attitudes with other groups within forensic mental health.

Assessing attitudes towards offenders with mental health problems would enable a better understanding of the formation of negative attitudes and stigmatisation and therefore, ways of tackling treatment, rehabilitation and also community reintegration.

The SMILE study (social media as informal support for people with mental illness: an exploratory study) aimed to explore how people with mental health issues use and value social media as a support mechanism.

A systematic search of Facebook and Twitter identified groups and pages relating to mental health issues. In total, 203 users over the age of 18 were recruited via Facebook and Twitter. Any user who considered themselves to experience mental health problems could opt to participate and no exclusion criteria were applied. A mixed-methods online survey retrieved demographic and qualitative data by asking users to describe their personal experiences when using social media for mental health support.

Users perceive Facebook and Twitter as useful online resources to gain informational and emotional support and to share experiences. The benefits were; ease of access, anonymity and personal control over engagement levels. Users had subjective experiences of engagement, however, overall these were deemed positive. Using Facebook and Twitter for mental health provided users with a sense of connectedness and reduced feelings of isolation.

The qualitative methodology allowed participants to share their experiences and views, with positive implications for services. Social media was discussed as a prospective tool for raising awareness and reducing stigma. The study highlights the scope for mental health service providers to tap into the social media consumer market and provide quality online support provision.

The purpose of this paper, a set of two studies, is to elaborate on the concept of scansis and its effects upon crisis communication theory and practice. A scansis represents the intersection of a scandal and crisis, essentially when a crisis becomes a scandal. A new term was created due to the varied ways in which the term scandal is used and misused. The effects of scansis on crisis communication are examined through two studies. A scansis is unique because it creates moral outrage and is a function of a perception of injustice coupled with greed.

Experimental design is used in both studies to test for the effects of specific crisis response strategies used during a scansis. The crisis response strategies were manipulated to determine whether or not corrective action with moral recognition is more effective at helping organizations during a crisis than those crisis response strategies that do not contain a moral component.

The two studies found no short-term effect for crisis responses during scansis. This included no difference between corrective action with moral recognition and the other three response conditions for the short-term factors of organizational reputation, negative word-of-mouth intentions, purchase intentions and anger. However, Study 2 found that corrective action with moral recognition was perceived as the most empathetic response and created the lowest levels of moral outrage. The authors postulate that corrective action with moral recognition has a long-term effect after a scansis by creating a positive response that moves organizations away from being stigmatized.

The results raise questions about the current configuration of the intentional crisis cluster articulated in situational crisis communication theory (SCCT). When just consider assessments crisis responsibility, a scansis would be part of the preventable crisis cluster. However, the evaluation of justice and greed suggest a scansis may be a unique crisis type that does not fit within the intentional crisis cluster and the prescribed short-term effects of crisis response strategies recommend by SCCT. The scansis establishes a boundary condition for the limits of crisis response strategies on short-term effects such as reputation and purchase intention. These findings require us to rethink elements of current crisis communication theory.

The lack of short-term benefits should not be an argument for abandoning accommodative crisis response strategies. Practitioners need to realize the limits of crisis response strategies for creating short-term benefits and think about the potential long-term benefits offered by crisis response strategies.

Scansis is a new concept for crisis communication and provides a link between the crisis communication and organizational stigma literatures. The two studies are the first attempts to empirically examine scansis and opens new avenues of thinking and research for crisis communication and organizational stigma researchers.