De Benedictis, S, Allen, K orcid.org/0000-0002-5583-8519 and Jensen, T (2017) Portraying Poverty: The Economics and Ethics of Factual Welfare Television. Cultural Sociology, 11 (3). pp. 337-358. ISSN 1749-9755
Abstract
Since 2013 there has been an explosion of a new genre of factual programming on British television that centres on the everyday lives of people claiming benefits. The emergence of Factual Welfare Television (FWT) has coincided with intensifying public and political debates about poverty and the British welfare state, and has proved a deeply controversial and contested genre. While programme-makers have argued that FWT fulfils a public service mandate to inform audiences, critics have accused producers of making inaccurate, provocative and unethical television. Sociological enquiries into FWT have focused on the representations within these programmes and audience reception, arguing that these contribute to hardening anti-welfare sentiment. This article presents a complementary and urgent line of enquiry into FWT, locating it squarely within the conditions of its production by including questions of cultural labour, diversity in the workforce, and increasing competition and deregulation within broadcasting. We argue that market logics governing broadcasting discipline cultural workers and contribute to the production of reductive and stigmatising representations of social class and poverty. In doing so, we offer new insights into relationships between television production, representation and – consequently – consumption.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017, The Author(s). Published by SAGE Publications. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Cultural Sociology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | austerity; cultural work; cultural production; diversity; factual television; poverty porn; reality television; social class; welfare |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Sociology and Social Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jul 2017 10:06 |
Last Modified: | 13 Jul 2018 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1749975517712132 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:118888 |