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Press representations of autism and autistic people both reflect and help shape public attitudes towards autism and neurodiversity and may establish critical barriers to social integration for autistic individuals. This study examined such representations in UK newspapers in the period 2011–2020 using a corpus-based approach. It also considered how press representations changed over time and differed with regard to reporting style (tabloids vs broadsheets) and political orientation (left- vs right-leaning). We created the Autism UK Press Corpus, which included all documents (~24K) referring to autism in 10 national newspapers. We used document counts (normalised by newspaper size) to assess the 'newsworthiness' of autism. We also employed a synergy of corpus-based and critical-discourse-analysis methodologies to study lexicogrammatical patterns and uncover explicit and implicit attitudes towards autism. Our results showed that the coverage of autism increased slightly over time, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Newspapers emphasised adversities associated with autism, often used negative language, and tended to focus on boys. These representations shifted gradually towards more difference-based descriptions and included more diverse age/gender groups, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. We discuss the broad implications of these findings for the autism community and those interested in a more inclusive society. Any thriving society must recognise, accept and celebrate all of its diverse talent. But how accepting is British society towards autism and autistic people? This research addressed this question through the lens of the press since the press both reflects and helps shape public attitudes towards various social categories. We used specialised 'corpus-based' methods to carry out a large-scale study, which examined all articles referring to autism or autistic people in 10 national British newspapers in the period 2011–2020. We first investigated how often newspapers referred to autism. We found that the coverage of autism increased slightly over the years, suggesting that autism was becoming an increasingly newsworthy topic. Furthermore, the rise in autism coverage differed considerably between individual newspapers: it was more pronounced in the broadsheets than tabloids, and in left-leaning than right-leaning newspapers. But what was the focus of these articles? We found that newspapers emphasised the adversities associated with autism and portrayed autism with a lot of negative language. Newspapers also tended to focus on autistic children, and particularly on boys. There were some signs of change in more recent years, with some newspapers now representing autism as a difference and, in addition, referring to more diverse groups of autistic people. However, these changes tended to be confined to broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Our findings suggest that representations of autism in the contemporary British press are skewed towards stereotypically negative views, which may well hinder the acceptance of autism and the fostering of a more inclusive society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how humanitarianism representations affect British Nigerian identities. It problematises the tendency within development literature to uncritically generalise British audiences of NGO representations as seemingly white. Studies further assume audiences interpret and are impacted by representations in largely undifferentiated ways. This assumption discounts the complexities and particularities of and within audiences and overlooks how humanitarian representations inform how (and why) audiences negotiate their racialised subjectivities. Applying Bhabha's hybridity theory, this article reveals how Nigerian diaspora negotiate racialised identities vis-à-vis humanitarian representations in distinct and revelatory ways, including along the lines of social class. These Nigerian subject-makings are contingencies against problematic portrayals of Black African poverty and perceived racism mediated by whiteness. While focused on Nigerians, this work has implications for the racialised realities of UK-based Black Africans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generating negative news coverage of state welfare provision has been identified as a strategy designed to create public support for radical policies aimed to reduce such provision. To date, research of this kind has focused on scandals and crises. However, little is known about the complex relationship between media representations of specific events, and those of media representations in the lead up to these events, what we refer to as periphery representations. Employing a content and frame analysis, this paper analyses the frequency and intensity of peripheral representations of the National Health Service (NHS) in the British print media for 1 week a month before and for 1 week during three key events in recent NHS history: the official consultation period for the Health and Social Care Act; the publication of Five-Year Forward View, and the first Junior Doctor Strike. This article finds that negative NHS representations in articles that are peripheral to particular topical issues of controversy evidence fluctuations, amplifications and intensities across time periods, depending on the particular context. The paper concludes by arguing that repetition of negative themes in news helps to build a sensibility of 'inadequacy' of vital services. We hope that this focus on the ways in which amplifications and de-amplifications in negative intensity of peripheral NHS representations across time and content, helps to contribute to debate about the complex interplay between public health services, media representation and policy consent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frozen embryo disputes are hard cases since providing the decision over whether or not to become a parent/dispose of the embryo(s) to one gamete provider in the way he/she wishes denies the other an equivalent decision. In response, estoppel, it is argued, can provide a doctrinally robust response due to its flexibility in deeming whether a person relied upon representation(s) or promise(s) made. The exploration of this theme indicates that the gamete provider seeking implantation will often have a stronger case in equity, than via other legal avenues. The different approaches in UK and Israeli law in this context are duly examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the start of the new millennium in the UK, a range of new feminist activities – national networks, issue-specific campaigns, local groups, festivals, magazines and blogs – have been formed by a new constituency of mostly younger women and men. These new feminist activities, which we term ‘third-wave’ feminism, have emerged in a ‘post-feminist’ context, in which feminism is considered dead or unnecessary, and where younger feminists, if represented at all, are often dismissed as insufficiently political. Representations of North American third-wave feminism are brought into play in these criticisms of the UK third wave, and insufficient attention has been paid to the distinctiveness of the UK contexts. Drawing on data from a survey of 1265 people involved in post-2000 forms of feminism and semi-structured interviews with thirty feminist activists, the article sketches out the contours of the contemporary feminist movement and its activists, activism and priorities. It attends to differences and similarities between second and third waves, and situates contemporary UK feminism in its distinctive UK context. Arguing that feminism is both alive and relevant for significant numbers of people in the UK today, the article interrogates younger feminists’ reluctance to use the term ‘third-wave feminism’ to describe themselves, attributing this reluctance to ambivalent and cynical representations of the third wave in academic literature and the popular media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive scoping review of empirical research into US and UK media representations of Africa published between 1990 and 2014. The results show that existing research has a remarkably narrow focus on a specific number of countries, events, media and texts. Research into representations of North Africa, Francophone Africa, non-news genres, non-elite media and radio content, is particularly scarce. This, I contend, provides an insufficient basis for reaching any firm, generalisable conclusions about the nature of media coverage of Africa. The common assumption that representations are dominated by Afro-pessimism, for example, may be accurate – but it is not currently substantiated by the existing evidence. In short, the widespread belief that we know how Africa is represented in the US and UK media is shown to be a myth. This paper also discusses how this myth has been maintained through certain citation practices and interpretations of evidence as well as the implications of these findings for the many corporations, governments, non-governmental organisations and researchers whose activities depend upon, or have helped to preserve, this myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article juxtaposes mediated representations of stay-at-home mothers (SAHMs) with accounts of twenty-two UK -educated middle-class SAHMs. It exposes a fundamental chasm between media constructions of women’s “opting out” of the workplace as a personal choice, and the factors shaping women’s decisions to leave a career, and their complex, often painful consequences. The juxtaposition highlights three aspects largely rendered invisible in current representations of SAHMs: (1) the influence of husbands’ demanding careers and work cultures on their wives’ “choices” to not return to paid employment; (2) the issue of childcare; and (3) women’s immense unpaid domestic and maternal labour. Although media representations often fail to correspond to middle-class SAHMs’ lives, they shape their thinking and feelings and reconstruct their deepest yearnings and sense of self. In particular, SAHMs speak of feeling invisible, lacking confidence, and being silent and silenced. I conclude by discussing how the disconnect between media representation and SAHMs’ experience may be enhancing and sustaining their silence, which supports and re-secures a patriarchal capitalist system, and by reflecting on the role of feminist media research to voice the lived experience of gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the cultural representation of Turkey as a travel destination for British tourists. Drawing on findings from a qualitative content analysis of 99 travel features published in three British broadsheet and three tabloid papers over a five-year period, we investigate the content and form of travel journalism as a journalistic genre dedicated to the representation of far-away places and the “Others” who live there. Looking at generic conventions and representations of Turkey at three levels—geography, landscape and culture, and the Turkish people—we found remarkable commonalities between broadsheet and tabloid travel journalism, although they have different institutional structures and cater to different audiences. Travel journalism as a practice is upbeat, positive, service-oriented and driven by market forces. The language is hyperbolic and flowery. In direct contrast with Turkey's negative framing in European political journalism, travel journalism frames the country positively: as a stunning, risk-free travel destination readers can dream about. Through the gatekeeping of travel journalists, Turkey is filtered, packaged and made consumable, allowing British readers to fantasise about an exotic and mysterious place with gorgeous beaches. Turkey also is presented as a country with an oriental and authentic flavour geographically “in” Europe, but different from Europe. The Turks are orientalised and introduced to the Western reader as Others. We argue that both the linguistic conventions and the representational politics of travel journalism are inclined to commodify countries with new practices of consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a cultural analysis of HBO’s drama series, The Wire. It is argued here that, as a cultural text, The Wire forms a site of both containment and resistance, of hegemony and change with recourse to the regulation of illicit drug markets. In this sense The Wire constitutes an important cultural paradigm of drug policy debates, one that has significant heuristic implications regarding both the present consequences and future directions of illicit drug policy. Ultimately, it is demonstrated below that through its representations of the tensions and antagonisms characteristic of drug control systems, The Wire reveals larger predicaments of governance faced by neoliberal democracies today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The features of a concept or principle an individual chooses to highlight in an explanation or description may be related to the medium of communication used. Different aspects of understanding can be revealed through words and through drawings. This two-part exploratory study examined the differences between explanations of physical and chemical equilibria generated by means of words or pictures. Participants included both instructors and students, who were randomly assigned to provide either written explanations or drawings of physical or chemical equilibrium at the macroscopic and particulate levels. For both studies, analyses revealed that significantly different features appeared in the written and pictorial explanations of equilibrium. The written responses focused more on processes such as the dynamic nature of equilibrium, whereas pictorial representations highlighted structural aspects of equilibrium, such as the spatial arrangement of molecules. Regardless of the level of chemistry knowledge, people conveyed the same type of information via the use of different representations and visual tools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to analyse media representations of veiled women in British online and printed press between 2001 and 2014. Using discourse analysis (CDA) as an analytical tool, the article seeks to demonstrate how enduring repetitions of essentialized media rhetoric - manifested in the topic selection, language and visuals - generate and naturalize racist sentiments towards veiled Muslim women. The findings of the study indicate that veiled Muslim women are commonly represented as the ultimate British others; they continue to be observed through the lens of beautified otherness and are caught in the paradox of being seen as on the one hand invisible victims of patriarchal oppression and on the other hand a visible danger for British security and identity. A nascent trend of counter-hegemonic discourses on veiling is also acknowledged and documented. The outcomes of the media analysis are combined with brief fragments from the interviews with British Muslim women, thus challenging the prevailing media myths and ensuring an emic perspective on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Participatory Action Research (PAR) aims to articulate knowledge production and transformative action. In this paper, we outline the sociopolitical background to our interest in LGBT and trans-collectives as an important territory where PAR might make some intervention in the social conditions of LGBT lives by transforming dominant forms of representation that have emerged from a history of psychological and medical pathology. We present two projects, from UK and Spain that utilize post-structuralist informed methods (interviews, photo-production, discourse analysis, narrative production) within a PAR framework. We examine their potential for problematising representations of sexuality and gender by reflecting on the knowledge produced and the transformative action they provoke. We rethink power relationships inherent in PAR concepts of 'participation' and 'empowerment' through a post-structuralist lens and argue that the achievements of PAR projects can be better understood as 'co-produced artifacts'. These (e.g. photo-exhibition) are co-owned by community members and researchers and their deployment in different settings (e.g. community or university) impacts on the meanings they convey and the action they provoke. Finally, we argue that through the use of post-structuralist methods PAR can enable effective transformative action, but caution against the practice of reinstating normative representations in the invitation to participate under specific identity categories (e.g. LGBT, Trans, mental health service user). PAR projects can do this by considering naturalized definitions of who is vulnerable or marginalized as the object and field of social transformation, and the starting point for collective and political action. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study looks at historical and contemporary representations of rural native communities in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Through the analysis of representations, the study underlines the production of a distinct space for native rural communities in Sarawak and highlights its material implications. The first part of the paper focuses on representations deployed by the colonial administrations to govern native populations of Sarawak. The consequences of specific representations that produced native territorial communities based on codified customs and ethnic presuppositions are identified. Second, the paper focuses on representations deployed to support a corporate agricultural development project on customary land referred to as the Konsep Baru. It demonstrates that these representations reify essential characteristics of the native space as it was produced by colonial regimes and position native rural communities in duality with modern society. In turn, the scrutiny of representations produced by native land rights advocates in response to problematic forms of rural development in Sarawak highlights the dualisms portrayed in specific accounts and stresses their links with colonial constructions of the native space. Overall the paper suggests ways to reflect on the implication of representations about native communities in Sarawak, as representations are intertwined with development practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques learning design as a representation for sharing and developing practice, based on synthesis of three projects. Starting with the findings of the Mod4L Models of Practice project, it argues that the technical origins of learning design, and the consequent focus on structure and sequence, limit its usefulness for sharing practice between teachers. It compares practice models with two alternative, more flexible, representations, patterns and bundles, based on the outcomes of the Pattern Language Network (Planet) project and of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: Active Learning in Computing (CETL ALiC). It concludes that while practice models may be useful in mediating between teachers and technical developers, they cannot encompass the range of practice teachers require to represent. A pattern language is more comprehensive and has the advantage of being generative, but is difficult for teachers to acquire, and bundles may provide a more adoptable representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a social-psychological framework for understanding the usability of mobile computers. This framework complements and extends extant sociological explanations of mobile computing. Sociological explanations satisfy principles of pragmatism and ubiquity in judging the usability of mobile computers. The paper argues that sociological explanations are inadequate, and draws upon the historical epistemology of perception to propose social-psychological explanations to complement them. By this epistemology, a user’s perception is deemed as a mode of action that is mediated by historical or functional representations. These issues are illustrated in an empirical case of the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in hospitals of the British National Health Service. The historical epistemology of perception suggests the principle of representation to complement the existing principles of ubiquity and pragmatism. This suggestion is derived from an analysis of the complementation between the user’s perception, work and movement which are conscious actions enacted concurrently during the use of mobile computers. Implications for the implementation and evaluation of mobile computing projects are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Castro and Batel's (2008) study points to some important strategies of resistance to social change in the transformation of transcendent to immanent representations. We contextualize this study within a broader cyclical model of social change, in which their focus is one of the four phases in the cycle. The expanded model is exemplified in the shifting representations of science communication in the UK from the 'deficit model' of public understanding of science to the dialogic representation of 'public engagement'. Within each of the four proposed phases, the dialectic of adoption/rejection is central, although it is modulated by strategies of resistance and the selective distribution of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways that the media, and television in particular, represent a particular aspect of the business landscape: entrepreneurship. It looks at the extent to which a more entrepreneurial television industry in the United Kingdom has extended the scale and scope of the range of representations relating to entrepreneurship on the small screen. This research also tries to capture whether such representations are helping to create a climate of opinion within which ideas about entrepreneurial activity are becoming increasingly legitimised and indeed normalised within society. Is this process an example of television reacting to broader cultural, economic and political shifts in society? Or does it tell us more about television's fixation with evolving forms and formats in an increasingly commercial digital environment? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on British press reports on Lenin in the ten days or so after his death on 21 January 1924 and shows how the texts—almost universally hostile in their appraisals—are saturated with gender, class and power distinctions and tropes of race, class, family, climate and geography. These are deployed to explain character or advanced as causative agents. In addition, physiognomic explanations predominate, and supposed binary opposites of mind/body, self/others, emotion/intellect and personal/political inform the ways in which journalists and pundits construct Lenin. The press advances a narrative of Revolution and Soviet power, which suggests that communism has already failed in Russia and that capitalism is being restored. Most writers predict the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. But the purpose of the article is not to explain or examine these representations in a conventional manner. It is to conduct an experiment in getting to grips with the problem of how to engage with past moments by recycling and reordering material from the press with a minimum of authorial comment, analysis and contextualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of handguns by a sample of university students (n = 96) from one of the southern states of the US, was contrasted with that of a sample of university students in the UK (n = 100), employing ANOVA and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. Exploring the structure of response, the findings showed little evidence for a common cross-locational representation of handguns for the US and UK samples taken together. There was support for the existence of distinctive locational representations, some support for gender-specific representations, and strong support for representations of handguns according to particular combinations of locality and gender. Representations of handguns by US males from the southern states were the most distinctive, complex and integrated in structure, bringing into question simplistic assumptions concerning the nature of an alleged ‘southern sub-culture of violence’ or of a more general ‘gun culture’. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of archive pictures (paintings, photographs and engravings) in school textbooks, in the controversial setting of the Key Stage 3 (11–14) and Key Stage 4 (14–16) topics of the American West and the Native Peoples of North America, where pictorial images have created powerful stereotypes. Attention is drawn to the 1994 Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s report on history textbooks, which criticized the lack of supporting information for archive pictures. Textbooks written prior to the 1994 report are contrasted with those written since. It is noted that despite the report and recent historical interest in the study of representations, there has been little improvement in textbook design. The methods of analysis that should be used on paintings, photographs and engravings are explained in some detail, and the effect of not providing the essential background for pupils to develop a reasoned discussion of their value as historical evidence is demonstrated through a number of case-studies. Finally a checklist is provided for authors, publishers, teachers, trainee teachers and teacher educators to help them incorporate essential background material, in order to ensure that pupils can bring the same critical awareness to pictorial images as they have become accustomed to with written sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]