Concerns about Media Representation of Disability
Media Coverage of Disability Issues: Persons with disabilities receive similar treatment in the news.
Media Coverage of Disability Issues: Persons with disabilities receive similar treatment in the news.
Media producers have recognized that they must make efforts to better represent persons with disabilities.
Persons with disabilities might best be described, in the media at least, as an invisible minority: though a large segment of the population has a physical or mental disability they have been almost entirely absent from the mass media until recent years. Moreover, when persons with disabilities appear they almost always do so in stereotyped roles.
Part of stereotyping is the attitude that all members of a particular group are the same, or else fall into a very small number of types. This is particularly true in the few cases where persons with a disability appear in media
Though they are by no means the only factor, media representations of weight and body shape are a major element in body image concerns.
Body image concerns have been documented in children as young as three,[2] but it’s adolescents who appear to be most at risk for developing unhealthy attitudes towards their bodies based on this perception.