Negotiating stance within discourses of class: Reactions to Benefits Street

Abstract

In this article, we examine the way that audiences respond to particular representations of poverty. Using clips from the Channel 4 television programme Benefits Street we conducted focus groups in four locations across the UK, working with people from different socioeconomic backgrounds who had different experiences with the benefits system. Benefits Street (2014) is

Does Money Talk Equate to Class Talk? Audience Responses to Poverty Porn in Relation to Money and Debt

“…The participants do not tend to draw upon scrounger discourses to evaluate those on benefits (although there are some allusions to this in their discussion of foodbanks) and are not overly critical of how those on benefits spend their money; with the exception of Extract 9.8, there are no instances in the Batley data of 'flawed consumerism' discourse (c.f. Bauman, 2004), which contrasts with what we found in our analysis of the Nottingham focus group (Paterson, Peplow and Coffey-Glover, 2016). In contrast, their talk of money and debt centres on criticisms of those who have money and suggest that 'bankers and the people at the top' create financial problems through their greed.…”

“…She continues '[u]ndoubtedly the comments made in these research settings are conditioned by the speech situation, which has its own interpersonal relations' (an issue we have addressed in Paterson, Peplow and Coffey-Glover, 2016), but suggests that 'it would be hard to argue that the speech situation can be held responsible for the substance of the comments, except in the sense that they may have an interest in coming across as concerned citizens, and will want to say the things that they believe such citizens out to say ' (1994, p.95).…”

The just world hypothesis as an argumentative resource in debates about unemployment benefits

“…This is reflected in an increase in public discourse around the role of the individual (Stenner & Taylor, , p. 421) regarding their welfare, which arguably results in unemployment and low incomes being perceived to be the result of individual failure as opposed to external conditions (Jo, ). Indeed, Paterson, Coffey‐Glover, and Peplow () assessed participants' beliefs about clips from Benefits Street and found that these functioned as prompts to discuss the negative characteristics of benefit claimants as a general category.…”

A multimodal analysis of the representation of the Rohingya crisis in BBC’s Burma with Simon Reeve (2018): Integrating Audience Research in Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies

“…These studies involve showing a text to a group of participants and then investigating their reactions through how they recount and evaluate (i.e. recontextualize) what they saw (Benwell 2007;Chouliaraki 2000Chouliaraki , 2003Edward 2016;Kalyango 2011;Kosetzi 2007;Paterson, Coffey-Glover and Peplow 2016;Phillips 2000;Richardson 1994Richardson , 2000. These studies, however, used texts chosen by the researcher, thus making it difficult to establish any prior interest or whether different interpretations were driven by the text or already existing ideologies.…”