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Abstract

In Britain, those in poorer demographics suffer from hostile representations throughout the media. One instance is through the word ‘chav’, which since the early 2000s has become synonymous with the white working class - what Marx would have referred to as the lumpenproletariat. Bringing together the ideas of a range of social theorists, this dissertation explores the various ways that contemporary British media has stigmatised the working class as undeserving ‘chavs’. By combining critical textual analyses of various television forms, journalism and social media with a range of secondary literature sources on the subject, this work argues that the media frame the white poor as an unfair cliché of criminality, immorality, vulgarness and stupidity. There also seems to have been a revival in chav-bashing thanks to viral trends on social media.

Course: Media Studies - BA (Hons) - C1346

Date Deposited: 2022-08-10

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13985.html