Solidarity in action : a case study of journalistic humanizing techniques in the San Francisco homeless project
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Solidarity is a political commitment to social justice that translates into action, and is a longstanding, though unacknowledged, ideal within American journalism that humanizes marginalized communities. To explain the role and significance of solidarity in journalism that humanizes marginalized communities, this dissertation explicates the concept of solidarity, applies solidarity to journalism, and develops an empirical case study of a 2016 journalistic collaboration called the San Francisco Homeless Project to demonstrate how journalistic humanizing techniques invite and impede solidarity. Based on semistructured interviews with participating journalists paired with textual analysis of their stories, this dissertation finds that journalists humanize homeless people through personalization techniques that appeal to empathy by representing homeless people's personal problems, and do so at the expense of solidarity. Empathy becomes a barrier to solidarity in journalism because it individualizes social injustice. On the other hand, journalists also rely on politicization techniques that invite solidarity by representing homeless people as living within unjust conditions produced by systemic factors that they cannot individually surmount. This dissertation concludes by arguing that solidarity provides a news value for guiding journalistic practice in the direction of social justice.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Varmā, Anītā |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Glasser, Theodore L |
| Thesis advisor | Glasser, Theodore L |
| Thesis advisor | Hamilton, James, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Jiménez, Tomás R. (Tomás Roberto), 1975- |
| Thesis advisor | Turner, Fred |
| Degree committee member | Hamilton, James, 1961- |
| Degree committee member | Jiménez, Tomás R. (Tomás Roberto), 1975- |
| Degree committee member | Turner, Fred |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Communication. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Anita Varma. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Communication. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Anita Varma
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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