Stigmatizing handsworth: Notes on reporting spoiled space

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Abstract
Deploying Erving Goffman's seminal ideas on stigma, the author demonstrates how a particular inner city locality in Birmingham, UK, has been subject to repeated stigmatization in its news portrayal. A seven year sample of local TV news reports concerned with Handsworth is subjected to detailed interrogation. Unlike previous studies concerned with the role of the mass media in processes of deviance, however, this study demonstrates a more complex interplay between professional news producers, stigmatized social settings and the symbolic construction of deviance. With reference to the concepts of social setting, moral mis‐aligners, and tension management, the role of the media in the symbolic construction of deviance is explored in new ways. Empirically the article demonstrates the relevance of these theoretical constructs and illustrates exactly how Handsworth in its repeated news rehearsal has become a potent and sticky symbol referencing far more than a strictly geographical space. It is this, it is argued, which principally accounts for its continuing and disproportionate news visibility.

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