Suchergebnisse

This article argues that the Grassroots Out Breaking Point poster was the crystallisation of a moral panic narrative framed around negative stereotypes of foreigners that had echoes of similarly racialized moral panics of the 1960s and 1970s. The poster sought to conflate European Union economic migrants with refugees and immigrants generally - portraying all of these disparate groups as one and the same, namely an invasive threat to the UK's economy, culture and security.

Recent research has noted the persistence of a long continuum of "anti-welfare" discourses that are increasingly embedded in the UK news media, political communication, and popular culture (e.g. Golding and Middleton 1982. Images of Welfare: Press and Public Attitudes to Poverty. Oxford: Mark Robertson; Jensen 2014. "Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy." Sociological Research Online 19 (3): 277–283; Morrison 2019. Scroungers: Moral Panics and Media Myths. London: Zed Books). Historical distinctions between the "deserving" and "undeserving poor" have been sharpened by successive governments in the service of varying shades of neoliberal governance. While Margaret Thatcher castigated "shirkers" in fostering an ideology of economic self-reliance, both New Labour and the Coalition obsessed over "welfare reform": promoting an ideology of "work" in symbolic opposition to supposed cultures of "worklessness". But, while "scroungerphobia" (Deacon 1978. "The Scrounging Controversy: Public Attitudes Towards the Unemployed in Contemporary Britain." Social Policy and Administration 12 (2): 120–135) is now a widely recognised sociological phenomenon, scholarly attention to the concept has largely been reserved for its manifestation in tabloid newspapers, political rhetoric and, latterly, "poverty porn" television. Even recent work considering the public's contribution to scrounger discourse(s) on social media focuses on mainstream platforms, such as Twitter and newspaper comment threads (e.g. Van Der Bom et al. 2018. "'It's not the Fact They Claim Benefits but Their Useless, Lazy, Drug Taking Lifestyles we Despise': Analysing Audience Responses to Benefits Street Using Live Tweets." Discourse, Context & Media 21: 36–45; Morrison 2019. Scroungers: Moral Panics and Media Myths. London: Zed Books; Paterson 2020). This paper begins to address this oversight, by examining how normative anti-welfare discourses infiltrate everyday communication in more disparate online communities – including niche consumer forums. ...

Introduction: Scroungerphobia revisited: shirker-bashing and feral freak-shows -- Moral panics, scapegoating and the persistence of pauper folk-devils -- Problem families and 'the workless': the rhetorical roots of shirkerphobia -- Framing the poor: images of welfare and poverty in today's press -- Deliberating deservingness: the public's role in constructing scroungers -- Incidental scroungers: normalizing anti-welfarism in wider press narratives -- Conclusion: From division to unity: a manifesto for rebuilding trust -- Appendices: Framing analysis methodology -- Sentiment analysis methodology.

As a component of the Australian Army, the Militia numbered over 300,000 men at its peak and fought in several successful and complex campaigns in the South-West Pacific Area (SWPA) during the Second World War. Notwithstanding its size and achievements, the Militia has been overshadowed by analysis of the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and it remains poorly represented in Australia's Second World War historiography. The 'Militia' has been inadequately understood and interpreted. It represented both a status and organisation during the Second World War that was markedly different from its pre-war incarnation and the post-war Citizen Military Forces. As Australia's only wartime fighting organisation that comprised conscripted men, the Militia was inherently political. Among both the army and public, perceptions of the Militia were affected by the presence of conscripts and contentious views of conscription even though it comprised an increasing number of unrestricted volunteers in the latter half of the war. Despite instances of bonding in battle, relations between the Militia and the AIF were strained at an organisational level throughout the war. Focusing on the experience of its 59 standard infantry battalions and drawing on a wide range of official and private evidence, this thesis charts the operational employment of the Militia, its relationship with the AIF, the perceptions of commanders at various levels and the tension provoked by the army encouraging men to opt for unrestricted service. Providing an integrated analysis that has previously been lacking, this thesis also examines broader issues associated with the Militia including political and social debate over conscription along with representations of the Militia in the press and official and unofficial histories. In according the wartime Militia its first detailed analysis, the thesis explores the relationship between a partly conscripted force in an army and society with a celebrated volunteer ethos.