Women beware women

Joanna Bourke takes a look at coverage of women’s violence and asks why it’s not reported in the same ways as men’s violence.

Women Beware Women

Charlie Brooker on men

It’s typical Charlie Brooker style - opinionated, rude, a bit surreal – but lots of fun for taking  a look at gender from a different perspective.

Charlie Brooker in The Guardian

Karen Matthews and single mothers

Some more stuff on single mothers, linked to the Shannon Matthews’ case.

Daily Telegraph article defending single mothers (and lots of comments attacking the article).

Barbara Ellen in The Guardian on “why Karen Matthews really offended the middle classes”.

News of the World “Evil Karen Matthews two-timed pervert lover with sick kidnapper” (or something like that)

Social workers and children’s services

Following the horrific Baby P story, the papers have been full of vitriolic attacks on social workers in Haringey (and in general). Here’s a taste of some of the ways in which this social group and individuals such as Sharon Shoesmith have been represented comments on The Sun’s message boards.

Sun letters and texts

Daily Mirror – view from a social worker

Daily Mail – “bungling social workers put children at risk”

Daily Mail – social workers criticised for “flimsy abuse claim”

You can’t win with the Daily Mail, can you?

As an ENGA1 mode exercise, you might find the comparisons between Sun letters and text messages useful too.

Single mothers

I’ve encouraged my students to google a phrase to get texts on a more specific topic.  Demonstrating it with “single mother”, some of the first-page hits I got were: this Guardian piece on J K Rowling and her rags-to-riches story (from July 1997); this Independent comment by Kate Saunders on her own experience (from Apr 2007) and this wonderful example from the Daily Mail about a single Nigerian mother who lives in a big house that – guess what – we the taxpayers are funding (from Nov 2008).  There’s clearly enough here for an investigation, but any of the texts could also be used as part of an ‘institution’ investigation into the idea of Family, or further texts about J K Rowling or Omowunmi Odia could be found for a piece on individuals.

More on representation of young people

This follows on from the Barnardo’s ads earlier in the week.

Martin Narey of Barnardo’s in The Times

Most adults chink children are “feral and a danger to society”

Kids these days: are they all bad?

Marcel Berlins in The Guardian

They’re people not animals

Representation of young people

Some good stuff on the BBC website today linked to the new Barnardo’s campaign “Children in Trouble”.

BBC story

Barnardo’s campaign

Could be a good investigation focus with a ready-made creative task in writing a charity ad to present a more positive representation?

Youth crime – an historical perspective

Good article about moral panics over youth crime from Mick Hume in The Times.

Channel 4 Dispatches – press coverage of Muslims

Channel 4’s Dispatches programme on Monday 7th July looks at how Muslims have been represented in the British media, particularly since the July 7th bombings.

The very detailed Cardiff University report into media representations of Muslims is available here.

Representation of soldiers’ wives and partners

From today’s Sun. Might be good for its obviously gendered construction of Daniel Gamble’s girlfriend’s  identity (“Heartbroken Tammy”, “Inconsolable Tammy” , “pretty shop assistant Tammy”).

Social groups – “pikeys”

BBC Magazine article on the word “pikey”

Wikipedia’s definitions of “pikey”