Kerry Moore, John Jewell







Black role models and the news

This chapter critically explores the news and journalistic discourses surrounding the concept of the role model in the UK. It draws upon news content and semi-structured interviews with journalists from a wider study commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government exploring the media image of Black young men and boys in 2009-10. Analysis demonstrates negatively stigmatising discourses at play in role model news and polarised attitudes towards role models among journalists' reflections. Post-Marxist discourse theory is employed to argue that rather than challenging the complex social inequalities facing young Black men as recent government policy suggests, role modelling as a 'technology of the self' is likely to articulate neoliberal logic and reinforce existing social inequalities

Keywords: role models; young Black men; news discourse; post-Marxism; neo-liberalism


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