The research has shown that there are occupational differences in
the Social Representations depicted. It is reasonable to assume that this
is a function of differential knowledge bases, training and experience.
Unexpectedly, medical professionals did not see disability in purely
impairment terms but in terms of social consequence i.e. the Sad/Lonely
macrocategory or the Tragedy macrocategory. This may be because
most of the sample were of younger medical professionals who are being
trained to see impairment in social terms. This is an important step
forward. Charity workers appear to remain patronising and altruistic in
their Social Representations of disabled people. In this case the altruism
is often tainted with self satisfaction. ‘Ordinary’ people appear to have a
reasonably wide range of Social Representations of disabilities and seem
to understand that disabled people are people. However they do
emphasise the practical problems such as physical access rather than
having integrated education. This offers some hope of future
developments.
There are three key findings of this study. Firstly non-disabled
people have in general different Social Representations of born disabled
people as compared to their Social Representations of acquired disabled
Chapter 5: The Whole Story
The Social Representations of Disability Michael Devenney
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people. A prime example from the storyboard study is that born disabled
people are Sad/Lonely or Support/Dependence whereas acquired
disabled people are often Medical, Tragedy or Brave/Determined. Born
disabled people are very much Exceptional/Special if they are
‘successful’. In the print media born disabled people must be
Brave/Determined or Exceptional and people with acquired disabilities
need to deal with life and death issues or are tragic and in pain. Fate runs
throughout both groups. In the case of born disabled people fate is seen
to be the ‘cards’ you’ve been dealt, in acquired disabled people it is seen
to be an unjust turn of events. However this is used for emotive media
reportage despite any material facts. Secondly, there is a noticeable
difference in how male and female disabled characters are portrayed in
both the storyboards and media study. Male characters are portrayed as
active but frustrated and angry or Exceptional/Special. Women disabled
characters are more passive, accepting of their situation and grateful.
This is an interesting gender difference in perception of how disabled
people cope with their impairment.