How Is Hate Towards Persons with Disabilities Produced and Amplified?
- A Text Mining Analysis of Online News Comments on the Protests by the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination
YANG Hye Seung [Professor, Chonnam National University]
- 1. Background and Purposes of the Study
At the end of March 2022, news related to the subway protests by the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination(SADD, or Jeonjangyeon in Korean) surged. The unusual spike in related news was largely due to the comments from politicians, as a specific politician publicly criticized the protests, escalating the controversy. Numerous comments flooded the news articles. However, serious discussions regarding the core issue of mobility rights for persons with disabilities were almost missing. Mobility rights are a value that should be universally guaranteed for both people with and without disabilities. In fact, “humans are born as individuals with mobility challenges and end their lives as disabled individuals with mobility challenges” (Park Chang-seok, 2021, p. 107). Yet, a significant number of comments revealed negative and exclusive feelings and attitudes toward people with disabilities unfiltered. The SADD protests became an occasion to expose the negative perceptions and hatred toward individuals with disabilities that are ingrain in our society.
.
.
.
Third, we must point out the media’s agenda setting approach on social minorities. The SADD’s protests did not begin at the end of March 2022. There had already been more than five demonstrations by December 2021 and ongoing debates over amendments to the Act on Promotion of the Transportation Convenience of Mobility Disadvantaged Persons, yet the media paid little attention. Only after one politician’s remarks became controversial did the press suddenly turn it into major news. The framing of coverage was problematic: articles focusing on certain politicians’ statements and relaying the conflict accounted for 67.84%, while pieces addressing the causes of the protests or the actual state of mobility rights comprised only 7.40%. That the main discourse in news comments drifted away from the substantive issue of mobility rights and became dominated by political squabbling is, in part, the result of this conflict centered media framing. Coverage should have given greater attention to the physical environments constraining mobility rights, the legal and institutional reforms needed, and the social measures required to address these problems.
How Is Hate Towards Persons with Disabilities Produced and Amplified?
- A Text Mining Analysis of Online News Comments on the Protests by the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination
YANG Hye Seung [Professor, Chonnam National University]
At the end of March 2022, news related to the subway protests by the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination(SADD, or Jeonjangyeon in Korean) surged. The unusual spike in related news was largely due to the comments from politicians, as a specific politician publicly criticized the protests, escalating the controversy. Numerous comments flooded the news articles. However, serious discussions regarding the core issue of mobility rights for persons with disabilities were almost missing. Mobility rights are a value that should be universally guaranteed for both people with and without disabilities. In fact, “humans are born as individuals with mobility challenges and end their lives as disabled individuals with mobility challenges” (Park Chang-seok, 2021, p. 107). Yet, a significant number of comments revealed negative and exclusive feelings and attitudes toward people with disabilities unfiltered. The SADD protests became an occasion to expose the negative perceptions and hatred toward individuals with disabilities that are ingrain in our society.
.
.
.
Third, we must point out the media’s agenda setting approach on social minorities. The SADD’s protests did not begin at the end of March 2022. There had already been more than five demonstrations by December 2021 and ongoing debates over amendments to the Act on Promotion of the Transportation Convenience of Mobility Disadvantaged Persons, yet the media paid little attention. Only after one politician’s remarks became controversial did the press suddenly turn it into major news. The framing of coverage was problematic: articles focusing on certain politicians’ statements and relaying the conflict accounted for 67.84%, while pieces addressing the causes of the protests or the actual state of mobility rights comprised only 7.40%. That the main discourse in news comments drifted away from the substantive issue of mobility rights and became dominated by political squabbling is, in part, the result of this conflict centered media framing. Coverage should have given greater attention to the physical environments constraining mobility rights, the legal and institutional reforms needed, and the social measures required to address these problems.