Reframing Disability?: Media, (Dis)Empowerment, and Voice in the 2012 Paralympics [Hardcover]

The London 2012 Paralympic Games - the biggest, most accessible and best-attended games in the Paralympics' 64-year history - came with an explicit aim to transform the perception of disabled people in society, and use sport to contribute to a better world for all people with a disability. This social agenda offered the potential to re-frame disability; to symbolically challenge ableist ideology and to offer a reinvention of the (dis)abled body and a redefinition of the possible. This edited collection investigates what has and is happening in relation to these ambitions. The book is structured around three key questions: 1. What were the predominant mediated narratives surrounding the Paralympics, and what are the associated meanings attached to them? 2. How were the Paralympics experienced by media audiences (both disabled and non-disabled)? 3. To what extent did the 2012 Paralympics inspire social change? Each section of this book is interspersed with authentic voices from outside academia: broadcasters, athletes and disabled schoolchildren.

Introduction  Daniel Jackson, Caroline E. M. Hodges, Richard Scullion and Mike Molesworth  Section I  Photo Montage: Paralympic Sports Within Victoria Education Centre  Kayleigh Wilcox  1. Between Exclusion and Inclusion: The Importance of the Olympic Movement for the Development of Paralympic Sports  Christoph Bertling  2. Out of the Shadows, Into the Light?: The Broadcasting Legacy of the 2012 Paralympics for Channel 4  Alison Walsh  3. Dis/Enablement?: An Analysis of the Representation of Disability on British Terrestrial Television Pre- and Post- the Paralympics  E. Anna Claydon, Barrie Gunter and Paul Reilly  4. #IsItOk to Be a Celebrity (Disabled) Cl³›