Communication about economic inequality: a systematic review

Michael Vaughan, Hendrik Theine, David Schieferdecker and Nora Waitkus

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: What do we know about representations of economic inequality in media, and how well does this account for media transformations like hybridization? This article uses a systematic review of academic literature on mediated communication about economic inequality, in order to assess the current state of research around salience, framing, explanatory factors and effects of this kind of inequality discourse. We find an overwhelming focus on legacy newspapers and a small number of Global North countries. We argue for research which builds further links between studies of economic inequality and the contemporary study of communication, including moving past obsolete models of media systems, decentering a small selection of Global North countries, and building a more comparative perspective on nationally-grounded inequality discourses.

Keywords: hybrid media system; wealth inequality; digitalization; economic inequality; interdisciplinarity; communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2025-06-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv
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Published in Annals of the International Communication Association, 4, June, 2025. ISSN: 2380-8985

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:128075

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