This book focuses on the relationship between the media and those who work as paid care assistants in care homes in Britain. It explores this relationship in terms of the contemporary cultural and personal understandings of care work and care homes that have developed as the role has emerged as increasingly socially and economically significant in society. Three strands of analysis are integrated: an examination of the representations of paid care workers in the British media; the experiences of current and former care workers; and the autoethnographic reflections of the authors who have experiences of working as care assistants. The book offers a rich contextual and experiential account of the responsibilities, challenges, and emotions of care work in British society. Grist and Jennings make a case for the need to better value and more accurately represent care work in contemporary media accounts.

Examines the representation of carers and care homes in the British media with the voices and experiences of care workers at the centre Argues that care work is undervalued and misrepresented in popular cultural formats and that it is time to care more about these representations Develops innovative methodological approaches for the study of ageing and care work, combining media and ageing studies perspectives

Autorentext

Hannah Grist is Co-Director of the Centre for Women Ageing and Media (WAM) at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Her research interests lie in ageing studies, media and cultural studies, and qualitative methodologies. Alongside Ros Jennings, she is co-author of a chapter in Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture: Reflections, Refractions, Reimaginings (2017). Ros Jennings is Co-Director of the Centre for Women Ageing and Media (WAM), and Professor of Ageing, Culture and Media at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Her research focuses on older age identities in relation to popular music, popular television, and late style performances. She is author of The WAM Manifesto (2012).

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Autoethnographies of Care.- 3. Little more than Fools and Monsters: Care workers in the UK Media.- 4. Conversations with Carers.- 5. Concluding Thoughts.