Poor and Unemployed in the Distorted Mirror of the Popular Media

Narratives in the Media Discourse on Hartz IV and Citizen's Income

Abstract

The article examines the media discourse that accompanied the labor market reforms in Germany at the beginning of this century and - according to the thesis of the article - prepared these reforms and made them politically possible. In addition to a phase overview of this media discourse in the first part, the article shows in its second part the discursive reevaluation of the recipients of unemployment benefits as well as the discovery of the "disconnected precariat". "Poverty [...] has undergone a profound functional change in the context of labor market reforms: The centuries-old fear of all possessing of the "dangerous classes" has turned into their mere contempt and media slander."