This study aims to examine the description of the people with disabilities in the
media via feature articles, ‘Narrative Report’ from Donga-Ilbo, further making
suggestions to improve the report concerning the minority group. Based on the
reviews of the current discussion on the report on the people with disabilities, the
study analyzes the protagonist’s attributes, story developments, and lexicons used in
the selected 20 narrative reports.
The analysis is consisted of three parts:
Firstly, the attributes of the people with disabilities. ‘Narrative Report’ underlined
the particular gender, age and occupations, guiding the story to a certain direction
unconsciously or deliberately.
Secondly, the fixed pattern of story developments. Reports were kept within a
stereotypical pattern of ‘sudden advent of disabilities-beginning of the
despair-triumph over adversities’.
Lastly, the usage of vocabularies. From titles to bodies, positive terms such as
‘dreams’, ‘hope’, and ‘challenge’ were used to emphasize success rather than failure,
hope, rather than despair. This fails to get the bird-eye view of the general realistic
hardships and reality of the people with disabilities.
The three important components of articles are story, terms and framework. Yet,
the narratives about the people with disabilities lacks impartiality and reality as the
components were severely biased and stereotypical. This study regarded all people
with disabilities within the same category. Yet, taking the types and degrees of
disabilities into consideration would help us better understand the process of how the
people with disabilities are embodied in the media, possibly providing meaningful
source of government policy and NGO’s agenda-setting.