Evoking Empathy or Enacting Solidarity with Marginalized Communities? A Case Study of Journalistic Humanizing Techniques in the San Francisco Homeless Project

Abstract

ABSTRACT American journalists regularly humanize marginalized communities in an attempt to bridge social distance. Journalists’ techniques for doing so may constrain representations to the level of individual turmoil and resilience without accounting for structural factors, however, which has troubling social justice implications. This study examines how journalists humanize homeless people in the case of the collaborative San Francisco Homeless Project. Textual analysis of 325 stories complemented by in-depth interviews with journalists finds that journalists predominantly evoke empathy at a personal level and less frequently enact solidarity at a political level. Personal stories humanize members of marginalized communities through narratives of individual exceptionalism and relatability, which establish grounds for empathy. In contrast, politicized stories enact solidarity through a technique of radical inclusion that begins with marginalized people's analytical perspectives. With an ethic of empathy, journalism may encourage interpersonal harmony at an individual level but does little to bring the shared conditions of social injustice experienced across a community into focus—whereas with an ethic of solidarity, journalism becomes equipped to represent paths toward a more just society.