{"id":16465,"date":"2021-03-16T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=16465"},"modified":"2022-10-09T06:31:03","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T10:31:03","slug":"how-homeless-people-are-misrepresented-in-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-537697-2997182.cloudwaysapps.com\/how-homeless-people-are-misrepresented-in-media\/","title":{"rendered":"How Homeless People are Misrepresented in Media"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With News Stories Like These, Who Needs Enemies?<\/em><\/h2>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.\u201d<\/em><\/h4>\n

Malcolm X<\/p>\n

Fighting homelessness is more than just serving soup or sending a yearly donation to your nonprofit of choice. While these are good steps toward achieving better outcomes for our neighbors without walls, we as advocates are tasked with not just envisioning a better world, but also creating an atmosphere where a better world could indeed become a reality. To do so, we must understand the gravity of words.<\/p>\n

Language is one of the marvels that separates human beings from all other animals on the planet. In the Animal Kingdom, \u201clanguage\u201d is restricted to repetition and symbolism. It lacks the structure necessary to generate logical, sequential sentences that illustrate not just basic needs and wants, but also abstract thoughts, feelings, and expressions.<\/p>\n

This is why language is such a powerful tool for humanity. Unlike pictures where what you see is what you get, words can be used subtly to frame subjects in a targeted light that sends us down a path the speaker wants us to explore. Essentially, words are used to explain our thoughts. But this can also happen the other way around where words are used to insert new thoughts, bringing us to epiphanies that seem to have come from nowhere … In reality, those thoughts were influenced by something we heard.<\/p>\n

Advertisers are all too keen on the subject of subliminal messages. They know the emotions that can be invoked by adding buzzwords like love, free, and now to their marketing campaigns. And in the Me generation, is it any wonder that the most popular word of all is you?<\/p>\n

So, since words have such a strong relationship with human actions and interactions (and you!), it\u2019s easy to see how words could be used to end homelessness or to exacerbate it.<\/p>\n

How Modern Media Harbors Homelessness through Prose<\/h3>\n

Here at Invisible People<\/em>, we recently published a report<\/a> detailing what the public really believes about homelessness in America. In that study, participants claimed that 56% of their information on the subject was derived from what they see on the news and\/or the local television. Other popular sources included:<\/p>\n