How can journalists evoke solidarity when writing about marginalized communities?

Picture by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

The journalism industry often humanises marginalised communities through individual stories that evoke personal empathy but not political solidarity. This post summarises one of Dr. Anita Varma’s recent research articles for Journalism Studies, showcasing how the media can do better in order to promote more structural changes rather specific feelings towards individuals.

By Carolina Are

Journalistic Representations of Homelessness

American journalists regularly humanize marginalized communities through stories attempting to bridge the distance between these communities and the public. Unlike many issues where journalists claim to strive for impartiality and balance, journalistic representations of people experiencing homelessness are characterized by their desire to help them through news coverage and through humanising news stories.

Dr. Varma argues that, although well-meaning, these stories tend to focus on representations to the level of individual turmoil and resilience without accounting for structural factors that have led to homelessness. Even more worryingly, the perspectives of homeless people are often absent from these stories. Therefore, she suggests that coverage eliciting solidarity, rather than empathy, can lead towards more meaningful change in public attitudes and policies related to homelessness.

Solidarity VS Empathy 

Dr. Varma argues that personalized stories showcasing homeless people’s shared humanity with housed readers through examples of good deeds and similarities to the general public fall short of providing readers with a politicised account of the structural roots of homelessness. Politicised stories presume this humanity already and instead they represent homeless people’s perspectives on the issue of housing.

Dr. Varma’s study views solidarity as a commitment to social justice that translates into action. Because of this, solidarity in journalism offers an alternative to empathy by shifting focus from the relatable individual to the systemic factors that affect entire communities. She writes:

“In the context of homelessness, solidarity in journalism construes the meaning of homelessness as a matter of politics that can and should be addressed through systemic change to the housing system, while empathy in journalism positions homelessness as primarily a matter of needing greater interpersonal understanding and harmony between housed and homeless people. Stories that evoke empathy emphasize the kindness of neighbors, the generosity of charitable organizations, and often focus on stories of ‘one of the good ones’ for whom the existing system suffices.”

Solidarity shifts focus to community-level actions, framing homelessness as socially unjust regardless of the merits, relatability, or personal demons of the individuals it affects. Journalists enact solidarity by using politicisation techniques to emphasize the community-wide constraints that prevent people from lifting themselves out of marginalization, and represent perspectives on how to address social injustice at a structural level.

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Case Study: The San Francisco Homeless Project

In order to understand how solidarity in journalistic representation of homelessness can lead to social change, Dr. Varma’s study examines how journalists humanized homeless people in the case of the collaborative San Francisco Homeless Project.

The San Francisco Homeless Project took place on 29 June 2016, with coverage throughout the week. It was a day of media action dedicated to covering homelessness across more than 70 news outlets, and it was the first project of its kind with regards to this issue, with the aim to humanise people experiencing homelessness. Participating outlets ranged from large flagship news outlets with hundreds of staff journalists to community news sites with small staffs of five people or fewer, and they included media such as The San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Examiner, SFIstMission LocalHoodline48 HillsBerkeleysideSan Francisco Public PressKQED, and San Jose Mercury News. Journalists involved ranged from recent college graduates to career journalists.

Although singular outlets retained control over story content, for the purpose of the project all papers and sites abandoned their usually fierce competition to cover the issue of homelessness, which had become an emergency in San Francisco.


Dr. Varma’s research aimed to answer the following questions:

(1) How do journalists humanize marginalized communities, such as homeless people?

(2) What are the social justice implications of journalistic humanizing techniques?

In order to do so, she conducted a textual analysis of 325 stories appeared during the week of the project, starting 29 June 2016. Additionally, Dr. Varma conducted in-depth interviews with twelve journalists, columnists, and editors who were involved with the project.

Empathy and Solidarity in the SF Homeless Project

Dr. Varma found that a third of the stories in the SF Homeless Project emphasized empathy, less than a fifth emphasized solidarity, and less than a tenth displayed both.

According to Dr. Varma’s textual analysis, personalisation and empathy-inducing techniques included:

  • Profiling exemplary individuals
  • Evoking emotional similarities

Both techniques are part of a dominant narrative along the lines of “they’re just like us” (when “they” are members of a marginalized community and “us” consists of privileged readers).

The main technique used by journalists humanising marginalised communities through politicisation and, therefore, solidarity, was radical inclusion, with journalists representing people’s perspectives on shared conditions that produced and reinforced marginalisation.

Examples of solidarity in the SF Homeless Project included stories that focused on systemic barriers that prevent people from exiting homelessness. Rather than individualising people experiencing homelessness, these stories reported the growing breadth of people experiencing homelessness and reasons for it. Dr. Varma found that in these stories, homeless people were regularly quoted through the technique of radical inclusion:

“What distinguishes ‘radical inclusion’ from ‘inclusion’ is that journalists who engage in this technique quote homeless people for their views on what would help them, and offer accounts of shared conditions that affect the entire community to represent power structures beyond individual fortitude. For example, radical inclusion in the SF Homeless Project took the form of journalists asking people affected by policies for their views on them—such as property confiscation or a proposed tent ban.”

Substantive humanising through the project, then, took place not when journalists amassed and presented evidence that homeless people are “just like” housed readers, but instead through the inclusion of their analytical perspectives on how to address the social injustice they endure in common. This enriched and expanded discourse on longstanding issues like homelessness.

Politicisation and solidarity techniques shift journalism from evoking empathy to accounting for politics. They take as a given that members of marginalized communities are human and not in need of humanisation —regardless of their similarity, relatability, or external worthiness. Politicisations occurs by representing the shared lived conditions across a marginalized community with an overarching narrative that invites solidarity against the injustice of the status quo.


The Need for Solidarity (Beyond Empathy) in Journalism that Humanises Marginalized Communities

Although evoking empathy through personalization could be a prelude to enacting solidarity through politicization, Dr. Anita Varma’s study did not find evidence that empathy operates as a prelude to solidarity in stories. Instead, it showed that empathy and solidarity tend to operate as distinct currents in journalists’ humanising practices. She concluded:

“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.”
  • Read “Evoking Empathy or Enacting Solidarity with Marginalized Communities? A Case Study of Journalistic Humanizing Techniques in the San Francisco Homeless Project” here via Journalism Studies. 
  • Read our Q&A With Dr. Anita Varma here.