This article draws on studies that explore forms of contemporary journalism which focus on the role played by the expression of emotions and feelings. We present results from a qualitative study which examined how British tabloid newspapers covered acid attacks on women between 2010-2016. Drawing on the notion of affect, we explore the extent to which journalists try and turn painful embodied states into rational discourse. The data analysed suggest that such experiences cannot be completely captured by language. The journalists make use of particular narrative strategies focussing on the incident of the attack by highlighting how pain was experienced by the individual. This often results in the women being singled out and isolated. While there is some discussion of the contexts in which the violence occurred, the wider sociocultural background is absent from the articles. We conclude that the focus on intense pain in the articles may enable a particular affective relationality to emerge that is felt by victims, journalists and audiences alike.

She is currently co-editing with Jacob Johanssen a book exploring media portrayals of disability from a global perspective.

By using discourse analysis, this paper compares and contrasts the journalistic coverage of the story of a beauty blogger with facial disfigurement with her blog. On the one hand, we will show the extent to which a self-representational account may align with the journalistic coverage, reinforcing rather than contesting mainstream representations of disability. On the other, we will demonstrate how a person with a disfigurement can use blogging to reclaim her own identity and challenge the medical objectification of her body perpetuated by mainstream media. This research found that rather than being mutually exclusive, journalism and blogging can play a complementary role in shaping the society's understanding of the complexities and contradictions surrounding disfigurement.

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