Guest Speaker Beth Haller Talks About Media Depiction

Guest speaker Beth Haller came out to the Orton Center at the University of Redlands, to enlighten students and faculty on the concerns of how the disabled community is represented in the media. Haller began with familiarizing the audience on her book, "Representing Disability in an Ableist World, Essays on Mass Media." Haller’s discussion followed the succession of her book, which covers topics of advertising, news, entertainment television, film and Internet new media. Haller, a professor of Journalism/New Media at Towson University in Maryland, has harnessed the media on concerns and issues of the disabled with her plethora of research. Haller opened up the dialogue for those who wanted to share their views or ask questions. When she was asked if she considers diabetes as a type of disability due to the limitations and stereotypes associated with it, she explained that diabetes can be considered a disability depending on if an individual identifies him or herself as disabled. Haller began by analyzing American society in the 1990s when the news media only began to understand the concept of “inclusion” in education for disabled students. She discussed disability humor and how disability is utilized in advertising images. She closed her speech with an examination of how "social media changes the conversation in that it helps get the message out" at a rate faster than ever before, Haller said. She described social media as an outlet available to everyone, presenting the opportunity to pull disability activists together and keep the public informed.