The identity politics of world news: oneness, particularity, identity and status in online slideshows

This article aims to fill the media representation gap in identity politics research by exploring connections to different identity politics models in representations of people in world news and relating them to discourses on humanity and notions of globalization respectively. News picture slideshows from Swedish, UK and US web newspapers are studied with an analytics-of-mediation approach. Slideshows of May Day are the focus alongside everyday slideshows. Intersections of identity politics models and discourses on humanity/notions of globalization are in the end sketched in a schematic model. The analysis shows that the reifying identity model dominates, and appears as a shortcut to media attention. It also discloses various possibilities of employing universalism and a focus on people's status. The key role of images in mediated identity politics is highlighted and it is argued that media studies is imperative for identity politics research, and vice versa.