{"id":379,"date":"2014-09-04T14:20:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T14:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=379"},"modified":"2015-10-13T19:04:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T19:04:57","slug":"homelessness-at-the-vmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2014\/09\/04\/homelessness-at-the-vmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Homelessness at the VMAs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/08\/25\/arts\/music\/miley-cyrus-steals-video-music-awards-again-this-time-by-staying-in-her-seat.html?_r=1\">Miley Cyrus\u2019 VMA\u00a0activities<\/a>\u00a0recently hit the news again &#8211; but this time it\u00a0wasn&#8217;t for twerking. Instead, Miley took\u00a0the spotlight off herself and put it on the issue of homeless youth. Passing her award acceptance on to 22-year-old Jesse Helt, a formerly homeless youth, Miley brought attention to severe social inequality across the U.S. The move raised over $200,000 for Los Angeles homeless youth. However, sociologists show that increasing media awareness of a stigmatized group can have <i>both <\/i>positive and negative consequences.<\/p>\n<h5>Regardless of Miley\u2019s intentions, her effort to give voice to the homeless population is a step in the right direction. Sociologists show that increased awareness of and contact with stigmatized populations can help decrease that stigma.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pop.psu.edu\/directory\/bal6\">Barrett Lee<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uaa.alaska.edu\/sociology\/farrell.cfm\">Chad Farrell<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mailman.columbia.edu\/our-faculty\/profile?uni=bgl1\">Bruce Link<\/a>. 2004. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org.ezp3.lib.umn.edu\/stable\/pdfplus\/3593074.pdf?&amp;acceptTC=true&amp;jpdConfirm=true\">Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness<\/a>.\u201d <i>American Sociological Review<\/i>. 69(1).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>The media also plays a large role in which issues get deemed \u201csocial problems\u201d\u2014problems we feel\u00a0responsible for helping to fix. Positive media attention given to homelessness at the VMAs, while fleeting, may have some positive impact on social perceptions of homelessness.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sociology.ucsd.edu\/faculty\/bio\/gusfield.shtml\">Joseph Gusfield<\/a>. 1989. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org.ezp3.lib.umn.edu\/stable\/pdfplus\/3096810.pdf?acceptTC=true&amp;jpdConfirm=true\">Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State<\/a>.\u201d <i>Social Problems<\/i>. 36(5).<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salisbury.edu\/socialwork\/Faculty_Profiles\/faculty-forte.html\">James Forte<\/a>. 2002. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/web.a.ebscohost.com.ezp3.lib.umn.edu\/ehost\/pdfviewer\/pdfviewer?sid=b0ea64f3-4955-4eea-9758-8aed3f386752%40sessionmgr4002&amp;vid=1&amp;hid=4204\">Not in My Social World: A Cultural Analysis of Media Representations, Contested Spaces, and Sympathy for the Homeless<\/a>.\u201d <i>Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare<\/i>. 29(4).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>However, raising awareness of what many see as a <i>deserving<\/i> segment of the homeless population\u2014white, healthy, homeless youth\u2014may also\u00a0detract from what many sociologists call the &#8220;undeserving poor.&#8221;\u00a0This equally important group of minority populations and welfare recipients will have a much harder time finding its way into an awards show.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.upenn.edu\/faculty\/katz.shtml\">Michael Katz<\/a>. 2013. <i><a href=\"http:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/the-undeserving-poor-9780199933952?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;\">The Undeserving Poor: America&#8217;s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty. 2nd Edition.<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>Oxford University Press.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Miley Cyrus\u2019 VMA\u00a0activities\u00a0recently hit the news again &#8211; but this time it\u00a0wasn&#8217;t for twerking. Instead, Miley took\u00a0the spotlight off herself and put it on the issue of homeless youth. Passing her award acceptance on to 22-year-old Jesse Helt, a formerly homeless youth, Miley brought attention to severe social inequality across the U.S. The move raised [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1957,"featured_media":586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,13],"tags":[38543,38541,129,115,94],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-inequality","tag-culture","tag-inequality","tag-media","tag-music","tag-television"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2014\/09\/image.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}