Life in the shadow of the media

Media images pervading everyday life often reproduce inequitable social relations that adversely affect the lives of vulnerable people. This article explores the influence of media representations of homelessness as a source of characterizations that are used by homeless people when representing themselves. To do this, it draws on life narrative interviews, photographic exercises and phogo-based discussions with 12 single rough sleepers from London. It documents how participants both reproduce common media storylines foregrounding their differences from housed people and emphasizes aspects of their lives that do not feature in media portrayals, but which invoke their `normality'