Masculinity, Identity, and Disabled Veterans: How British Audiences Respond to Representations of Military Veterans on Prime Time BBC Programmes

In recent years, media coverage of the London Paralympics (2012) and Invictus Games (2014) significantly increased the visibility of disabled people, specifically veterans, on British television. In contrast to NBC’s five and a half hours of coverage in the United States, Channel 4 provided over 150 hours of coverage of the games to UK audiences and foregrounded well-known disabled presenters. Through coverage of these events, media producers highlighted veterans’ journeys of recovery and overcoming disability and injury (Kelly, 2016), giving them the opportunity to shape public perceptions of veterans.